After many years of agitation and controversy, the first instalment of a much-needed reform of the law as to inebriates has been conceded by the Legislature. The aim of the present article is to subject the Inebriates Act, 1898, which came into operation on January 1st, 1899, to a somewhat minute and critical examination, in the hope at once of suggesting points for future amendment, and of throwing light on difficulties that may arise in its practical administration.

A complete microscopical examination of the following case was made with the hope that new light might be thrown not only on the pathology of the disease itself but also on some of the disputed points of cerebral anatomy.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century psychology has gradually come to be recognised as a branch of biological science. This is due to the influence of the works of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, of the Clinical and Neurological School of Meynert, Golgi, Cajal, Flechsig, and others, and recent developments in the Psychometric School of Fechner and Wundt on the other. The Alienistic School can render powerful aid to this movement; and though there are indications of the current in the proper direction, as shown more particularly in the work of Mercier (1) and Bevan Lewis (2), the end, however, cannot as yet be said to have been achieved, nor the movement to have become general. Psychology still lingers on the borderland of metaphysics; it has not yet been established on the firm rock of natural science. And while it thus lingers progress in knowledge is slow and restricted.

Although the condition of acromegaly existed and was described many years ago, its recognition as a morbid entity practically dates from the year 1886, when Dr. Pierre Marie, of Paris, named and defined it as a disease characterised by great overgrowth of the hands, feet, face, and head. Since then the disease, though rare, has been universally recognised, and more than 200 cases have been reported. Of these some have been typical, some atypical, and some have not been acromegaly at all.

As an introduction to this paper I have detailed three cases as clinical pictures. My conclusions are based on an examination of sixteen cases, six of which proved recoverable. Case No. I is an example of recovery and illustrates the condition found; but it presented no congestive attacks, which sometimes occur during the course of such a case. Cases Nos. 2 and 3 show in addition confirmed muscular and degenerative lesions precluding any chance of recovery; in both, however, there were distinct remissions.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that no physicians have so many favourable opportunities for pathological observations as those connected with asylums. Post-mortem examinations are generally expected to be made on all patients who die in asylums. There are in most, if not in all the asylums, well-appointed mortuaries for conducting these examinations, and every facility is available for preparing and preserving morbid specimens and making microscopical and other observations. In some asylums special pathologists have been appointed.

The subject of aphasia is one which has offered some of the most interesting problems presented to the physician for solution, and, although many remain unsolved, yet the study of aphasia has been more fertile of great discoveries as to the function than that, perhaps, of any other brain symptom or group of symptoms. The researches of Broca, indeed, were the beginning of localisation, and, as far as the cerebral cortex is concerned, formed the starting-point of any scientific knowledge which has since been attained.