It will be well known to all to whom these remarks are addressed, that Statistical Tables of the Causes of Insanity in the Admissions into Asylums began to be collected by the English Commissioners in Lunacy for the first time in 1876. In that year returns upon a definite system and plan were asked for and received from all asylums throughout England and Wales, the results being published in the Commissioners' Blue Book for that year. In the following year, 1877, the corresponding statistics were not collected, but in 1878 they were resumed in a slightly modified form as regards the list of causative agencies from that originally issued, and, on the amended plan, they have since year by year been continued.

At a time when Insanity is commonly looked on as a bodily disease; when the only aspect of it that receives systematic study is that of disturbed bodily function; when a leading neurologist speaks of the mind as “a force evolved from the brain; when the main difficulty in the exposition of the facts of insanity lies in procuring an acknowledgment that there is anything besides the bodily health to be studied; little insistence need be laid on the importance of a systematic and methodical examination of the condition of the bodily functions in cases of Insanity.

The feeling of the sacredness of human life, which springs from the selfish feeling of the sacredness of the life of each person to himself, has extended in many directions, so that the murderer's life is often spared, and the suicide is considered as not responsible for his acts.

In reading a paper on rectal feeding and medication I am not desirous of unduly extolling that form of alimentation and treatment, or of substituting it for the more direct, usual and natural methods, where the latter are feasible and effective. Deprecating any misunderstanding on that point, I speak in the first place of the principal conditions in which rectal feeding may prove useful in asylum-practice. These I will speak of in groups of diseases, or of cases, loosely bound together, for the nonce, by the tie of suitability for the use of nutritive enemata.

The term posture indicates the relative situation of the several members of the body with regard to each other, or the relative situation of the parts of the member. Now, the posture is the result of the last movement; the description of a posture is the description of the effect of the last movement of the part. Postures may be seen as the result of the action of any part of the muscular system. We may speak of the posture of the hand and upper extremity, the head and neck, the back, &c. Postures depend upon the resultant action of opposing muscles, the relative tone of the flexors and extensors, the adductors and abductors, &c. In the limbs the opposing muscles act upon the bones and move the joints. In the face the contending muscles dilate and contract the apertures for the eyes, mouth, and nose, and otherwise alter the features; hence alterations in these characters in the face may be called its postures. The movements of the eyes being due to antagonistic muscles, the various ocular positions may be similarly termed.

The importance of the subject which I propose for discussion is such that I need make no apology for bringing it under your notice. Fire, always a dreaded calamity, becomes complicated with many additional horrors when it breaks out in an asylum for the insane. The crowding under one roof of a mass of human beings, most of whom are incapable of acting for themselves, the locked doors, the secured windows, the often insufficient means of egress, are conditions which render a conflagration an exceptionally appalling calamity.

I have read with much interest Prof. Cleland's article “On the Seat of Consciousness.” I agree with many of the author's opinions, especially with those contained in the critical or negative part of his work; but it appears to me that the positive portion, notably the extension of consciousness to the peripheral terminations of the nerves, is scarcely in agreement with the facts supplied by clinical observation and physiological experiment.