The Nervous System and the Mind: A Treatise on the Dynamics of the Human Organism. E-book. Formato PDF Charles Mercier   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

Not very many years ago, courses of lectures on Physiology used to be prefaced by an apology from the lecturer for occupying the time of the students with a subject which did not directly concern the treatment of patients, and by a laboured exposition of the various uses of a knowledge of physiology. Such an apology would not now be either needed or tolerated. The least intelligent of men needs now no explanation to convince him of the necessity of a knowledge of the normal as preliminary to a knowledge of the abnormal. The rawest of students requires no proof to show him that he cannot understand disorder of a function until he has some knowledge of its healthy working. Physi ology is no longer considered a useless subject arbitrarily added to the medical curriculum by tyrannical examiners for the mere purpose of increasing the burden to be borne by students. So far we congratulate ourselves on a distinct advance of Opinion. But the advance is not yet quite far enough. One branch of medical science has remained in this respect absolutely stationary. There is one department of medicine, and only one, in which a knowledge of the normal is not only not considered as a necessary preliminary to a knowledge of the abnormal, but is openly scoffed at, jeered at and derided.

Sanity and Insanity. E-book. Formato PDF Charles Mercier   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

There is, however, one department of medical knowledge to which even the most intelligent of laymen has not yet gained access, and that is the department that deals with insanity. With respect to this malady the great majority of medical men are themselves in the position of laymen. They have not studied it. It was not included in their examinations; it was a thing outside their curriculum — a thing apart, having little community of nature or similarity of character with the subjects Of their professional studies. TO the outside layman — to the non-medical public, insanity presents itself in two somewhat contradictory aspects. Sometimes it is to them a matter of transparent and childlike simplicity, a thing which a person of most ordinary intelligence — say a common juryman — is capable Of Estimating with accuracy and certainty. At other times it is viewed much as our ancestors Viewed the Black Art as something mysterious and marvellous something super natural something to be spoken Of with bated breath; something too full of awe to be even named explicitly. It must then be referred to in indirect and elliptical terms, with pursing Of the lips, with raised eyebrows and shoulders, and with shakings Of the head.