SECTION F NEUROLOGY 



(Hall 13, September 22, 3 p. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR LLEWELLYN F. BARKER, University of Chicago. 

 SPEAKER: PROFESSOR JAMES J. PUTNAM, Harvard University. 



THE VALUE OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE IN 

 THE STUDY OF NEUROLOGY 



BY JAMES JACKSON PUTNAM 



[James Jackson Putnam, Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System, Harvard 

 Medical College, since 1893. b. Boston, Massachusetts, October 3, 1846. A.B. 

 Harvard, 1866; M.D. Harvard Medical School, 1869. Physician, Massachu- 

 setts General Hospital, 1874; Instructor in Diseases of Nervous System, 

 Harvard Medical College, 1875-93. Member of the American Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences; American Medical Association ; American Neurological Associa- 

 tion; Association of American Physicians and Surgeons; American Association 

 for Advancement of Science; Massachusetts Medical Society; Boston Society 

 of Medical Sciences; Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology; Boston 

 Society for Medical Improvement. Author of numerous medical publications, 

 mainly on neurological subjects.] 



THE subject of this address will be considered under three heads : 

 1. The limitation in usefulness of those methods of medical inves- 

 tigation which are based on the assumption that disease is always 

 a localized process. 2. The importance of the part played in 

 disease by readjustment and adaptation on the part of the organ- 

 ism, and the need of cultivating physiological conceptions as a 

 means toward a proper understanding of these processes. 3. The 

 impropriety of attempting to draw fundamental distinctions between 

 "functional" and "organic" disorders, and the significance of the 

 hypothesis of "energies" as applied to living organisms and to 

 disease. 



When the late Professor Virchow was chosen to deliver the open- 

 ing address before the International Congress at Rome, in 1894, 

 he selected for his topic "The Anatomical Principle in the Study 

 of Disease" (Morgagni und der Anatomische Gedanke"), 1 a doctrine 

 to the maintenance of which a great portion of his own long and 

 splendid labors had been devoted. The anatomical principle was 

 not conceived by Virchow in any narrow spirit. Its tenets were 

 that disease is always a localized process, and ought to be suscep- 

 tible of expression in some sort of anatomical terms, but he as- 



1 Berl. kl Woch, 1894. 



