Oxidations by the brain

A FULL consideration of the work which has been carried out in relation to the causation and treatment of abnormal mental states shows that it is extremely desirable that researches be undertaken to discover how organic conditions, in psychotic states, differ from those existing in the normal. Much work has been carried out from a histological standpoint-particularly by Nissl, Alzheimer, Southard, Dunlop, Mott, Spielmeyer to quote only a few of the authors of many painstaking investigations. The results definitely suggest, in the very widespread disease of dementia praecox, organic changes occurring particularly in the nervous system. Mott 1920 states that the essential morbid change is one of nuclear decay most marked in the cortex and suggests that the histological findings are associated with deficient oxidation. Koch and Mann 1909 had already found, from analyses of the condition of sulphur in the brain, evidence of deficient oxidations. These results refer to dementia praecox. There is no question but that there occur marked histological changes in frankly organic mental diseases such as general paresis, which is of venereal origin, and treatment is on definitely organic lines, as in the clearing up or partial clearing up of general paresis by the action of malaria.