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Every medical out-patient clinic contains a percentage of patients who are examined, investigated and eventually discharged, no structural lesion having been found to account for their symptoms. The term “functional” is used in this paper to describe such patients; i.e. those who have a disorder of the function but not of the structure of an organ, whether or not the disorder is regarded as primarily psychogenic. The purpose of this investigation is to examine carefully these out-patients and try to identify them more clearly by comparison with those in whom structural disease can be detected, with particular reference to the mental state.

No abstract