Contents:

Introduction
Outline Of A Theory Of Organ Inferiority
Heredity
Anamnestic Demonstration
Morphologic Indications
Reflex Anomalies As Indications Of Inferiority
Manifold Organic Inferiorities
The Part Played By The Central Nervous System
Biologic Viewpoint In The Organ Inferiority Theory
Appendix: The Inferiority Of The Urinary Apparatus
Remarkable Books Just Issued For Students of Psychology & Psychoanalysis

***

An excerpt from the beginning of the:

INTRODUCTION

An examination of the diseases of the urinary apparatus can be very extensively carried on so far as their symptomatology is concerned. In renal pathology, as in all other diseases, the schema of symptoms is built up empirically, and accordingly rests on a firm basis. It is richly enough equipped to lead the diagnostics of renal diseases along safe paths. The compass is at once reduced, however, when the examination is directed towards etiology. The theories of the causes of renal diseases read like a short collection of truisms, in which terms such as predisposition, chill, poisons, infection, disturbance of the circulation appear and reappear and play their part, just as they do in other organic diseases.

The fact that a definition of these causal factors themselves Is notably lacking ought not even to be particularly emphasized. More important is the fact that there is so little positive material available to decide the question concerning the localization of disease in the kidney. What has been emphasized, the sickening of the kidneys through poisoning or infection as well as through the progressive changes in affections of the circulatory system, all this is in line with the basal concepts of pathology, for the urinary organs are affected like all others proportionately to their relation to the disease centres.

The conditions in those cases which one is forced to designate as "genuine," or "primary" diseases of the kidney are less clear. A long list of diseases falls under these heads. They all have this in common, namely, that the final cause of their pathologic form cannot be traced beyond the kidney, and that a more remote or even an exogenous etiology—from the very name—seems out of the question. Here may be reckoned, if all other distinguishing indications are put aside, true contracted kidney, renal tumors, localized lues and tuberculosis, cystic degeneration, nephrolithiasis, nephralgie hematurique, renal hematuria, floating kidney, imperfect development and hypoplasia and analogous diseases in the pelvis of the kidney and ureter. I must add also that the genetic course of development in secondary diseases must not under any consideration be deemed exhausted by reference to the causa movens, but, rather, in these cases too, the selection of the kidney is determined in a hitherto unexplained manner.

If one turns aside from an explanatory attempt which limits itself to causes of disease which are purely local and situated in the kidney, one can divide the notions on localization of disease in the kidney synoptically into three groups, of which each one has reference to secondary as well as primary diseases. The one hypothesis tries to make the selection of the kidney as center of the disease tenable on the ground of "nephrotoxic" action of a number of poisons. The strength of this hypothesis lies in experimentation, as well as in a number of recorded cases which bring to mind a noxa especially harmful to the kidney, such as is present in scarlet fever, diphtheria and other infections. On the other hand it is inapplicable to a great number of renal affections, does not offer an explanation for the kidney's remaining unaffected upon the appearance of renal poisons, and should only be generalized with the utmost caution on the basis of animal experimentation. At any rate we know of no poison at present that invariably harms the kidneys, and at the same time, only the kidneys. A second conception sees the cause of the greater number of renal diseases in the exposed position of the kidney as an organ of excretion through which the waste material of the body is constantly passing. This hypothesis is supposed to serve as a sufficient explanation for most of the renal affections. Its application is surely greater and its bearing unquestionable, since it has to do, not only with true toxins, but also with the increase of waste products and with heightened external demands upon the kidney. But even with this conception we are not in a position to give satisfactory explanations. It also leaves us in the lurch when we ask why, with the admission of the premises, that is, the presence of bacteria in the blood, of toxins and poisons, of chronic metabolic anomalies, of alcoholism, pregnancy or chill...

Read More