Page:The Modern Treatment of Mental and Nervous Disorders.djvu/26

— 24 — predominant, and in these cases the methods of treatment must logically be psychological in character. Owing to the growth of psychology in recent years, these methods are already attaining the exactness and systematisation demanded by science, and their employment in the cases due to the war has been eminently successful. In other types again we are as yet uncertain of the relative importance of physiological and mental factors in the chain of causation. Here the great need is for investigation and research, carried out along every promising line of approach, by the physiologist, the chemist, the anatomist and the psychologist. In the light of our present-day knowledge the only reasonable programme for dealing with mental and nervous disorders is to discover by systematic investigation all the causes at work, both physiological and psychological, to ascertain how they are combined and their relative importance, and to attack each and every one by all the means in our power, to act on the body with every weapon of physiology, and on the mind with every weapon of psychology.

We may now turn to the consideration of some facts which will serve to bring before us the magnitude of the question at issue, and finally we may ask what are the present facilities for dealing with it, and in what directions we may reasonably expect these facilities to be improved.

So far as actual insanity is concerned, statistics are available, though these do not by any means cover the whole field. On 1st January 1915 the number of patients actually certified as insane in England