The following observations are the result of three years' work in examining the leucocytes in the various patients admitted to the Perth District Asylum. During this period the blood of 150 patients has been systematically examined, not on one or two occasions only, but often for weeks and months at a time. We have observed in medical literature observations recorded on the leucocytosis occurring in various forms of insanity in which the observer had made many observations on different patients, but as a rule limited the observations made on each individual patient to one, two, or at most three occasions. Such records are of little or no value, and would be on a par with the observations of, let us say, an astronomer who, having examined the heavens on two nights out of the 365, and having found both nights cloudy, reported that no such things as stars existed. With regard to the technique employed for the estimation of the number of leucocytes per c.mm. of blood, we have throughout employed Coles' system of counting “fields” with the counting slide of a Thoma Zeiss' hæmocytometer. Never less than thirty fields were counted for each enumeration, and frequently sixty and eighty fields were counted when extra accuracy was deemed necessary.

The object of this paper is to draw attention to the nature of the social conditions that lead respectively to drunkenness and to chronic alcoholism, and to point out that these two phenomena are in great measure related to two distinct types of drinking, differing in origin, differing enormously in social gravity, and corresponding to quite different statistical measures.

Before the invasion of established general paralysis there is a prodromal stage, which ranges within wide limits as to its scope and duration. The clinical manifestations are many and various, and are symptomatic of either a rapid, or of a slow and insidious disintegration of the intellectual, moral, and affective life. Of all the prodromata, failure and decay of the moral sense are the most important, and are exemplified by acts of omission and commission against law, order, and propriety. The disease attacks all classes, and as the friends cannot nicely discriminate the changes in character, and are apt to look upon them as temporary aberrations, the disturbance to the social fabric caused by these sporadic displays of moral perversion is not inconsiderable. The nature and extent of the disharmony and distress occasioned by these moral lapses depend largely on the social standing, occupation, and opportunities of the diseased individual, and desolate homes, widespread ruin, and unenviable publicity often follow in the train of the predominant imaginative conceptions. The larger ambition may lead to wild speculation, the bolder schemes to fraud. Sobriety is turned into drunkenness, and sexual excitement may result in rape and acts of indecency. If thwarted or opposed, destructiveness or violence may ensue, but in this direction serious consequences are comparatively seldom associated with the expansive prodromata. The budding paralytic of this type is rarely vindictive; although easily roused to anger, he is easily calmed. Being, in his own estimation, so superior mentally and physically to his fellow-men, he can afford to pity and forgive.

It must be gratifying to us that our Association has in a great measure solved for itself the problem of registration which is now agitating the nursing world and divided it into two hostile camps—those for and those against registration.

BY the Act 25 and 26 Vict. cap. 54, sect. 16, the General Board of Lunacy, Scotland, may grant authority for the liberation on trial or probation of any lunatic from any asylum for such time and under such regulations as the Board may consider necessary or proper, and by the Act 29 and 30 Vict. cap. 51, sect. 8, every pauper lunatic who is discharged on probation shall remain subject to inspection by the Commissioners during the period of probation, and it shall not be lawful for the parish council to take any such pauper lunatic off the poor roll, or to alter the conditions on which probationary discharge was granted, without the sanction of the Board, during the period of probation.

The question of the adoption in Ireland of family care as a method of dealing with mental unsoundness is at once highly academic and highly practical: academic because this mode of treatment has never been hitherto attempted in that country; and practical, because it may be said, with a slight modification of a familiar line, that no nation wants it so much. Perhaps all this is only another way of saying that the question stands exactly in that position in which any earnest and vigorous reformer likes to take a subject up. The crop is ripe, but no sickle has yet swept over the field.

The necessity for special care of infants and young children afflicted with defective brain development has been increasingly recognised in recent years, but the modes for providing this care are as yet little developed.