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Furthermore, the aetiological theories supported by Charcot in his doctrine of the ‘famille névropathique’, which he made the basis of his whole concept of nervous disorders, will no doubt soon require sifting and emending. So greatly did Charcot over-estimate heredity as a causative agent that he left no room for the acquisition of nervous illness. To syphilis he merely allotted a modest place among the ‘agents provocateurs’; nor did he make a sufficiently sharp distinction between organic nervous affections and neuroses, either as regards their aetiology or in other respects. It is inevitable that the advance of our science, as it increases our knowledge, must at the same time lessen the value of a number of things that Charcot taught us; but neither changing times nor changing views can diminish the fame of the man whom - in France and elsewhere - we are mourning to-day.

VIENNA, August 1893.