158 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



organic or structural change within the organ of the mind, viz. the cerebral 

 cortex. The war has tended to the former view and to favour the psycho- 

 genic origin of mental disorders, the horrible sights, for instance, and the 

 awful sounds and the terrifying personal experiences having proved too 

 great a mental stress ; and the effort to disregard personal danger, to con- 

 trol the will and to neglect and to suppress the natural tendency to self- 

 preservation being eventually outbalanced. Those who take this view assert 

 that mental states such as anxiety and worry are the cause of epilepsy, of 

 recurrent insanity as well as the condition of dementia praecox, but the 

 editors of this Journal do not accept the psycho-genetic origin of mental 

 diseases. They hold strongly to the belief that diseases of the mind are 

 primarily the result of organic disease of the body, and their society has 

 undertaken to support this view by propaganda and the publication of 

 research work embodied in a number of scientific papers which all tend 

 to show that dementia prsecox is based upon some organic changes in the 

 nervous tissue. 



The Editor, Dr. Bayard Holmes, who is the Director of the Psycho- 

 pathological Research Laboratory in the Cook County Hospital, is the chief 

 contributor. He asserts that dementia prsecox is responsible for 25 per 

 cent, of the total admissions into mental hospitals in America, and for 60 

 per cent, of the total under care, that there is one case in every fifty families, 

 and that many adolescent prisoners in reformatories and penitentiaries suffer 

 from it ; also that many vicious, erratic persons and prostitutes are similarly 

 afflicted. 



Dr. Holmes considers the diagnosis may be made from the " mummy " 

 attitude, cyanotic cold hands, dilated veins in the upper eyelids and behind 

 the ears, that in these cases adrenalin injected intravenously does not cause 

 a rise of blood-pressure, that the tongue may be increased in size as also 

 the thyroid, that there is a rise of pressure in the cerebro-spinal fluid to 

 150-300 (from 60-125 normal) millimetres of water, that the automatic 

 excitability shown in association with the spasmo-philic tendency are, with 

 the mental inertia, the mutism, mannerisms and the intellectual decline, 

 pathognomonic symptoms. He agrees as to its hereditary origin, and he 

 points out there is intestinal stasis especially near the ca^cum, for which 

 removal of the appendix and intestinal lavage have effected definite relief. 

 There is no mention made by the Editor of a very important chemical 

 analysis of the brain in cases of dementia praecox made by the late W. 

 Koch. Compared with the normal brain there is, according to this observer, 

 a condition of marked metabolic deficiency in this disease which is ex- 

 pressed in a definite variation in the neutral sulphur fraction, i.e., as sulphur 

 in non-colloidal water-soluble combinations not precipitated by barium 

 chloride direct. Special mention is made of two other papers contributed 

 by Laura Forster and M. Kojima, working in the Clay bury Laboratory and 

 based upon some cases among others under the reviewer's care clinically. 

 These authors have both shown that the ovaries and the testes in cases of 

 dementia praecox suffered from parenchymatous degeneration, but whether 

 primary or secondary is uncertain ; the possibility is that their physiological 

 insufficiency reacted upon a nervous system already prone to decay. 



J. Retinger, employing the method of Abderhalden, which is based upon 

 the discovery of specific defensive ferments in the body ; e.g. when foreign 

 proteins are introduced into the body, they cause the development of 

 ferments which destroy them. These ferments can be identified by chemical 

 tests ; and it is argued similarlj'^, by analogy, that altered functions may 

 also cause the appearance of defensive ferments whose presence can be 

 ascertained by chemical research. In this way a katabolism of the cerebral 

 cortex and of the sex and other glands has given rise to the appearance of 

 defensive ferments within the body. 



