Discussion has recently arisen in regard to the introduction of hospital-trained nurses into asylums, and the experiment has even been tried of placing them in charge of wards without having had previous experience of the insane. With careful selection and enthusiastic co-operation, this has even worked satisfactorily.

The extension of the voluntary boarder system to the county and borough asylums has long been felt to be a necessity by all who are interested in promoting the early treatment of the insane. It is, moreover, only just that a provision of the law which is found to be good for the well-to-do classes should be extended to the poor. Dr. Ernest White has done good service in again giving prominence to this great need of the poor, in the recent discussion on the treatment of incipient insanity.

A contemporary reports a Detroit “doctor and scientist,” “after a careful investigation of existing conditions,” as asserting that “260 years hence everyone in the United States will be insane.” The population by that time will amount to a few hundred millions, so that this prophecy affords, an opening for much speculation. Imagination paints the General Paralytic Progressive Party contesting with the chronically Hallucinated Conservative faction.

The cases of clinical interest in our asylums must be very numerous, and there can be no doubt that much valuable information is buried in asylum case-books with little hope of ever reaching the notice either of the specialty or the profession.

Lunacy legislation in the present Parliament is again conspicuous by its absence, but before this reaches the eyes of our readers there will probably have been some discussion in the House on the insufficient number of medical men on the Lunacy Commission.

The Derby meeting of the Association did not pass without reference to the unfortunate report of the Tuberculosis Committee. The President explained that the whole matter had been considered by the Council, that they had obtained the opinion of an expert of the highest eminence, and that it was desirable to proceed further in order to have the statistics corrected and published in this Journal. As we have previously indicated, the errors in these statistics do not vitiate the important conclusions set forth by the Committee. Of that the Council has been definitely assured; and, as Dr. Yellowlees remarked, it is the duty of the Council to protect the honour and dignity of the Association. The whole of the materials accumulated and dealt with by the Tuberculosis Committee in the production of their Report will be submitted to a searching expert inquiry, and the results will be made known. Nothing less could be regarded as satisfactory in the circumstances; the members of the Committee are just as desirous of having mistakes corrected as the Council or the Association at large. The Chairman of the Committee has taken a course which is absolutely unassailable; having consulted with the members of his Committee, he laid the matter before the Council and gave every possible assistance towards the amendment of the errors into which the Committee fell. We may therefore await with confidence the result of these deliberations.

That officers and servants of the Scottish district and parochial asylums should be utterly shut out from all superannuation allowances is an almost incredible anomaly. Public servants throughout Great Britain are generally provided for in this way, and very few of them can claim it on the ground of having duties that are in any respect so anxious, responsible, or dangerous. Asylum workers should be the first and not the last to be thus provided for.

The suffocation of fifty insane persons, as the result of a fire in an English asylum, constitutes a tragedy that might have been hoped to be impossible. Yet, despite the magnitude of the loss of life, there is much reason to be thankful that it was not greater.

The report of the first year's work of the pavilion (F) for mental diseases at the Albany Hospital is now to hand, and appears to offer every encouragement for the extension of the hospital treatment of mental diseases.

The Annual Meeting of this Association was held at the house of Sir William Church, the President of the College of Physicians, who presided.

The laying of the foundation stone of the Winsley Sanatorium for Consumptives was an opportunity for the expression, by those connected with, it of their recognition of the valuable services of a member of our Association, Dr. Lionel Weatherly.