Giants of Science: Elmer Southard

Introduction
Elmer Southard was director of the Psychopathic Hospital, later to be called "Mass. Mental". He was also a professor of neuropathology at Harvard Medical School. Southard favored "microlocalization", meaning that brain parts are not mutually exchangeable in function like liver parts. He felt that Wundt was against localization. In 1906 E. E. Southard began to study "the brain problems of dementia praecox". He published his first paper on this in 1910.

Dementia Praecox
In 1910 Southard reported "anomalies or scleroses in particular brain-regions". He found 23 out of 25 brains to be "significantly anomalous". He felt that "disease of a toxic or metabolic nature" caused anomalies in "weak places". This might be true, but it may also be that the toxin is created in certain regions of the brain. He reported "parenchymatous (neuronic)" and "interstitial (neuroglia)" changes "in the brains of certain psychopathic subjects, especially in dementia praecox". In other words he found nerve cell losses and gliosis, including satellitosis. It is now know that gliosis signifies the presence of a toxic factor. Gliosis is incompatible with a neurodevelopmental disease. At this time Bleuler had invented the term "schizophrenia". However, it was not yet popular.

Gosline
Dr. H. I. Gosline (1917) found lesions demonstrable by fat stains. Southard tried this but he obtained "too rich a display of lesions, as a rule, to permit correlation". In other words, Southard tried to relate particular type of mental disease to particular sections of the brain. Alzheimer and Cotton (1915) reported fat-stained cells and deposits.