Gentlemen,—On taking formal possession of this chair, to which your generosity has called me, which confers honour on its occupant because it has been tenanted by a succession of able and distinguished men, and which is to me especially venerable, because my father once filled it, I shall, I believe, be conforming to excellent precedents if I begin by passing in rapid review before you the principal occurrences of the last twelvemonths, affecting the interests of the Medico-Psychological Association.

This connection may result—

1st. From the presence of symptoms which resemble, or are identical with, those which we recognise as expressions of the physiological function of the sympathetic, and which we have enumerated and explained in the former part of this essay.

2ndly. From pathological anatomical changes in the sym pathetic nerve.

Those conditions usually go together, but not invariably; thus, the pathological alterations may be completely wanting, or, on the other hand, they may be found in cases which were not before suspected to have any connection with the sympa thetic system.

We begin with the consideration of the affections of the cervical sympathetic, afterwards taking up those which pro bably have relation to some change in the thoracic and abdominal portions of that nerve.

Naturally, if a child be dull or stupid, he will be slower to learn the use of the senses or the muscles, and, accordingly, we find that some idiots of the lowest type are not able to learn to walk or grasp. I remember one case distinctly where the only acquired motions were receiving food into the mouth, and following with the eyes the spoon with which he was fed.

The following account of a case of microcephalic imbecility, for three years under observation in the Royal Albert Asylum, Lancaster, may be of interest, both on account of the family history and of certain abnormalities in the structure of the brain and heart observed at the autopsy.

Having recently visited, and as regards some of them, revisited many of the French Asylums, I propose to bring under your notice to-day, as briefly as possible, three or four prominent subjects of interest, which more especially attracted my attention. I shall not now attempt to describe the asylums which I visited, but merely to bring into as strong relief as possible those matters in which there is a difference of practice between our own country and France, either generally or in regard to the practice of some celebrated French alienists.

Somnambulism and the conditions allied to it have always attracted peculiar interest, probably because most men have felt that common sleep, although so familiar, is yet a wondrous and solemn thing, and full of mysterious possibilities for each of us. Cases of somnambulism have naturally lost nothing when reported, the observer and the recorder being alike liable to enhance rather than lessen the mystery. The wholesome scepticism which now prevails as to the truly involuntary character of many nervous disorders was formerly less common. We know that some patients will subject themselves to constant suffering and discomfort, or will practise the most patient and painful imposture, for no conceivable object save to be exceptional or to attract attention; and there is no want of charity in suspecting that in some cases the somnambulism was but hysterical simulation or morbid malingering.