Psychiatrie Médicale, Physiologique et Expérimentale. Sémeiologie-Thérapeutique

ET EXPERIMENTALE.Sbwot.oomGovernment : MassonTHERAPEUTIQUE.By Dr. H. Baruk,Diseases, of Charenton, pages,physician-in-chief,Paris. is not (ParisHoset Cie.,for volume,Mental consistinga textbook of psychiatry, but done in the past two decades by the psychiatrists. Baruk speaks of the studies as the beginning of a physiological and experimental psychiatry which, he hopes, will ultimately replace descriptive psychiatry. In introducing the author to the American audience one may say that he belongs with de Jong to the pioneers who have applied the methods of pharmacological experimentation to psychiatry, by producing experimental catatonia in animals with bulbocapnine. But, as he points out, the biologic approach will not explain completely the basis of personality, emphasizing that one should not lose sight of the psychologic aspects of human behavior. Ther#{233}sum#{233} work which of the outstanding groups of FrenchThe first chapter deals with a review of the search for a “method” in the study of mental diseases. In the days of Pinel and Esquirol, psychiatry used the same methods as general medicine, on the one hand clinical observation and on the other anatomical correlation. It was with this method that in 1822 Bayle, a pupil of Laennec, made the important observation on the gross changes of dementia paralytica at the institution in Charenton, located in the suburbs of Paris, of which Baruk is now director. Later, by anatomical thinking the concept of dementia was developed intimately connected with irreversible structural disintegration of some of the cortical elements. The earlier hopes of finding the basic cause of other large groups of mental...