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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    but it needs to remember that it has not yet attained to the enucleation of the neurotic constitution. And when I see, as I have seen, the uterine appendages removed for an apparently incurable neuralgia, I see in the measures adopted not the advance of scientific surgery, as some might suppose, but the abasement of the patient, who has been obliged to yield to the force of circumstances. It is a poor result. Opera- tions of this kind are on a par with some of those upon a painful kidney, or with the destruction of Meckel's ganglion for tic. They may be necessary, just as war is necessary. But they are nothing to be proud of; they often leave a lot of bad blood behind them, and they are conspicuous for the failure of those higher and more fundamental arts of treat- ment that should have lifted the patient over this necessity. To criticisms of this kind it is often said, But the people love to have it so ; and true this, is. But for us the thought should ever be, With the kidney gone, the ovaries removed, the Meckel's ganglion destroyed, and the pain returned, what will ye do in the end thereof? With one other subject only do I propose to trouble you, and I have done. It is one perhaps most dear to the neurotic of any I have named, and, must I not say, most indispensable of all as a shelter to the doctor ? I need hardly add that I allude now, in its own right, to the torpid liver. Ah! what, indeed, should we doctors do without this sluggard of an