In the first and second volumes of the West Riding Asylum Medical Reports, 1871–72, there appeared two papers bearing my name, which were entitled, the one “The Sphygmograph in Asylum Practice,” and the other “The Sphygmograph in Epilepsy.” The first paper, besides containing a few general remarks, was, however, confined to the study of the physiology of General Paralysis; the other, as its name implied, referred entirely to certain phenomena observed in Epilepsy, and contained a few speculations as to the origin and nature of these phenomena. Both papers had been hastily prepared, though they really represented an amount of patient labour such as probably I shall never undertake again. The later one had also the disadvantage of being so cut and mutilated for want of space that, when finished, I hardly recognised my own work. I had begun to think that they were to be considered of no real value, and only fit to pass into the limbo of forgotten things, when they were suddenly snatched from a threatening oblivion by having assigned to them a prominent place in the new edition of the work so familiar to many engaged in this special branch of medicine by the names of Bucknill and Tuke. More recently they have been brought into further prominence by being incorporated into that clever, thorough work, “The Pathological Anatomy of the Nervous Centres,” by Dr. Long Fox, where the views originally advanced by myself are put in much clearer and more forcible language than I could ever master. It has occurred to me, then, that now is a good opportunity for considering de novo the bearings which these speculations may have on the further elucidation of the nature of the origin of two diseases, one of which, at least, has hitherto been enveloped in darkness, and which, because of such ignorance, has, until recently, baffled all attempts to effect anything like a certain cure.