stem asserted that neurotic sufferers should be patients set apart for
neurologist physicians alone, whereas the alienist should content
himself with real lunatics. The professor of the clinic for mental
diseases protested with much wit and claimed the right of attending
equally the neurotic patients. All this proved a great confusion in the
ideas.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, Charcot's studies themselves on
hysterical accidents began to make people's minds uneasy and to modify
conceptions of neuroses. They showed that neurotic sufferers presented
disorders in their thoughts, that many of their accidents, in all
appearance physical, were in connection with ideas, with the
_conviction_ of paralysis, of illness, with the remembrance of such or
such an event which had determined some great emotion. Without doubt,
this interpretation of hysteria, which I have myself contributed to
extend, must never be exaggerated, and it must not be concluded from
this that every neuropathic accident always and solely depends on some
remembrance or some emotion. In my opinion, this is only exact in a very
limited number of cases; and then it only explains the particular form
of such or such an accident and not the entire disease. Without doubt it
seems to me exaggerated to-day to see in neuroses those psychological
disorders alone, whereas the disorders of the circulation, the disorders
of internal secretions, the disorders of the functions of the
sympathetic which will be spoken of just here must also have a great
importance. But, however, this observation proved very useful at that
moment. A remembrance, an emotion, are evidently psychological
phenomena, and to connect neuropathic disorders with facts of the kind
is to include the study thereof with that of mental disorders. At this
time, in fact, they began to repeat on all sides a notion that had
already been indicated in a more vague manner; it is that neuroses were
at the root, were in reality diseases of the mind.

If such is the case, what becomes of the classical distinction between
neuroses and psychoses? No one can deny that the latter are above all
diseases of the mind and we have here to review the reasons which seem
to justify their complete separation. Will it be said that with
psychoses the disorders of the mind last very much longer? But some
patients who enter the asylum with a certificate of insanity are very
frequently cured in a few months and some neuropathic