On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment.

  • Goodhart, James F. (James Frederic), Sir, 1845-1916.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    time the doctrine of evolution has come into exist- ence and has grown into robust manhood. In those days change of type conjured up the idea of jumps from the disease of one day to that of some suc- cessive one. We can understand now, if we could not at first sight then, that no such demonstration is possible, because it is out of the natural order of things. But the absence of gross changes within the span of a century or two does not touch the assertion that disease has changed and is changing. The process is one of transition, subtle and gradual —as gradual as that by which man himself must be undergoing modification, because this earth is changing; and unless he accommodates himself to his altering circumstances the man of to-day will have to make way for some other being more pliable than he. I see no escape from the absolute certainty of the conclusion based on this a priori consideration that disease is becoming modified, and this, too, in all sorts of directions in correspondence with the manifold circumstances to which it is subjected. I need hardly give any illustrations of this, they are so abounding; but to show the intricacy of the case, let me insist on this maxim : No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Apply the principle—for it is a principle—to the exanthemata, and to what we are doing for them in all directions, both preventive and curative, at the present day. It is impossible, I take it, to do away with one of