It has hitherto been the rule in this country that epileptics should qualify as lunatics before they could find a home. The usual charitable institutions were for the most part closed against them, and, save a few special hospitals, no other place of rest could be found for them. Those “subject to epileptic fits” are, by the rules of many homes, excluded from them. Want of employment and the consequent worries of poverty aggravate their malady, and the utter helplessness of their condition leads to despondency and hastens their descent towards dementia. According to Edith Sellers, in a paper in “The Medical Magazine” for February, who quotes the recently published statistics of the Charity Organization Society, there are nearly 78,000 epileptics in Great Britain, and 39,000 of these are still in the full possession of their reason. Now it is a fact that the condition of life most calculated to ward off epileptic attacks is that of healthy occupation, and, under ordinary circumstances, this is the most difficult to obtain. Thus the scheme so ably advocated at the Mansion House, at a meeting∗ presided over by the Lord Mayor, for the purpose of founding a home for those necessitous epileptics who are able and willing to work, meets an urgent and ever-growing want. The importance of such a scheme it would be difficult to over-estimate; it is a reasonable one, and it is based, to a great extent, upon the successful colony established at Bielefeld, in Westphalia. It is proposed to secure an estate of 100 acres within fifty miles of London, easy of access, where additional land may be procured when required, and to erect upon it appropriate buildings. Through the munificence of Mr. Passmore Edwards, the necessary funds for the purchase of the land and erection of the buildings are promised, and an encouraging amount of support from other quarters has been given.

During a holiday visit to the Auvergne last autumn we visited the quaint little town of Riom, which has, as we shall see, a certain interest for the alienist. It has always been a rival to the more flourishing city of Clermont Ferrand, and although it has had to give place to Clermont as capital of the district, it still retains the Courts of Appeal for the whole neighbourhood. By this means the town continues to hold its own and keeps some of its past importance, although at the present time it can only boast of a population of some ten thousand persons.

Derkum (“Journ. Nervous and Mental Disease,” 1892, xvii.) gives an anatomical description of a (Chinese brain, the seventh which has been carefully examined. In this the features characteristic of the other brains were again noted, namely, unusual degree of convolution, disposition to anastomosis in the perpendicular and horizontal directions, and marked obliquity of the orbital surfaces of the frontal lobes (with the last-mentioned may probably be associated the peculiar position of the eyes in the Chinese). Blending of the central and Sylvian fissures is said to be a frequent feature of such brains. For other details see the original paper.

Any publication proceeding from the Physician of the Hartford Retreat, Connecticut, is certain to be welcomed by all who are acquainted with his conscientious work in the field of medical practice to which he has devoted his best energies for so many years.

Dr. Eugene Riggs, of St. Paul, Minn., U.S.A., the Chairman of the Committee on the History of the Treatment of the Insane, appointed by the National Conference of Corrections and Charities, read the report at its twentieth annual meeting, held June 12-18, 1893, at Chicago. The article is evidently drawn up by himself, and endorsed by the Committee. It constitutes an interesting and valuable review of the progress made in the care of the insane, the first era being that of neglect, the second that of detention more or less severe in character, and the third that in which we live, including the last twenty years. Dr. Riggs commences with the dawn of intelligence in the care of the insane in England in 1792, when the Retreat at York was founded. The period between this date and 1815 is recognized as one coincident in France with the beneficent work of Pinel, reinforced a little later by that of Esquirol. “Since that time both there and here (America) the battle for the increasingly intelligent application of that principle has been going on.”

This is a translation of Prof. Ziehen's “Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie” (published in 1891), and we may say at once that to some extent it fills what is, or should have been, a long-felt want of the alienist. Unless we take into account Ladd's large and in many respects excellent work, there was no book in English which presented in a concise and handy form any statement of that general science of experimental psychology of which medical psychology is but a branch. Dr. Ziehen's book is well fitted to fill the void for two reasons—he is in sympathy with the English associational tendencies in psychology (in opposition to Wundt's doctrines), and he was moved to take up the general study of physiological psychology by the problems that came to him in the course of medico-psychological work. Although not appealing exclusively to the physician, this book is especially intended for (as the translators call him) the “psychiater.”

This is a large book, but it cannot be said that there is much unnecessary padding in it. From first to last it is filled with facts and observations drawn, not only from the stores of an erudition singularly rich with the ancient and modern science of many countries, but especially from the experiences of a clinical observer who has had ample opportunities of studying the physiology and pathology of emotional states.

In the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie” (xlviii. Band, 3 Heft) there are published some statistics about the suicide of young persons, which are of terrible interest. During the six years 1883-88, 289 scholars committed suicide.