DEPARTMENT OF INSTITUTIONAL NEUROSIS |
| DIRECTOR Hardman Sturm |
ABOUT
Painters' colic is an example of the effects of a metallic poison on the nervous system. There are certain metals which produce a powerful effect on the system, not by means of their corrosive properties or by any direct action on the surface to which they are applied, but by a peculiar impression made upon the nervous system. Thus we find that mercury under certain circumstances will give rise to a very singular nervous disease; arsenic may be introduced into the system in such a way as to produce symptoms of nervous lesion; copper exercises a similar morbid influence, and the effects of lead are universally known. 1 do not mean to say that all these metals produce similar effects on the economy, for this is not the case, but there is one point of agreement between them, that all may produce symptoms which are called nervous or neurotic, and the diseases" thus produced are classed among the neurosis. What is the meaning of this term neurosis? A lesion of nervous function, more or less complete, occurring independently of any demonstrable organic change. A neurosis, then, is an alteration in the functions of the nerves of organic and animal life, the nature of which alteration we cannot understand, neither can it be demonstrated by the knife, nor by any examination of the state of the nervous tissue. In other words, a person will die with the symptoms of a neurosis, and when you come to examine the body, you will be unable to detect, in the minute ramifications of the nerves, the trunks, or the nervous centres, any appreciable lesion.