38 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



have not been declared insane, who have not presented 

 any major problem to the community or themselves 

 mainly because their behavior was not disordered to the 

 degree which the law specifies is to be considered as a 

 menace to themselves or to the community. To say that 

 medicine and especially psychiatry now have interests, 

 therefore, in behavior is to indicate that medicine has so- 

 cial relations and an interest in the social organization 

 much more far reaching even than the social implications 

 of communicable diseases, which are so well recognized 

 at present. The medical attack, however, is made easier 

 by being confined to a limited part of the problem and is 

 not officially concerned with social problems in general. 

 The medical interests must be based on the problem of 

 pathology, and it is this point which I particularly would 

 like to stress. 



There is one other general consideration which I think 

 it is important to note, namely, that the logic of medicine 

 cannot be transferred from the clinical field of physical 

 diseases to that of mental disorders without some modi- 

 fication. The generalization which covers this is perhaps 

 best stated thus: there is no specific relationship between 

 the nature and degree of the organic involvement in 

 the nervous system and the behavior manifestations to 

 which it gives rise. 



It is this latter consideration probably to which we 

 must ascribe the aloofness of the general medical practi- 

 tioner in his attitude towards mental problems. The 

 physician, perhaps merely as a human being, prefers pro- 

 blems in which the sequence of cause and effect can be 

 clearly determined. Where the cause is often so elusive 

 or so apparently insignificant as contrasted with the ef- 

 fect, as it is in mental disorders, both layman and physi- 

 cian refuse to commit themselves. 



There is one specific subject in which after a very hope- 

 ful beginning a great deal of distrust has resulted. I re- 

 fer to the subject of feeble-mindedness. When Binet de- 

 vised his system of tests, which have since become fa- 

 mous, great enthusiasm was manifested because it seemed 

 as though at last we had an accurate quantitative method 

 for determining this important phase of mental disabil- 



