While this subject is being discussed in the Journal of Mental Science, a short account of an attempt to carry it out may be of some interest.

It is convenient to regard the mental part of man, or his ego, as being made up of feeling, will, and thought. Feeling I place first, because it takes precedence in evolution, and because it may be said to constitute the foundation of mind.

The speech faculty of the epileptic has hitherto received very little attention, though passing references to it have been made from time to time by several writers, viz. Kussmaul, Ross, Wylie, and others. Wylie has stated the well-known fact that temporary aphasia appears sometimes as the “aura,” sometimes as an immediate consequence of a fit. Kussmaul confirms this, and Ross writes, “In some cases the warning of an epileptic attack consists of a sudden inability to speak, and it is very probable that word-deafness and word-blindness are by no means uncommon auræ.” While saying so much, Ross admits what is certainly true, that motor aphasia is the more readily noticed, and, as obscuring the question of aphasic auræ, he admits the mental confusion attending the onset of unconsciousness, a factor of some importance. Bradylalia (slow speech) and echolalia (echo speech) have also been noticed by observers at home and abroad. They are, however, so frequently observed in developmental speech, and in other nervous and mental diseases, that too much may be made of their significance.

The analysis and arrangement in a statistical form of the various entries made in the case-books of the different asylums would form a valuable synopsis of clinical, therapeutical, and pathological significance. But the labour involved would be something enormous, and might dishearten the most enthusiastic statistician; even the work of arranging and tabulating the entries in the case-books of one of the large asylums would be very great.

In the following paper it is proposed to study the influence which alcoholism exerts upon suicide in this country, so far as that influence can be traced in recent statistics of the movement of these social phenomena. Our discussion will aim more particularly at determining the rôle which alcoholism may have played in the late increase of suicide in England, and at establishing the distinctive characters which constitute the type of alcoholic suicide.

Mr. Whiteway's paper on this subject in the last number but one of the Journal is very interesting to medical men as an indication of the view taken by an enlightened legal mind, and it is especially interesting to us as proving that all legal minds are not so steeped in mediæval notions of responsibility as some medical men are apt to suppose. It contains, however, statements that must not be allowed to go unchallenged, and it pushes the doctrine of irresponsibility further than I, for one, should be prepared to follow.

The observations upon which this essay is written have been made in the Coppice Hospital, and refer to cases admitted between 1st August, 1859, and 1st August, 1893, and still surviving at the latter date, and to cases thereafter admitted consecutively, all of which have come under the writer's care, being 175 in all.