Textbook of Insanity: Based on Clinical Observations; For Practitioners and Students of Medicine (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Textbook of Insanity: Based on Clinical Observations; For Practitioners and Students of Medicine

The present edition follows the tradition of preceding editions, in that the author's text-book is intended to be a useful guide in the difficult domain of psychiatric study and science, for the student as well as for the practitioner of medicine. For the attainment of this object, the important points that have been kept in view are: Clear, comprehensible terms; avoidance, as far as possible, of theories and hypotheses; emphasis of all that may be regarded as more or less certain in the science of psychiatry; and systematic arrangement of the scientific material.

Owing to the peculiarity of this science and its state of incompleteness, text-books on psychiatry present more or less prominently subjective features dependent upon the personality of their authors. The present text-book is based upon thirty-three years of observation of the insane, and presents disease-pictures in the light of the author's personal experience. The general correspondence between the author's experience and that of other observers may be taken as a guarantee that in general he has been correct in his observation, and that, notwithstanding the confusing variety of manifestations in "diseases of the personality," there are certain fixed laws which permit the establishment empirically of distinct disease-pictures.

The most careful account has been taken of the additions to psychiatric science since the last edition of this work.

May the book in its new form again meet with success!

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