I propose to show that organic memory consists in cerebral processes, regulated by the laws of evolution and reversion, and common as vital processes to both plants and animals.

Anæmic Insanity.—This is the variety of insanity produced by exhausting discharges, loss of blood, or starvation, and takes its name from the condition of anæmia that precedes and accompanies it. Dr. Aitkin says that “any acute disease which occurs in an anæmic individual assumes a peculiar character.” Now this is precisely what occurs when such an individual becomes insane. There are two very distinct kinds of anæmic insanity, which may be called the chronic and the acute. The chronic results from anæmia produced gradually by exhausting discharges or such slow processes. Its symptoms are precisely those that Dr. Skae described as occurring in the insanity of lactation without the sexual characteristics of the latter, so that I need not occupy your time in describing them. The most important characteristics are the premonitory giddiness, flashes of light, singing in the ears, headache. The acute variety follows great and sudden losses of blood or starvation. It is most typically seen in the latter condition. At first there is a state of mental prostration, with pale and cadaverous countenance, wild and glistening eyes, severe pain in the epigastrium, and an intense thirst; then the mind becomes quite imbecile, so that the patient will make no effort for his own benefit, and after this a state of maniacal delirium, with hallucinations of the senses, comes on. The patient sees ravishingly cool and limpid streams and green fields, which if he is at sea he will at once jump overboard to reach, he tries to sing, and converses with imaginary friends. This is soon succeeded by coma or convulsions and death. But if food is given before this, the patient often remains for a long time delirious or imbecile in mind, cannot get rid of his hallucinations, and cannot exert his mind in any way.

I wish here to give as briefly as possible an account of the pathology of the nervous symptoms which result from syphilis. Of necessity there is considerable recapitulation from former papers I have written. For syphilis produces very different affections of the nervous system, and I have therefore had to speak of syphilis when considering Amaurosis, Epileptiform seizures, Hemiplegia, &c. It is, however, justifiable to bring together the conclusions one has arrived at about syphilitic nervous affections from the study of nervous affections in general.

“Look to the needle of your compass, I beseech you, good Sir Astrophel, and tell us, if yon can, whence comes this storm ?”

We now come to the consideration of the last of the three forms of weakmindedness among prisoners, viz., states of mental exaltation. We looked upon the first form, simple mental weakness, as a state of “want of mind,” a negative or irresponsive condition of mind. The second form, states of mental depression, we took as a condition in which there is general inertia of mind with a prominent activity (positive action) in the direction of painful depression.

Moral Responsibility, although often treated from a metaphysical point of view, has seldom been regarded from a physical or physiological side, and yet it is from this source alone that we are at present able to gain any accurate information respecting the working of the mind, and it is chiefly from this basis that I purpose here regarding it. The means of observation which metaphysicians employ have been known to, and employed by, philosophers for the last two thousand years, and yet it must be admitted with but a poor result. Until physiology came to their aid, they had not arrived at a knowledge of the fact that the grey cortical matter of the brain is the seat of the mind, and that intellectual action involves definite physico-chemical changes which we are to some extent capable of estimating. The psychologists, indeed, fixing their attention solely upon subjective phenomena, resemble those fatuous fakirs, who, intent upon a particular point in their own bodies, come to believe that the umbilicus is the seat of wisdom; or, rather, they resemble the horse in a threshing floor, which, however rapidly it may seem to advance, only retraces its steps in one small unending circle. It is a simple fact that, whatever positive knowledge we possess of the mental process has been obtained by the aid of physiology, and it is equally certain that all the knowledge we are likely to attain for a long time, if not always, must be derived from the same source.

Medical details are conspicuous by their absence from the great majority of the reports for this year, and it is well that it should be so, though the reviewer is thereby deprived of material of which he could take notice. Were the members of the Medico-Psychological Association appealed to for their opinion as to the proper method of writing an asylum report, we are quite certain that each superintendent would contend, did modesty not forbid, that his own method is the best on the whole. The gentleman who writes one so short that it could easily be compressed into a page of note-paper might justly urge that there is no use in repeating in a report what the magistrates already know; and he would have much truth on his side. But another gentleman may consider himself an adept at writing the Queen's English and, may take the occasion of his annual report to set forth the results of the year's management in an effective manner. The report may then be of local value, although it cannot have much general interest.