Literary Notices. xliii 
need in the way of general anatomical introduction? does not find a 
very good answer, nor the data of histo-pathology a lucid presentation. 
This holds still more for the introduction into clinical psychiatry. 
A classification in a text-book appears justified, if it helps the stu- 
dent to arrange the writer’s ideas or the facts or, if possible, both. 
BERKLEY promises to follow Krarrr—Esinc in order not to add a fur- 
ther attempt; but he cannot resist the temptation of giving four groups: 
1. Mental diseases without ascertainable pathological alteration 
of the brain substance. 
2. Mental diseases sequential to ascertainable alteration of the 
cerebral substance. 
3. Insanities due to inherited or acquired mental instability. 
4. States of complete or incomplete retardiation of the psychical 
(and physical) development. 
I should be greatly distréssed if I had to group my patients in such 
a manner, and to what extent would it help me? 
In the general etiology of insanity, BERKLEY considers civilization 
and education (with special reference to the negro), brain-cell degener- 
ation from overstrain (how demonstrable ?), nationality, gender, age, 
and heredity, and alcohol as the most important of inciting causes—a 
very gloomy look into the prophylaxis, since, of all the things men- 
tioned, alcoholism is the only one from which there is an escape, and 
perhaps the brain-cell degeneration, if it were not a petitio princtptt. 
In the general symptomatology, due emphasis is laid on the neces- 
sity of a complete examination from a general medical point of view. 
The analysis of the mental symptoms is, however, very precarious. 
Many of the most valuable features for the purpose of a diagnosis of 
prognostic and not merely descriptive value, are not mentioned and are 
left as ‘“‘heretofore almost an unknown territory.” SOMMER and KRAEP- 
ELIN have lived in vain; and the literature which in other chapters is 
ample, limited to ParisH and REDLICH. 
This may be the place for a comment on the omission of a short 
outline of psychological data which might well be considered more 
certainly a condition for a new psychiatry than the anatomy of the 
cortex. To avoid a poor psychology one ought not to invite the stu- 
dent or even a busy practitioner to avoid a careful treatment of the 
data which belong in the field of psychology. To do without some 
useful working hypothesis and working plan in the examination of men- 
tal disorders, is the same as to return to the old coughs and pulses in 
general medicine. Today it is far more necessary that a physician 
should learn to cope with the psychic data than even with the anatomy 
