We have received notice from Cambridge that there is a project for starting an English journal devoted to psychology. The great increase in the number of workers in this department of science has overburdened the pages of Mind, and it is believed that there is now scope for a journal which will permit of the publication of important papers in regard to analytic, genetic, comparative, and experimental observations. The recent founding of new laboratories and the establishment of the Psychological Society justify the expectation of a largely increased volume of work.

At the International Congress, held at Antwerp last September, the proceedings of which were reported in the last number of this Journal, it was resolved that the Congress of 1904 should be held in Edinburgh. A Scottish Committee was elected, and Sir John Sibbald is now arranging to convene a preliminary meeting. It is to be hoped that it will be fully attended by representatives of the various State-supported and charitable agencies for the relief of the poor, every variety of home help, and that measures will be adopted to secure the success of the Congress, which has aroused so great an interest and formulated such important propositions.

The “Association of Medical Men receiving Resident Patients” has issued a Guide for Medical Practitioners and a Book of Reference to the Health Resorts and Institutions for Patients of Great Britain. It is printed by Mr. E. J. Frampton, at Bournemouth, and sets forth the information indicated on the title-page at considerable length.

The Lancet of last year gave details of a great wrong committed in Melbourne, a wrong whereby our respected colleague, Dr. Beattie Smith, has been grossly injured. The result is that he is no longer in the service of the State of Victoria, but after twenty years of notable work in the asylums of that country, within a short step of reaching the highest place, he is cast adrift without pension or compensation. The political record of Victoria is debased still further by this last example of shameless misgovernment. Dr. Beattie Smith has had to give place to an assistant medical officer, who, if the allegations against him reported in the Lancet(1) are to be trusted, was utterly unfit for the post. The “Minister” at the head of the department, however, acted in spite of the Inspector's protest. The callous indecency of the incident, as related by the Australian correspondent of the Lancet, passes belief, were it not that it is of a piece with what has gone before. We trust that the Council of the Association will carefully consider the whole question raised by this act of Victorian maladministration, for it not only affects one of our members, but vitally touches the interests of the insane in those important asylums at the Antipodes.

The fourteenth International Medical Congress is now a thing of the past. About 7000 members attended it, exclusive of the wives and families accompanying them. For some unknown reason the Madrid authorities included in the Congress not only doctors, but dentists, veterinarians, and pharmacists as well. This was too large a number of persons for the authorities to manage, and consequently a good deal of confusion prevailed. The Spaniard is a polite, courteous gentleman, but his business capacity is decidedly wanting. Moreover, the results of that fatal word mañana (to-morrow) were everywhere in evidence, and arrangements which should have been made weeks before were only just concluded when the Congress opened. An account of the proceedings of the neurological section appears on another page. From it it will be seen that the Association had honours conferred on it by the election of three of its members to the position of Honorary Presidents. The difficulty of understanding what was said by the Spaniards, however, led many men to forsake the Congress and explore Madrid, or go on excursions to the Escurial and Toledo. The reports and papers were too numerous for the time allotted to them, and only about a third of the sixty-six communications were read. On another occasion it will be better to limit their number and allow all of them to be read. Only one resolution was passed by the neurological section—a resolution calling on the Press not to report crimes, in order to avoid the contagion of crime. It is doubtful, however, whether the editors of the Press in any country will consent to omit the most sensational part of the contents of their paper; but that too much prominence is given to the life of the criminal in prison and to accounts of his life-history, in some papers, there is no doubt, and the consequence is that weak-minded individuals commit some homicidal or other criminal act.

In vol. xxi of the Archivio (1900) the author published a note on some cases of morphological anomalies of the extremities in the insane; and in the present paper he records the result of an autopsy on one of these patients—an hereditary degenerate with partial syndactylism of the right hand. Several anomalies were found in the bones of the hand and in the muscles of the forearm. The osseous abnormalities were most notable in the second phalanges; in two fingers (index and middle) that phalanx was absent; in the ring and little fingers it was rudimentary, and in the latter it was partially blended with the ungual phalanx. The ungual phalanges of the index and middle fingers were united, and bore a single nail. The os magnum and unciform bone were blended. The rest of the hand skeleton was normal. The muscles of the hand and forearm were all somewhat atrophic. Their most important anomalies were the absence of the extensor indicis and of the tendon of the flexor sublimis digitorum to the little finger, and a reversal of the ordinary arrangement of the flexor tendons, the deep flexor being perforated by the tendons of the superficial muscle.

The author divides the stigmata of degeneration into four classes—anatomical, physiological, psychological, and sociological. The first group he discussed in an earlier paper contributed to the same journal, and the third and fourth groups he proposes to deal with later on. The present paper is devoted to the physiological group, and is, as the author expressly points out, a simple catalogue of the several functional disorders which, for good, bad, or indifferent reasons, various observers have brought into the wide net of “dégénérescence.” It is needless to add that the catalogue is a long one, seeing that some authors claim for the degenerate a monopoly of tubercular diseases and of post-nasal adenoids; and one expansionist even goes so far as to insist that every departure from the left occipito-anterior presentation in childbirth is to be accounted a stigma. The paper is followed by a useful list of the literature on the subject.

In various cases, the author has noted at the moment of death a cænæsthesic sensation—doubtless associated with arrest of motor, respiratory, and circulatory functions—which is not without interest. The cases here described were mostly tuberculous, and included individuals of both sexes, and of atheistic as well as religious beliefs. In all the cases, the last sensation to which expression was given was one of flying, of moving upwards. In some cases death was peaceful, in others painful. In one case a girl died clasping the iron bars of the bed, in horror of being borne upwards.