The Autumn Meeting of the South-Western Division of the Medico-Psychological Association was held, by kind invitation of Dr. Fox, at Brislington House, near Bristol, on Tuesday afternoon, October 26. The members present were Drs. Aidridge, Deas, Morton, Soutar, Bower, Wilson, McCutchan, Bullen, Blatchford, Fox, Hanbury, Green, MacBryan, Lindsay, Stewart, Manning, Benham, and Macdonald (Hon. Secretary). On the motion of Dr. Stewart, seconded by Dr. Deas, Dr. Aldridge was unanimously voted to the chair.

A meeting of the Scottish Division was held in the Laboratory of the Scottish Asylums, 12, Bristo Place, Edinburgh, on Thursday, November 11. Present: Dr. Urquhart (in the chair), Dr. Lewis C. Bruce, Dr. Carswell, Dr. Campbell Clark, Dr. Clouston, Dr. France, Dr. Gilmour, Dr. Hotchkis, Dr. Ireland, Dr. Carlyle Johnstone, Dr. Macpherson, Dr. Middlemass, Dr. R. B. Mitchell, Dr. Oswald, Dr. Richard, Dr. Ford Robertson, Dr. G. M. Robertson, Dr. Turnbull (Secretary), Dr. N. P. Watt, Dr. Watson, Dr. Yellowlees; with Dr. Christie, Dr. Findlay, and Dr. Orr as guests.

The adjourned meeting of the Scottish Division was held in the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, on 27 November, 1897. Dr. Urquhart was in the chair, and there were also present Drs. Campbell Clark, Carlyle Johnstone, Macpherson, Middlemass, G. M. Robertson, Rutherford, Watson, Watt, Yellowlees, and Turnbull (Secretary). In accordance with the remit from the Annual Meeting of the Association, the Division took into consideration the report of the Educational Committee giving the proposed amended regulations for the nursing certificate. Considerable discussion took place, and it was agreed to submit the following suggestions to the Educational Committee: 1. That the minimum period of training should be fixed at two years. 2. That Rule 3 should (consequent on the preceding suggestion) be deleted. 3. That section a. of Rule 5 should read—“Systematic lectures, in addition to the practical demonstrations provided for below, by the medical staff,” etc. 4. That sections b. and c. of Rule 5 should be combined, and should read—“Clinical demonstrations of mental and bodily disease, and practical instruction in sick nursing and in first aid, to be given by the medical staff. At least twelve demonstrations, each of one hour's duration, must be given in each year of training, and no attendant will be admitted to examination who has not attended at least nine demonstrations in each year.” 5. That the last clause of section c., Rule 9, should read—“The written questions being confined to subjects included in the Handbook.” 6. That in the written examination the maximum of questions to be answered shall be six, and the minimum time allowed for answering three hours.

The Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, held in Montreal, proved an unqualified success as regards the scientific work and the hospitality shown to the guests. The Psychological Section was fairly well attended. Amongst those present from various parts of Canada were Drs. Bucke, Clark, C. K. Clarke, Burgess, Hobbs, Russell, Valleè, Wilkins, Anglin, Villeneuve; the United States were represented by Drs. Cowles. Dewey, Brush, Stearns, Crothers, Rohè, Spilzka, Van Giesen; and Drs. Alexander, J. A. Campbell, J. G. B. Blandford, Hazlitt, Blair, and Urquhart represented British psychologists.

Whether an International Congress brings out the best work of the best men may be questioned, but it is beyond question that in a city so full of interest as Moscow foreign visitors arc apt to sacrifice sections to sight-seeing.

Section VII. was one of the busiest and best attended of all the fifteen sections into which the Congress was divided, and not a few communications were left unread. Many nationalities were found at its meetings, and Honorary Presidents of Section were courteously appointed from each, Dr. Yellowlees being chosen to represent Great Britain. As the section included both nervous and mental maladies the field was very wide and the subjects very varied and very mixed: Obsessions and Fixed Ideas, Juvenile Dementia, Pathology of the Nerve-cell, Hypnotism and its Legal Relations, Tabes Dorsalis, Polyneuritis, Inherited Neuroses and Degeneration, Transitory Alcoholic Mania, Treatment by Alternations of Temperature, etc. Dr. Shuttleworth, of London, Dr. Sutherland, of Edinburgh, and Dr. Robertson, of Glasgow were the only readers of papers from this country.

Sir William Turner's address to the Anthropological Section was of great general interest and of special interest to ourselves.

On cranial capacity, ne arrived at the conclusions that this was greater in the European than in the savage, that the range of variation was also greater, that few male savage crania reached the European mean (1,500 c.c.), and that there is less difference between male and female crania in savages than in Europeans.

Dr. Alexander Morison delivered the Morison Lectures for the present year in the Hall of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, during the first week of November, on “The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous Mechanism of the Viscera.”

[The Editors request that members will oblige by sending full newspaper reports of all cases of interest as published by the local press at the time of the assizes.]

Reg. v. Marriotini.

Prisoner stabbed his wife in twenty-five places, and about two hours after wards threw himself into the Thames. While in the water he discharged a revolver four times. He was rescued, and then said, “I have killed my wife by stabbing her with a large knife. She worried me so much that I told her she would make me murder ber.” Subsequently he said, “I had a quarrel with my wife. I have been unhappy for twenty years. I have had a miserable life.” It was proved that three years before there had been an explosion at the café kept by the prisoner, and that he received such injuries that he was in hospital for five months. When he returned home be was greatly changed, became very irritable, and complained of pains in the head. For ten days before the murder he suffered very much from sleeplessness, and used to wander about the house at night talking to himself.

We regret to observe that the Lancashire Asylums Board have decided to provide additional “temporary” accommodation at Rainhill for 200 patients. It is to be hoped that these buildings will be really temporary, and that the Board will remove them as soon as possible. The evils of these overgrown institutions have been so often the subject of unfavourable comment that wo refrain from further remarks at present, except to express sympathy with Dr. Wiglesworth in having this unwelcome addition thrust upon him. We certainly cannot agree with Mr. Turner in his reported remarks to the effect that, as in a very short time the lunacy requirements of the county would be such as to occupy all the permanent provision that the Board anticipated making, as many of the asylums as could should make temporary accommodation. If the requirements transcend the possibilities under the arrangements now completed, it seems to us high time that the question of further permanent provision should be faced.

An important report upon asylums on the Continent and in England has been prepared by a committee of the Edinburgh District Lunacy Board, in view of the proposed new asylum for Edinburgh. It is a document of special interest to those interested in the provision of accommodation for the insane, and especially to us as an expression of opinion in regard to recent methods of asylum construction set forth by a body of gentlemen who approach the subject with open minds. The deputation returned impressed with the conviction that the asylum at Alt Scherbitz was the best they had seen, and that Edinburgh should adopt that system. The estate of Wester Bangour, tear Uphall, extending to 861 acres, has been purchased for £13,000; and the District Board have resolved to construct their institution on the villa system, at an expense of some £150,000. We understand that the plans will be open to a limited competition, and we shall watch the development of this important hospital with great interest.

An article under this heading, “contributed” to The Scotsman of 8 December, 1897, draws attention to the existence of “crazy” areas in Scotland.

We have received a circular from Professor Bechterew stating that the clinique for mental maladies in the Imperial Military Academy of Medicine at St. Petersburg has now been opened for thirty years, and that a new separate building for nervous diseases will be inaugurated forthwith. It is proposed by the physicians in charge to create two museums, psychological and neurological, to commemorate this event. They ask for contributions of plans, reports, publications, photographs, etc., relative to asylums and their inmates, and for pathological specimens, preparations, apparatus relative to nervous diseases. Those willing to aid are instructed to address packages to “Russie, St. Petersbourg, Clinique des Maladies Mentales et Nerveuses, Rue Samarskaya No. 9. The carriage will be paid by the recipients. Our Library Committee might take a hint and negotiate a fair exchange.

The installation of the electric light at the Aberdeen Asylum, at the time particulars were asked, was in an incomplete state, and is still so far from being finished that we cannot give definite information either as to the first cost or as to the cost of maintenance. The light has been in use in the Hospital buildings for over a year, and has recently been introduced into Elmhill House, there being in all about 700 lamps in use. It is not yet introduced into the Asylum main buildings, but will be as soon as the proposed reconstruction and alterations are completed, which, however, will not be for some years. When all is finished it is estimated that there will be from 1,500 to 1,600 lamps in use.

Referring to Dr. Jones's paper in the last number of this Journal, Mr. Townsend writes: —

Electric Lighting Engines.—Statistics taken during the last five years show (as pointed out by Dr. Jones, p. 761) that high-speed engines coupled direct to dynamos and with improved multitubular boilers, are coming into favour, and prove that their cost of generating current is nearly 10 per cent. lower than with slow-speed engines and belt-driven dynamos—especially when the engines and dynamos are of 50 horse-power and upwards.

Mr. Richard Adams, L.R.C.P.Edin., M.R.C.S.Eng., Medical Superintendent of the Cornwall County Asylum, at Bodmin, on his retirement from that office, which he had held over forty years, was presented with a valuable silver coffee tray as a testimonial of esteem, subscribed for by 157 of the officials, past and present.

By a very handsome donation of £25 from Mrs. Hack Tuke the sum for investment has been brought up to £350. This sum has been handed over to the Association and invested. The interest of the fund will prove of the greatest service in developing the Library, which is probably the form of memorial most fitting to Dr. Tuke's memory, and which he would certainly have approved.

Dr. William Henry Higgins died on October 26, 1897, at Birkenhead, whither he had recently retired after leaving the Leicestershire and Rutland Asylum. He graduated at Edinburgh, having obtained both the gold and silver medals for Anatomy, and in 1869 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England. Immediately after this he was attached to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, sailing to the west coast of South America for four years, during three of which he was Superintendent of their hospital at Callao. He then returned to Edinburgh to make a special study of mental diseases. His first appointment in lunacy was as Assistant Medical Officer to the Derby County Asylum, under Dr. Murray Lindsay. From thence he went, in 1876, to the Leicestershire and Rutland Asylum, under the late Dr. Buck. After Dr. Buck's death he was appointed Medical Superintendent, in 1881. During his ter of office he carried out many structural alterations and improvements on the asylum. Though he took a great interest in the treatment and welfare of his patients, Dr. Higgins seldom contributed any writings in connection with mental diseases. In 1894 his health began to break down, and in June of that year he became seriously ill. After several months' leave of absence, he finally retired, in March, 1895, with a pension sanctioned by the County Council. It was hoped that in the retirement from the work and worries of an asylum his health would improve, but to a severe recurrence of his former illness he succumbed. He occupied his leisure hours with astronomy, and in his latter years engaged in the study of Hebrew and Swedish.

By the death of Professor Haughton, which took place on October 31, 1897, the University of Dublin has lost one of its most remarkable ornaments and Irish social life one of its most striking figures. Haughton was a man who, under more favourable circumstances (viz., most especially if he had been blessed with a lesser measure of early success), might have been capable of almost any intellectual feat. His versatility and the agility of his intelligence alone amounted to genius. In the humdrum region of university teaching in which unhappily he early lost himself he always seemed the most brilliant pioneer. Unfortunately he yielded to the temptations—to diffusion and lack of concentration—to which a versatile genius is particularly exposed, and consequently he did not really lead in any of the numerous subjects which he illuminated. One example is afforded by his ill-fated remark on Darwin's epoch-making work that it contained nothing new that was true and nothing true that was new. Haughton's knowledge, often profound, always acute, dies with him, for he has written little that will last: his sparkling wit and genial good-fellowship will survive in the memory of those who were favoured with his personal acquaintance. One great work will, we hope, long bear testimony to his zeal for knowledge and his disinterested public spirit. To him is due the revival of the so-called “School of Physic in Ireland” (Medical School of Trinity College, Dublin), and we trust the debt which that school owes him will never be forgotten. Dr. Haughton exhibited much interest in the work of our Association at the Dublin meeting of 1894, though the feeble condition of his health even then precluded his taking any active part in our proceedings.

Born at Musselburgh in 1830, Dr. Howden received his elementary education there. After taking his degree at the University of Edinburgh, in 1852, he studied at Paris. He served as Assistant Medical Officer, under Dr. Skae, at the Royal Asylum, Edinburgh; and in 1857 received the appointment of Medical Superintendent of the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, succeeding Dr. Gilchrist, who had gone to the Royal Crichton Institution, Dumfries.

By a somewhat remarkable coincidence, two former Medical Superintendents of this asylum—colleagues during twenty years—surviving fifteen years more—died within one week of each other. Mr. William Gurslave Marshall, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., succeeded Dr. Davey, the first Superintendent of the Female Department, in 1852. The building (of which the foundation-stone was laid by Prince Albert in 1851) had been opened about a year. Mr. Marshall had previously been Resident Medical Officer of the Northampton Borough Asylum.