Sir Frederick Mott

The cause of the Association for Mental Welfare, no less than the scientific aspect of psychiatry, has suffered a great loss by the death of Sir Frederick Mott. This is no place to deal in detail with the purely scientific side of his activities, but some knowledge of their general tendency is required in order to assess the great influence that he exercised on our conceptions of the treatment of insanity. The work of Mott, beginning with broad fundamental studies of the physiology of the nervous system, progresses in a logical order to the examination of the structure on which physiological activity depends, next to the pathological disorders of structure, later to the concomitant evidences of functional disorder attending it, and finally to considerations of the psychological implications of pathological disturbances in the nervous mechanisms. His earliest work was to attempt to localise the motor functions in the brain and spinal cord, and later followed much work on the sensory functions of the central nervous system and the sensory mechanisms for the control of bodily movement.