It is doubtful if there be a special sense enabling us to recognise the form and consistency of objects independent of other sensations such as pain, pressure, weight, heat, electricity. Nevertheless, cases in which there was greater impairment of the feeling of touch than of the other modes of common sensation have been described under the title of “astereognosis.” To the consiceration of this subject, Dr. Franz Kramer has contributed a paper of thirty pages. He describes ten cases very carefully tested by himself. These are too long to reproduce, but we gather the following considerations from his observations and citations from other writers on the subject. It seems probable, that the loss of sensibility to touch is but a degree in the impairment of common sensation. Where to fix this degree is difficult owing to the complicated feelings and motions used to ascertain the outward form of objects. There are cases described in which the loss of tactile sensibility was much greater in proportion than the derangements of other qualities of common sensation. Perhaps similar inequalities of relation exist in normal persons.

The author has made a careful investigation in 41 cases of general paralysis in order to enable him to ascertain to what extent sensory changes were present. Of these cases, however, 18 were so demented that it was impossible to draw any accurate deductions from their examination. All the cases were of a fairly advanced type.

Quinquaud's sign, which is said to be idiopathic of chronic alcoholism, was the subject of a short and interesting paper by Aubry in the Archives de Neurologie (deuxième sérieto, me xi, 1901). It is elicited as follows: The physician fully extends his hand, palm upwards. The hand of the subject of the examination is held parallel to and above this, dorsum upwards. The patient is directed to flex his three middle fingers and press them perpendicularly against the physician's palm. The three fingers should be separated, the middle one slightly behind the other two; steady pressure should be made. After a moment or two there is a crackling sensation conveyed to the examiner's palm from the patient's fingers as if crepitus were present. This tactile sensation is perhaps best to be compared to the rub experienced in pleurisy or dry arthritis.

Dr. Henneberg showed to the Berlin Psychiatric Society, numerous preparations illustrating the pathology of cysticercus in the brain. In the Clinique for Nervous and Brain Diseases at the Charity, there was at least one case revealed by dissection every year. Out of ten thousand post-mortem examinations there were in this hospital about sixteen in stances in which cysticerci were found in the brain. It is generally difficult to distinguish the presence of these parasites in the brain from a tumour. A patient ót.57 had epileptic seizures of the left side which lasted for five days till his death in the status hemiepilepticus. A cysticercus about the size of a walnut was found at the foot of the first frontal gyrus.

In this communication, Dr. Moravesik observes that it can scarcely be held that all hallucinations have a peripheral origin, since there are cases of hallucinations affecting the senses in which the normal function has ceased. Here we may observe that at the meeting of psychiatric physicians at Jena (Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie, February, 1906) Dr. Berger reported a case of hallucinations of sight after total atrophy of the optic nerves; he also cited one of hallucinations of smell, although there was atrophy of both the olfactory bulbs. Döllkenhad noted vivid hallucinations of light after atrophy of the optic nerves of four years' duration.

Bechterew, who has studied this question in other articles, records in the present paper with full details three new cases of the “phobie du regard,” or morbid inability to bear being looked at. In these, as in the earlier observations, the salient facts are that the symptom is constantly related to an insane or neurotic heredity, that it frequently develops as an immediate sequence of sexual exhaustion, particularly when brought about by masturbation, and that it is often associated with other phenomena of morbid inhibition, such as the phobia of blushing or the inability to micturate before witnesses. With regard to treatment, the author says that he has got good results from hypnotism combined with hydropathy and with the use of cardiac tonics and codeia

The author takes as his text the recent experiences of the Russo- Japanese war, in which, according to the testimony of numerous witnesses, outbreaks of acute insanity were extremely common in the battlefield, and occasionally assumed an epidemic character, and in which, moreover, many “regrettable incidents” were due to mental disorders in commanding officers. Dealing first with the statistics of suicide and of insanity in the army in time of peace, he points out that the former phenomenon is very much more frequent amongst soldiers than amongst the general population in the chief European countries. In Italy in 1901, while the suicide-rate for the whole country was about.061 per mille, in the army it amounted to “33 per mille. And it appears to be tending to increase; thus the figures for the years 1895 to 1901 show that, while sanitary improvements have reduced the general mortality in the army by nearly a half, the ratio of suicide has slightly risen. On examining the figures in detail it is seen that the suicide rate is very high during the first year of service, that it falls off some what in the second year, to rise again when the period of service is prolonged over two years. With regard to insanity, the official statistics would suggest that it is less frequent amongst soldiers than in the population at large, but the author contends that this result is misleading, inasmuch as the army represents a picked population which by reason of its age, constitution, and the exclusion from its ranks of the congenitally defective, is, or ought to be, specially free from insane tendency. In any case the rate of insanity in the Italian army is increasing notably of recent years. With regard to officers, there is a consensus of opinion in all countries that the incidence of insanity amongst them is peculiarly high, and this applies more particularly to general paralysis, which is estimated to account for 50 per cent, of mental disease in German officers, for 54 per cent, in French, and for 55 per cent, in Italian.

Dr. Ernst Rodenwaldt, a military surgeon, four years ago published an estimate of the mental concepts of persons in health as a standard in comparison with their condition in disease. In 1902, he had occasion to examine 144 recruits, Silesian cuirassiers; i io of these were of German origin and 34 were Poles. The report of the examination is given at great length, the whole paper filling forty-six pages, thirty-five of which are occupied with the questions put to the men, their answers, and the comments thereon. Some of these answers make us misdoubt the intelligence and information of the young men of Silesia, though perhaps an equal number of the same class in Britain would not come off any better. One man thought the Rhine ran into the Dead Sea, another into the Red Sea. To the question: “Who was Luther?” one man replied that he was the head of the Mahomedan Church, another that he was the King of the Jews, another the first preacher of Jesus Christ. Twenty-one had never heard of Schiller, forty had never heard of Goethe. The question “What are mammalia?” (Säugetiere, lit. sucking animals) gave rise to some etymological guessing; one man suggested leaches, another animals who live upon the sap of plants. Bees, fishes, worms, hawks, animals of the female gender, were all given as examples of this order. As might have been expected, the young men were found to have gained little in knowledge beyond the scope of their military duty; but they were readier to lay hands upon their knowledge, to apprehend questions, to answer them quickly, and to choose the shortest way to do so, qualities which, once secured, are better than acquired information, as they are the tools of the intellect, while knowledge is only the material. In my own experience the service in India seemed, with the private soldiers, to induce an utter helplessness to anything save their military duties. Taken to a foreign country amongst a people speaking a different language which they rarely took the trouble to learn, lodge, fed, cared for marching about, sent to parade and to church, brought to the hospital when ill, they degenerated into mere military machines. With the German army the period under the colours is no longer than three years, after which they return to civil employments. The general effect of this universal mili tary training upon the physical, moral, and mental condition of the people must be very considerable.

This paper is a critical review of the psychology of the criminal, and is of special interest as an indication of the present tendencies of thought in the more progressive section of the Italian school of criminology. At the outset, the author lays stress on the fact that the study of the criminal is changing its direction and is becoming psycho logical rather than morphological. The insistence on the evidence of somatic abnormality, he points out, was useful and, indeed, essential when it was necessary to combat the old views which saw in the criminal a normal individual doing evil of his free will, but it is out of place nowadays when the pathological nature of crime is fully recognised. What is now needed is a more minute study of the psychological mechanism of the criminal. Approaching the question, then, from this side, Angiolella first discusses the relation of crime to insanity, and points out that the affinities of these two conditions have been emphasised of late years as a result of the tendency to abandon the old antithesis between abnormality and disease, and to assign an increasing importance to the rôleof congenital predisposition in insanity. It has, however, to be borne in mind that, even admitting that a common basis of degeneracy underlies certain forms of insanity and certain criminal types, we have still to explain why it is that in one case and not in the other this condition is associated with anti-social tendencies. To meet this difficulty we must assume that an additional factor is operative in the case of the criminal. This factor cannot be, as is sometimes asserted, a special defect of the so-called moral sense; for, since what we so term is no more than the sum of the latest evolved and most complex ideational and emotional associations, we necessarily find it to some extent enfeebled in all the mentally diseased and degenerate, whether they be criminal or not. The further element which is needed to produce the criminal 1st, hen, to be sought rather in the exaggeration and the perversion of his impulses, which the weakness of inhibition allows to issue in anti-social conduct. And this explains the fact that the insane who commit crimes are for the most part those whose insanity is of the degenerate type-paranoiacs, for instance, and epileptics. The insanities of the previously valid brain, the acute psychoses in general, do not lead to gravely criminal acts except in what is to be regarded as a purely accidental way, as may occur in states of hallucinatory confusion. Thus the lunatic who commits a deliberate crime acts, according to this view, under the influence of a temperament which is fundamentally identical with that of the offender whose ill-doing is not associated with any disorder of thought. Passing, then, to the consideration of these perverted impulses which are the essential factor in crime, and discussing more particularly the impulses to homicidal and sexual violence, the author reduces them mainly to exaggerations of individualism and points out that they are fostered by all the influences in social life which exalt brute force over moral force. The combating of these influences must lie at the root of the social prophylaxis of crime, as the prevention of the multiplication of the degenerate must be the aim of its biological prophylaxis.