132 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 343. 



to become so. For reasons, however, which 

 will be pointed out below, the medical man 

 needs a more exact and systematic knowl- 

 edge of the relations of the human mind 

 than the hereditary common wisdom of the 

 race provides him with, while at the same 

 time his opportunities for acquiring this 

 knowledge at present are either entirely 

 lacking or quite impracticable for the 

 average practitioner. It is a fact that the 

 men who, for the public benefit, require the 

 largest amount of insight into mind and its 

 relations with body, have had thus far the 

 least convenience for acquiring it. This 

 condition is probably a relic of that same 

 ancient fallacy so very frequently en- 

 countered everywhere, that material ob- 

 jects (here the tissues of the body) are 

 more real and more important than things 

 which are immaterial, ideas and emotions 

 and the determinations of the will. Yet 

 most old men and women would tell you 

 that these latter things had influenced their 

 lives far more than matter of any sort 

 whatever. For every person maimed by a 

 material accident a dozen are maimed by 

 some one's will or emotion or idea. 



The physician needs some direct acquaint- 

 ance with the science of psychology, be- 

 cause, in part, he is properly the self-elected 

 teacher of the public, and to every teacher, 

 of whatever sort, psychology is by reason of 

 its nature necessary foundation -knowledge; 

 to argue otherwise is sophistry, convincing 

 to none. The average phj^sician, that is to 

 say, most physicians, are not teachers of 

 the public in hygiene, physiology and 

 general prophylaxis to half the measure 

 that they might be, some from inability, 

 some from thoughtlessness, some from 

 ^ inertia,' some possibly from indisposition 

 so to do. But this duty of the medical man 

 is a privilege and its compensations out of 

 proportion to its costs. Herein lies the 

 general affection for the old-time family 

 doctor, the most contented and best re- 



quited of his profession, the friend and con- 

 fidant rather than the hireling of his neigh- 

 bors. Practical psychologist that he was, 

 w^hen he entered a house, patient and 

 household at once felt better even though 

 death were near. 



In ways, however, more immediate to his 

 cases than in this position as medical edu- 

 cator to the public does the physician need 

 to know the principles of modern psychol- 

 ogy in a broad meaning of the term. He 

 requires it because always in his practice 

 he is concerned with living and social or- 

 ganisms who invariably are compounded of 

 both body and mind. As regards the 

 wholly obvious necessity of acquaintance 

 with the normal mind for the many medical 

 graduates who pay chief attention to mental 

 and to nervous diseases, much might be 

 said, although little will be, here. Even 

 these, alienist and neurologist (although 

 usually versed more or less, late or soon, in 

 the substance of empirical psychology, 

 while some are competent and even distin- 

 guished psychologists), even specialists in 

 the mind, have at present no adequate op- 

 portunity to learn the substance of the 

 science in a thorough systematic way. 

 Many of our distinguished alienists have 

 enjoyed a general college education and 

 some have been led by the psychology 

 learned meanwhile to ' specialize,' when 

 their medical degree was acquired, in the 

 diseases of the mind. But these educational 

 privileges are relatively infrequent and with 

 our present system of college education 

 must remain so some time, most medical 

 schools being not yet, b}"" probably many 

 years, post-graduate institutions. Yet in- 

 sanity appears, by reliable statistics, to be 

 on the increase ; and to meet the certain de- 

 mand for the care and proper treatment of 

 these patients, a larger proportion of all 

 medical graduates w^ill, by economic prin- 

 ciples, devote their attention to this most 

 important branch of therapeutic science. 



