The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man.

Abstract

Previous to the present regime in Germany, Kurt Goldstein was considered the leading pathologist in the country. His laboratory in Frankfort contained a mass of serial sections of the nervous system from the elephant down to the smallest of animals. He had considerable experience in working with traumatic cases in the first World War. After leaving Germany he paused for a short while in the Netherlands, where he wrote the present volume. Then he came to the United States, and his book has been translated into excellent English. In brief, it is a complex but basically sound summary of the general belief about the functioning of the central nervous system. Goldstein believes that the reflexes and other similar concepts of nervous activity cannot be taken out of the theoretical context but that the organism must be thought of as a whole. The point of view is broadly biologic. The clinical