This treatise begins with a long, well-written introduction on neurological physiology inspired by John Fulton's treatise, and containing other data and some original research.

The author has little interest in clinical psychopathology. Only what can be demonstrated in terms of pathology of the nervous system—organic or physiological—is of value to him. Morel has a strict scientific methodology comparable to Theodore Meynert's with the addition of fifty years of accumulated data. Three chapters are outstanding: the hallucinatory syndromes, the amnesic syndromes and the autonomous functions with their metabolic centers. These present not only facts but show deep thinking and originality.