stand as the culminating achievement in therapeutics of our century.
It is the logical outgrowth of those experimental studies with the
microscope begun by our predecessors of the thirties, and it represents
the present culmination of the rigidly experimental method which has
brought medicine from a level of fanciful empiricism to the plane of a
rational experimental science.

IX. THE NEW SCIENCE OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

BRAIN AND MIND

A little over a hundred years ago a reform movement was afoot in the
world in the interests of the insane. As was fitting, the movement
showed itself first in America, where these unfortunates were humanely
cared for at a time when their treatment elsewhere was worse than
brutal; but England and France quickly fell into line. The leader on
this side of the water was the famous Philadelphian, Dr. Benjamin Rush,
"the Sydenham of America"; in England, Dr. William Tuke inaugurated the
movement; and in France, Dr. Philippe Pinel, single-handed, led the way.
Moved by a common spirit, though acting quite independently, these
men raised a revolt against the traditional custom which, spurning the
insane as demon-haunted outcasts, had condemned these unfortunates to
dungeons, chains, and the lash. Hitherto few people had thought it other
than the natural course of events that the "maniac" should be thrust
into a dungeon, and perhaps chained to the wall with the aid of an iron
band riveted permanently about his neck or waist. Many an unfortunate,
thus manacled, was held to the narrow limits of his chain for
years together in a cell to which full daylight never penetrated;
sometimes--iron being expensive--the chain was so short that the
wretched victim could not rise to the upright posture or even shift his
position upon his squalid pallet of straw.

In America, indeed, there being no Middle Age precedents to crystallize
into established customs, the treatment accorded the insane had seldom
or never sunk to this level. Partly for this reason, perhaps, the work
of Dr. Rush at the Philadelphia Hospital, in 1784, by means of which the
insane came to be humanely treated, even to the extent of banishing the
lash, has been but little noted, while the work of the European leaders,
though belonging to later decades, has been made famous. And perhaps
this is not as unjust as it seems, for the step which Rush took, from
relatively bad to good, was a far easier one to take than the leap from
atroc