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 disorders may last years.  I could name you patients who since thirty years keep the same obsessions, and who at the age of fifty still ask themselves questions upon their pact with heaven, as they did at the age of twenty.  Shall we speak of the consciousness the patient has of his state?  But this consciousness may be complete in certain melancholies and very incomplete in certain impulsions.

Is it necessary to insist on the presence or absence of anatomical lesions which one tries to ascertain at the post-mortem examination?  Shall we say with Sandras, Axenfeld, Huchard, Hack, Tuke, that neuroses are diseases without lesions?  One finds lesions in general paralysis which is ranged with insanity and we find some also in epilepsies which are considered as neuroses; one no more finds lesions in melancholic conditions than in conditions of obsessions.  Besides,