PSYCHIATRY IN THE FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSES 271 



the conditions of the inception of the current teachings, based upon 

 a rigid morphology. The German schools of psychiatry became the 

 centres of interest and influence, and their characteristics have 

 already been noted. In the history of the time from Virchow, Grie- 

 singer, and Meynert to the present there have been momentous 

 advances in the other biological sciences as well as in pathology and 

 psychiatr} r . The two latter lines of research are being strongly 

 influenced by the concurrent changes. There are some very recent 

 and significant signs of changing views in psychiatry which possibly 

 betoken the freeing of itself from the too rigid dominance of struc- 

 tural pathology. 



The Relation of Pathology to Other Biological Sciences, Especially to 



Physiology 



Physiology, when it declared itself an independent science by 

 breaking away from medicine and establishing its place in the great 

 realm of biology, entered upon a broader field of study of the func- 

 tional side of life with its complex phenomena in the functions of all 

 living matter. To morphology, as an equally independent science, 

 belongs the study of the structure and form of living matter; it 

 covers the whole field of anatomy in the special forms of zoology and 

 botany. But physiology and morphology, which are closely woven 

 together, are both built upon the foundation of the inorganic elements 

 of inanimate matter with its controlling laws of physics and chemistry 

 that govern the forces of inanimate phenomena. All these forces of 

 animate and inanimate nature are bound together; from a biological 

 point of view we do not know living matter without both form and 

 function. 



On the part of the physician the inquiry at this point is as to the 

 true relations of pathology to the other biological sciences in medi- 

 cine. The scientific foundation of pathology, the development of its 

 work in the other sciences which it necessarily involves, support its 

 claim to an equal place in biology with the other natural sciences. 



Prof. Orth, in an address at Kassel in 1903, described pathology as 

 consisting of two branches, anatomy and physiology. Although the 

 great Virchow remained a pure pathological anatomist, he contem- 

 plated the beginning of pathological physiology as the culmination 

 of his endeavors; "one of his favorite themes was the establishment 

 of pathological physiology, a subject which, to his mind, was the 

 foundation of scientific medicine, and therefore of medicine as a 

 whole." Practical medicine, according to Virchow, is coextensive 

 with pathological physiology; this is founded on pathological ana- 

 tomy, clinical observations, experimental researches; its problem is 

 the determination and investigation of bodily processes under abnor- 



