Again, we must not lose sight of the fact that a given sensation or condition is never described in the same words by two persons of different type. By a volatile or lugubrious patient it is described in one way and by a reticent patient in another way, if described at all. The importance of a symptom is over emphasized by one and minimized by the other. In the mind of one it is certain to be plus in value and in the other minus. Of course it will be said in reply that it is up to the physician to distinguish facts and fiction, between wheat and chaff. But if he has no knowledge of the basic facts, which means the individual morphology, what guide has he for separating the wheat from chaff.
The charge has been made that the morphological method of materia medica study assumes to get along without the symptomatology; that the morphologist considers the symptoms of no particular value.
Only a person grossly ignorant of the method and of the theory of modern morphology will make such a charge. What the method aims to do is lead us to a knowledge of the conditions that are basic to the symptoms, to the conditions in which the symptoms have their origin and by which their special mode of manifestation is determined. The morphological method when carried out scientifically makes forgetting or ignoring of symptoms impossible. Symptoms are a part of the whole, and this method concerns itself with the whole, which makes it therefore quite different from the symptomatic method, which concerns itself with effects only.
And how a knowledge of the whole raises the physician above the level of the patient in knowledge of the real facts, and even above the physician who has only the patients more or less questionable story on which to base his judgment! The morphological method makes it possible for the physician to discover all the facts for himself and relieves him of the physician to discover all the facts for himself and relieves him of the necessity to depend on hearsay evidence. He becomes, with a knowledge of this method, truly master of a situation.
Modern morphology, as developed by Prof. De Giovanni, has for its foundation the related sciences of embryology, physiology, psychology and pathology. It clearly recognizes the fact of subjective states, but it does not content itself with merely this; it endeavors to find an explanation for them, for their variation in different individuals under different circumstances. And it seeks for explanations where they may only be found, namely, in the morphological state in which all have their origin, and frequently their sole cause, and by which their special mode of manifestation is determined in every instance.
Modern morphology takes the position that aside from a physical base subjective phenomena have no existence, can, in fact, have none. It takes the position the neither subjective nor objective physiological process are possible except in a physical organism. In this they are born and bred. Hence the necessity of studying the physical facts. Modern morphology does not lead us to become materialists and to cast aside as useless the dynamic elements in the problem. On the contrary, it intensifies our regard for them because it gives us a clearer understanding of their place in the scheme of things. Modern morphology makes us better and wiser symptomatologists through an understanding of its principles and their direct and immediate bearing upon all functional processes.
