PSYCHIATRY IN THE FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOSES 285 



makes great trouble in dealing with senile conditions in medico- 

 legal cases; and in like cases concerning degeneracy in earlier life 

 the most contradictory and confusing notions prevail. They are 

 not in harmony with practical experience. This is largely due to 

 the adoption in psychiatry of generalizations in regard to heredity 

 not yet warranted by the science of biology. The morphological 

 ideas in the prevailing pathological conceptions, and the descrip- 

 tive terms employed, have undoubtedly obstructed the progress of 

 psychiatry. From all such preconceptions the psychiatrist should 

 be wholly emancipated. 



A functional conception of pathology is not in conflict with a 

 pathological conception in the sense of the long-used distinction 

 between functional and organic diseases. The objection to this 

 is not lessened, but the fault is not with function. Life and the 

 science of physiology are first; function and all that pertains to 

 it are primary facts of the activities of normal life. Much dishar- 

 mony in the conceptions of pathology has been due to the setting- 

 up of ideas of "organic diseases" as the chief factors in pathology, 

 and the minimizing of function as worthy of serious scientific con- 

 sideration. Our conceptions of function are uncomplicated as re- 

 lating simply to the modes of action of the several parts of the 

 organism; but we must think of organic disease in two ways, of 

 changes of structure in results, and of changes of action in "pro- 

 cess." The functional factors are necessary to organic disease and 

 their distinction and true relation should be discovered in their 

 combination. The organic changes of disease are the sequels of 

 interferences with the prime process of normal life. 



Physiology and its Relation.to Psychology 



Physiology acknowledges its debt to Johannes Miiller, who mas- 

 tered the two great sciences, morphology and physiology, and 

 was a teacher of pathology. He took an active interest in psych- 

 ology, regarding physiology by empirical methods as essential 

 to advancement. After Miiller's death, nearly fifty years ago, the 

 fields of his scientific work were divided by the specializations 

 through which the present marvelous advancement has been gained. 

 Physiological chemistry became independent of physiology; and 

 physiological psychology developed on the lines of psycho-physical 

 experiment. It was then that mental physiology should have made 

 its union with mental pathology. It is easy to see that psychology 

 tried to accomplish this by its attempts to find a morphological 

 basis for its investigations through the experimental method, but 

 the field for this was limited. Psychiatry under like limitations, 

 by its morphological attitude, met the invitations of psychology 



