1913] Arnos W. Peters 239 



The majority of cases of mental diseases are, I am convinced by 

 special studies, characterized by the occurrence of obvious brain lesions, 

 i. e., even in the present stage of science they possess a structural pa- 

 thology. Do they therefore possess no functional pathology? Their 

 possession of the two aspects is a truism. Should we not study both 

 aspects ? 



Furthermore, suppose we learn that, whereas three quarters of our 

 cases of mental disease exhibit obvious irrecoverable brain lesions, 

 another quarter falls to shovv these. Suppose the methods of micro- 

 scopic research should still fall to show in many cases essential or 

 irreversible brain lesions, should we not stultify ourselves if we did 

 not abandon jor the research campaign both that psychopathology 

 which has taught us the main course of our disease and the neuro- 

 pathology which has proved usefully negative? Should we not repair 

 at once to the chemistry of metabolism, the physiology of internal 

 secretions, and the entire point of view of psychopathology? Dis- 

 coveries in the latter fields, concrete and pertinent facts, would carry 

 US back to the tissues and back to the processes of the nervous System, 

 to neuropathology, structural and functional and to psychopathology, 

 and enlighten many dark corners therein. He who adheres to the clas- 

 sical Problems as they He within the teaching divisions of any science is 

 not apt to change the face of that science.^ 



It is the method of science to develop the ultimate truth with 

 its numerous and involved qualifications, which are due to the infi- 

 nite complexity of natura itself, by means of hypotheses. These 

 are repeatedly set up and repeatedly confirmed or refuted and re- 

 placed by others of better construction in view of previous expe- 

 rience. Whether the hypothesis was exactly correct or not — ulti- 

 mately tenable or untenable — ^becomes a matter of no practical sig- 

 nificance. The testing of hypotheses develops facts, and facts, dem- 

 onstrated and adequately qualified truths, are the precious heritage 

 of the race f rom previous human endeavor. Now, then, the hypoth- 

 esis which underlies the use of the biochemical method in this 

 problem is that which postulates, simply, a relation between patho- 



^ Southard, E. E. : " Psychopathology and Neuropathology : The Problems 

 of Teaching and Research Contrasted," Amer. Jour. of Psychol., 23 : 230-235, 

 1912. Read by invitation in a Symposium at a meeting of the American Psycho- 

 logical Association, December 28, 191 1, at the Hospital for the Insane, Wash- 

 ington, D. C. 



