The science of anthropology claims, as we know, to have discovered, that
the various epochs of history are marked not only by characteristic
religious, political, social, and literary conditions, but not
unfrequently also by particular forms of disease; and it is the opinion
of eminent medical authorities that nervous and mental diseases
constitute the “pathological feature” of modern civilisation. This,
of course, is not to be understood as meaning that diseases of this
character have not appeared in previous epochs, but simply that they
occur with unusual frequency at the present day and in unusually grave
forms.
A book treating of the affliction of the age ought to count on a large
circle of readers, and it will be all the more deserving of such if it
thoroughly and skilfully fulfils its purpose of holding up the mirror to
the time and of imparting the light and advice required in this matter.
This has been done in an excellent manner by the work of the Bremen
alienist Dr. SCHOLZ, entitled _Die Diätetik des Geistes—Ein Führer zu
praktischer Lebensweisheit_, which has just appeared in its second and
enlarged edition, Leipsic, E. H. Mayer. This book is distinguished from
the majority of similar recent publications intended for a greater public
by its relative thoroughness. It must be characterised as thorough and
comprehensive, also, in comparison with the older and more celebrated
work, which its title at once suggests, FEUCHTERLEBEN’S _Diätetik
der Seele_. The character of the book is not “purely psychological,”
overlooking the high importance of the influence of the body, as was
the case with Beneke; nor does it lean towards the moralising of a
Heinroth and Ideler; nor does the author treat his subject from an
exclusively medical point of view: the work, in fact, is anthropological
in character. Its contents possess chiefly in two respects great
interest: (1) from a universal human point of view, in that it affords
us a glance into the awful abysses of life, in the company of an expert
guide who tells us how these depths are to be avoided, or at least gives
consolation to those whose way leads necessarily through them; and (2)
from a pedagogical point of view, in that it directs attention to the
heredity of the morbid constitutions and abnormalities that oppose
obstacles to education or may become such if improperly treated.
It is obvious that morbid mental dispositions must be taken into account
in all work of education and instruction, if we wish to avoid an
egregious violation of the universally recognised requirement to regard
individuality. And from this point of view the book of Dr. Scholz will
awaken in readers who have anything to do at all with education, the
desire to learn more about the nature of morbid mental life in the young
than is presented in this treatise destined for a large public.
Such a wish would have had to remain unsatisfied six years ago, when the
_Diätetik des Geistes_ first appeared. It is true, English physicians
particularly, like West, Conolly, Maudsley, and others, had a long time
previously directed attention to the morbid phenomena of infant psychic
life, but their work, like that of their French and German professional
associates, lies buried in medical magazines and volumes not easily
accessible. The first to apply himself to the work needed in this
condition of affairs was Professor EMMINGHAUS, who digested and collected
all the material, thus supplied, in a compendious work bearing the title
_Die psychischen Störungen des Kindesalters_, Tübingen, Laupp, 1887. The
fact indeed is not to be left unrecognised that the book, in so far as it
may be used by those who have not had a medical training, possesses two
defects,—defects, however, for which the author cannot be censured. In
the first place, it is intended for physicians only, and is therefore,
on account of the many technical terms it uses, at times not uniformly
intelligible. To the serious student, however, who possesses the previous
psychological and physiological knowledge most indispensable, it presents
no difficulties of too great magnitude. The second defect likewise
springs from the purpose of the work. It consists in the fact that,
excepting a few occasional references and hints, the pedagogical aspect
of the question is not considered. Pedagogists, here, are confronted with
a problem which must be solved, and of which the solution will certainly
not be a thankless task. The writer of these lines has approached one
aspect of this question in a treatise of his entitled _Nervosität and
Mädchenerziehung_, Wiesbaden, 1890, in the course of which study he has
arrived at the conviction that an important factor is lacking in modern
pedagogics and the training of teachers. This conviction he has put into
words in another treatise, _Geistesstörungen in der Schule_, Wiesbaden,
1891, with what success it remains for the future to say.
Two years after the appearance of Emminghaus’s work a translation was
published in Germany of a French book of a similar character. _Der Irrsin
im Kindesalter_, by Dr. PAUL MOREAU, authorised edition by Dr. Demetrio
Galatti, Stuttgart, 1889, Ferdinand Enke, publisher. Unfortunately,
Moreau, as his own preface reveals, did not know, when he wrote his
book, of the existence of the German work,—a circumstance that has not
been without regrettable consequences. Taken in conjunction with the
work of Emminghaus, however, Moreau’s book possesses, on account of the
numerous morbid cases it gives, a high value; although it cannot bear
comparison with the former work in richness of material and familiarity
with the literature of the subject, and much less so in the psychological
treatment of the subject, where Emminghaus is incomparably subtler and
more profound.
A treatise that is closely related, in point of subject-matter, on
the one hand to the works of Emminghaus and Moreau, and on the other
to the books of Preyer (_Die Seele des Kindes_) and Pérez (_Les trois
premières années de l’enfant_ and _L’enfant de trois à sept ans_) on
the development of children, has just been published by a Leipsic
teacher under the title of _Die Periodicität in der Entwickelung
der Kindesnatur_, _Neue Gesichtspunkte für Kinderforschung und
Jugenderziehung_, by GUSTAV SIEGERT, Leipsic, 1891, R. Voigtländer.
The author endeavors, in a very interesting manner we must admit, to
show that, in the development of the child, lasting states in regular
alternate succession occur of mental and physical buoyancy on the one
hand and depression on the other, of moral exaltation, likewise, and
moral subsidence. The fundamental cause of this periodical alternation,
of the general existence of which numerous proofs are adduced, is
supposed to lie in the alternate strengthening and relaxation of the
individual’s forces of action, brought on by the expenditure and
reproduction of energy; additional determinative causes, accelerative as
well as retardatory, are found in intercourse with the world and with
other human beings. We may call the former the individual and the latter
the social cause of the phenomena of periodicity. In the application of
his results to juvenile education the author arrives at some far-reaching
propositions of reform, the consideration of which, however, we shall
have to leave to the pedagogical press.
We shall have to preserve the same attitude with regard to a new work
of the well-known Leipsic professor Dr. STRUMPELL—_Die pädogogische
Pathologie oder die Lehre von den Fehlern der Kinder_, Leipsic, 1890,
Verlag von Georg Böhme Nachfolger. We must refer here to this otherwise
highly deserving book only in one respect, where we have occasion for
censure. The author does not in his expositions sufficiently take account
of the intimate connection between physical and mental phenomena, and the
consequence of this is among other things that he excludes pathological
mental conditions (the physical causes of which he is forced to admit)
as a matter of principle from the pedagogic system and consigns them
entirely into the charge of the physician. In our treatise mentioned we
have explained why this is not allowable, as well as, in addition, what
portion of duty devolves on the teacher in the consideration of these
pathological mental conditions. Strumpell’s mistake springs from the
fact that he conceives with Herbart the essential object of education
to be intellectual culture. Allowing that Herbart cannot be taken to
task for entertaining this conception, we may yet demand of Strumpell
the recognition of the results of recent physiological psychology to the
extent at least of perceiving that psychical and physical phenomena are
_one_ if not the _same_. Even the opponents of Monism dare not overlook
this truth,—a truth moreover that admits very well of reconciliation with
the Herbartian pluralism to which Strumpell is devoted.
We might cite here numerous pathological conditions of mind that very
plainly spring from physical causes and to which the instructor has to
give attention just as much as the physician. Instead, however, of citing
particular cases, we will refer to three little treatises that are in
the highest degree instructive on this point, not only for teachers
exclusively but also for all who have to do with children. Dr. MAXIMILIAN
BRESGEN, specialist in diseases of the nose and throat at Frankfort on
the Main, has published at the house of Leopold Voss in Hamburg (1890)
a brochure entitled _Ueber die Bedeutung behinderter Nasenathmung nebst
besonderer Berücksichtigung der daraus hervorgehenden Gedächtniss- und
Geistesschwäche_. A treatise of like character is that of Dr. med.
LENZMANN of Duisburg, entitled _Ueber den schädlichen Einfluss der
behinderten Nasenathmung auf die körperliche und geistige Entwickelung
des Kindes_, Bielefeld, 1890, Anders Verlag. Both treatises contain,
among other things not to be considered here, instructive examples of
the rise and disappearance of that morbid mental condition to which Hack
first directed notice in Germany but which elsewhere became known through
the researches of the Dutch physician Guye by the name of _Aprosesia
nasalis_. The third treatise is by Dr. med. RALF WIECHMANN, specialist
for nervous diseases at Brunswick, and bears the title _Eine sogenannte
Veitstanzepidemie in Wildbad_, Leipsic, 1890, Verlag von Georg Thieme.
By St. Vitus’s dance (Ger. _Veitstanz_) we understand the disease of
which the well-known symptoms are involuntary muscular twitchings usually
accompanied by severe or light psychical disturbances, known in medicine
by the name of _chorea minor_ and _chorea rhythmica_, and sometimes
occurring in epidemics. At the school in Wildbad the number of the
afflicted children rose in the course of time to twenty-six. Wiechmann
expatiates at length in his book on the character of the contagion, and
arrives through an exhaustive use of the existing literature on the
subject at the result, that there was present in the individual children
attacked substantially a physical predisposition, an unstable nervous
system. As the first children attacked were not removed, the convulsive
motions were seen and perceptually taken up by the other children, who
were just approaching the period of puberty and labored under hereditary
predispositions. “Once these images had entered perceptually into the
unstable brain, they became competent to operate as stimuli and to be
translated into involuntary muscular motions.”
The conclusion of my letter may be taken up with the discussion of a
treatise that deserves a somewhat more detailed consideration. The
director of the Royal Würtembergian State Insane Asylum at Zwiefalten,
Dr. F. L. A. Koch, who already possesses eminent repute in the domain
of psychiatry, has just published the first part of a new work called
_Die psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten—Erste; Abteilung: Einleitung,
Die angeborenen andauernden psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten_,
Ravensburg, 1891, Verlag von Otto Maier. In this work the author extends
the development of the ideas he some time previously outlined in his
_Rudiments of Psychiatry_, second edition, 1889. In the expression
“psychopathische Minderwertigkeiten” (psychopathical secondary factors)
Koch embraces all those psychical irregularities, be they natural or
acquired, affecting the life of the human personality, which though in
the severest cases even not amounting to actual mental disorders, yet in
the most favorable instances so affect the persons afflicted with them
that they appear as lacking the full possession of mental normality and
capacity. Primarily, of course, the treatise is intended for physicians,
and the author counts on the gratitude of this profession in so far as
he has undertaken to put in independent form the separate facts formerly
scattered over the whole domain of psychiatry, to free them from other
neuro- and psycho-pathological subjects, and to unite them into one
special group of pathological states. But the author also counts on his
book being used by the representatives of other professions, by pastors,
tutors, teachers, jurists, sociologists, historians, and the like, and
indeed with perfect justice.
The savers of souls, if they had mastered to a slight degree even
the comprehension of the psychopathical secondary factors, would be
astonished to see how many people there are in the case of whom medicine
is more effective against “spiritual” vexations than pastoral advice,
and that often such advice, being one-sided and starting from false
assumptions, does harm only. They would see in the peculiarity of the
religious needs and tribulations of many a man a psycho-pathological
abnormality; they would come to understand how the otherwise
unintelligible badness of many another has its source in a pathological
basis: they would not regard and hail as absolutely good, moreover, many
“good impulses”;—all this they would find out if they had learned to
note and comprehend what the import is of such persons being descended
from neurotic ancestors, of their exhibiting palpable indications of
degeneration, and having also perhaps insane, idiotic, whimsical, and
epileptical brothers and sisters. They would furthermore perfectly
comprehend, that in the case of people who are descended from healthy
parents, but who from being in times past happy and joyful Christians
are now struggling with distractions of soul, it were often better
first to inquire after the state of their organs of digestion. And they
would be able to deal quite differently from formerly with many a soul
entrusted to their care, perhaps also more easily to conquer, or at least
to endure, some secret burden of their own lives. The import of the
book for the educator is easily inferrible from the remarks made. For
the jurist, who has to deal with the problems of accountability and the
administering of punishment, its importance is manifest. Sociology, too,
the deeper it enters into its problems, will not be able to dispense with
psychopathology, and in this field it is precisely the psychopathical
secondary factors that eminently demand attention. In that which concerns
its connection with history we need only mention the names of Lombroso,
Emminghaus (_Allgemeine Psychopathologie_) and Möbius (_Rousseaus
Krankheitsgeschichte_), to point out the importance of a work like that
before us. We recommend it without reserve to all whom it touches.