∗ For presentation to the Annual Meeting of Medico-Psychological Association, Edinburgh, 1898.Google Scholar

† In an official report of the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals to the State Commission in Lunacy for transmission to the legislature, the writer has endeavoured to urge the necessity of a more comprehensive view of study of the science of psychiatry. This report is composed of the following sections:Google Scholar

1 The beneficial results of scientific investigation of insanity.Google Scholar

2 The inadequacy of the present methods of investigating nervous and mental diseases.Google Scholar

3 The correlated branches of research in the scientific investigation of insanity.Google Scholar

4 The unclassified residuum.Google Scholar

5 General remarks on the organisation and conduction of the Pathological Institute.Google Scholar

From its nature this report had to be written in an un technical form. This paper embodies in substance Sections 3 and 4 of this report.Google Scholar

∗ This refers to Section 2 (“The Inadequacy of the Present Methods of Investigating Nervous and Mental Diseases”) of the report from which this paper is extracted.Google Scholar

∗ These methods and their application to the investigation of pathological mental manifestations are described by Dr. Sidis in a work coming from the Department of Psychology and Psycho-pathology, now in press for a coming number of the Archives of Neurology and Psycho-pathology.Google Scholar

∗ Vide, “Neuron Energy and its Concomitant Psycho-motor Manifestations,” Archives of Neurology and Psycho-pathology, April, 1898.Google Scholar

∗ Future observations, I think, are liable to show that this view is not correct. From a study of the identity of differentiation which the general structure of the neuron undergoes in the neuraxon in the form of long parallel filaments incorporated with distinct microsomes with analogous modifications of the cytoreticulum in other somatic cells (muscle cell, ciliated cell, leucocyte, chromatophores, &c.) subservient to motility, my own observations incline me to believe that the axon is the retractile and expansive structure of the neuron rather than the dendrons or gemmules.Google Scholar

∗ Apathy's theory of the concrescences of the neurons in the lowest parts of the nervous system is perfectly tenable. But we should remember that the stereotyped function existing through eons of time in these lowest parts of the nervous system presupposes a fixed relation of the neurons to each other. In the evolution of the higher centres, however, such as the association centres and probably the sensory spheres, the individual neurons have become independent anatomically, and the impulse is transmitted by physiological contact.Google Scholar

Retraction does not take place in the lowest parts of the nervous system, but must be postulated for the phenomena of the highest portions of the brain. Apathy's theory, in my judgment, should not create distrust in the neuron theory; his theory does not apply to the whole nervous system, but to its lower-most parts, such as pertain to the most automatic and vegetative functions. The homologue of the lowest parts of the human nervous system is found in the leech and other invertebrates that Apathy has studied.Google Scholar

∗ See Sidis, , Psychology of Suggestion, chap. xxi.Google Scholar

∗ Van Giesen, , “Toxic Basis of Natural Diseases.” State Hospital Bulletin, 1897.Google Scholar

∗ Vide, Archives of Neurology and Psycho-pathology, April, 1898.Google Scholar

∗ The details of chronic over-fatigue of the nerve-cell with normal food-supply, or work of the nerve-cell under conditions of deficient food-supply, involve too many technicalities to be presented in this text. Some of these details respecting the significance of the excretion of the metaplasm granules from the nerve-cell in relation to pathological expenditures of energy are presented in “The Toxic Basis of Neural Diseases,” in press for a future number of the Archives of Neurology and Psycho-pathology.Google Scholar

∗ “What Psychical Research has accomplished” in the Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, p. 299.Google Scholar