Of 220 cases in which post-mortem examinations were held the following were the conditions as to rigor mortis. It will be seen that in only 11 cases does the condition recorded militate in any way against the statement that “far from commencing in the jaw, then attacking the arms and lastly the legs, and disappearing in the inverse order,” as was at one time taught, and as is stated at the present time in some of our text-books, in whatever order it may commence, it almost invariably disappears first from the jaw, afterwards from the arms and legs; in fact probably in the order of its appearance.

By colitis one understands a disease characterised anatomically by an ulcerative or membranous affection of the large intestine, and signalised clinically by acute sanguinolent or muco-purulent diarrhóa, plus pyrexia and prostration.

In this paper I propose to consider the questions which this subject involves, chiefly from observations I have made upon convicts in this prison.

It was originally our intention to cover the whole ground of the pathology of the cortical nerve-cells in relation to insanity. But in the course of our more recent investigations we have been strongly impressed with the fact that there are certain as yet little known, but very grave fallacies, into which investigators in this field are in danger of running; and it seemed to us in the first place imperative to clear these up before formulating conclusions regarding the relation of cortical nerve-cell changes to insanity.

It occurred to me that, on the occasion of our division meeting at an asylum which has made special provision for the care and treatment of imbeciles, apart from the other patients, a brief dissertation as to forms of industrial training appropriate to such might not be out of place.

I have lately been engaged on a research into the normal and morbid histology of the choroid plexuses of the lateral ventricles.

Modern opinion as to the nature of syphilis regards it as an exanthematous fever, with a period of incubation, a stage of efflorescence, and an epoch of sequelæ, and in fact diverging in no essential from the type of its class save in its more protracted course, by which peculiarity all other seeming variations can be explained. If the periods of incubation and efflorescence be taken as one, each stage of the disease may be said to have its own characteristic nervous phenomena, including psychoses; and this fact may serve as a basis for the classification of the syphilitic insanities.

Gentlemen,—I am not going to weary you with a catalogue—it would be a long one—of the distinguished sons that Dumfriesshire and Galloway have sent forth; I ask you to bear with me for a little while I appeal for your generous admiration of the most illustrious of all of them —I mean Thomas Carlyle. and such an appeal is not unnecessary, for this illustrious man—glorified by genius— has more than any great man of modern times been subjected since his death to detraction and disparagement. Late in securing the recognition of his claims as a writer, for it was not until he was in his forty-second year that the British public really took note of him, he rose rapidly thereafter in fame and popularity, and after his rectorial address in this University, in 1866, was the object of enthusiastic national regard. He died in universal honour, the ablest and highest of his literary contemporaries vying with each other in sounding his praises, extolling his heroic and unsullied life, and describing him as sovereign by divine right amongst the British men of letters of his generation. But a change speedily came over the spirit of the scene. Carlyle had not been a week in his grave when the Reminiscences, edited by Froude, appeared; these were followed within a year by the Letters and Reminiscences of Jane Welch Carlyle; and after these came rapidly The Early Life and The Life in London, for which also Froude was responsible. “It was these nine volumes,” says Masson, “that did all the mischief.” Full, at least as regards the earlier volumes, of slovenly press errors, and obviously very hurriedly prepared, they depicted Carlyle in his darkest and gloomiest moods, almost ignoring the bright and genial side of his nature, and gave prominence not merely to the biting judgments he had passed on public men, but also to his pungent comments on private individuals then still living. Froude was Carlyle's most intimate friend in his hitter days; he was his chosen literary executor; he was his faithful disciple in doctrine; he has, with lofty eloquence, described his extraordinary personality and gifts, and put on record his conviction that, with all his faults of manner and temper, he was the greatest and best man he had ever known. and yet, for all that, it has been his part to open the flood-gates of adverse criticism, and to supply all the quacks, and idiots, and sects, and coteries whom Carlyle had scourged, in his day, with nasty missiles with which to pelt his memory. Even Froude's warmest defenders are constrained to admit that he showed defective reticence and bad taste, and every impartial reader of the Reminiscences must, I think, perceive that in his vivid sympathy with that brilliant woman, Mrs. Carlyle, Froude has many times been betrayed into references to her husband that are unjust and almost vindictive. When Carlyle was working at the French Revolution “his nervous system,” says Mr. Froude, “was aflame. At such times,” these are Mr. Froude's words, “he could think of nothing but the matter which he had in hand, and a sick wife was a bad companion for him. She escaped to Scotland to her mother.” The plain inference from this is that Mrs. Carlyle, when an invalid, was driven away from home by Carlyle's neglect and irritability. The fact is, that it was solely the state of her own health that sent her to the north, and that she had no peace or comfort till she got home again. She writes, on returning on this occasion: “The feeling of calm and safety and liberty which came over me on re-entering my own house was really the most blessed I had felt for a great while.” Does this sound like coming back to a self-absorbed bear of a husband? “The house in Cheyne Row,” says Mr. Froude, “requiring paint and other readjustments, Carlyle had gone to Wales, leaving his wife to endure the confusion and superintend the workmen alone with her maid.” Thus Froude insinuates that Carlyle selfishly went off to enjoy himself, leaving his wife to drudgery and discomfort. But the facts are that Mrs. Carlyle was a house-proud woman, and took delight in her domestic lustrations, and that while Carlyle was in Wales at this time, on one of those excursions which were essential to the maintenance of his health and of his bread-winning labours, Mrs. Carlyle went off on a holiday on her own account to the Isle of Wight, from which she was very glad to return to her dismantled home. I could quote a dozen paragraphs like these in which Froude seems to seek, by innuendo or elision, to convey the impression that Carlyle was systematically hard and heartless in his relations with his wife, whereas the truth is that, with failings of temper and thoughtlessness—from which few are exempted—he was a tender and affectionate spouse.

A man, aged 50, was admitted on 4th October and died 15th October, 1897. The medical certificate stated that he was suffering from delirium tremens.

Before this body it is unnecessary to revert to the inadequacy of conducting scientific investigations in psychiatry along the restricted plan of confining the research to material found within the asylum by some one exclusive department of investigation, such as the routine governed and mechanical methods of microscopical research. This restricted plan has largely governed psychiatric research up to the present time. Now, however, that many of the sciences tributary to psychiatry have attained a growth and capacity to be of service in psychiatric research, the restricted plan of research may be relegated to the past.

It would be “flogging a dead horse,” at the present day, to offer arguments against the exploded phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, which has long been discredited by scientific men.

The term “weakmindedness” is a most misleading and ambiguous one, and it is imperative that it should receive early attention. It is confusing from the very comprehensive scope of its significance, and altogether so capable of such extremely varied and general interpretation that it is rendered worthless, and perhaps worse than worthless, for the purposes of actual practice. By some, the slightest departure from the normal mental standard is regarded as “weakmindedness,” although the case in question might be one of mere eccentricity; by others, again, the term is accepted in its full comprehensiveness,—the lunatic and imbecile, the idiot and person of defective intellect (who cannot be classified with either of the above three divisions), are all included together, and in the absence of a qualifying statement, confusion is the result. It is most improbable that any two alienists would be likely to interpret the meaning of the term in the same way, and the Commissioners in Lunacy, who are most strict in the matter of validity of certificate, would certainly not accept it per se on account of its ambiguity.

In the following paper, dealing with the hereditary transmission of mental disease, my conclusions are based on a statistical review of 1200 cases of hereditary insanity admitted into the Cumberland and Westmorland Asylum during a period of thirty years (1865—1895). So far as I can ascertain, no analysis of such a large number of cases of hereditary insanity has hitherto been made by any one observer; there is, therefore, ground for the hope that results of value may accrue from such an investigation. One of the most important contributions to this subject is contained in a paper∗ by the late Dr. Hugh Grainger Stewart, which appeared in the Journal of Mental Science in 1864. That paper was based on the statistics of 447 hereditary cases admitted into the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries; the patients belonged mainly to the middle and upper classes of society, with a smaller number of pauper cases. The cases I propose to analyse were almost entirely paupers admitted from the general population of Cumberland and Westmorland. Private patients often come to an asylum from a considerable distance, and from beyond the limits of the district in which the asylum is situated; inferences drawn from the tabulation of such cases are scarcely likely to give so reliable a picture of the features of insanity in any district as when the cases analysed stand for almost the entire insane population of all the districts from which the patients come.

It would appear, by reference to the Blue-book of the English Commissioners for 1896, that, out of 7182 deaths in the asylums of England and Wales, thirteen resulted from diseases of joints and bones, and eleven from fractures or dislocations. In 1897, out of 6783 deaths, fifteen resulted from diseases of joints and bones, and thirteen from dislocations and fractures.

The subject of these notes was a gentleman who was admitted under the care of Dr. Deas, at Wonford House, in June, 1895, and remained there until his death in July, 1896.

The interest of the following case centres in the severity of the lesions, both macroscopic and microscopic, which were found post mortem.

A man, E. C—, aged twenty-eight, is at present a patient in the Northampton County Asylum. This man has since childhood suffered from epilepsy, and although at one time the fits were for several years in abeyance, just now they are frequent and often severe. The attendants, who have known him for many years, state that while the severe fits are of the usual type, the lesser ones are often followed by “antics” and “playing the fool.” In one of these less severe attacks, which I witnessed recently, the convulsions had all the characters of a genuine epilepsy, and were followed by the usual stage of stertorous passivity. But this stage was of short duration only, the patient suddenly springing up and adopting the “segment of a circle” position, the occiput and heels alone touching the ground. Suddenly relaxing, he then raised his trunk from the ground and bent forwards towards his feet five or six times in succession. Then, falling on his back, the knees were flexed and the thighs drawn up on the abdomen, and then as rapidly stretched out. This he repeated several times. Drawing up the thighs again, he placed his hands on his buttocks and rocked backwards and forwards, shouting loudly a stave or two of “We won't go home till morning.” Finally he burst into a loud laugh, gesticulated extravagantly, got up from the ground, picked up his hat, and sat down complacently on a bench. These last movements were performed quite automatically, and without the least evidence of conscious appreciation. In fact, he continued for some hours in a dreamy state, and not till the next day was he fully and clearly conscious. I have no doubt at all that the convulsion was a genuine epilepsy, and it is quite obvious that the subsequent performance corresponded in detail to the series of movements demonstrated by Richer in hysteria major.

As far back as 1871 a paper named “A Plea for Convalescent Homes in connection with Asylums for the Insane Poor” was admitted by the Editors, Drs. Maudsley and Sibbald, into the Journal of Mental Science. In 1879 an article called “After-care,” by the Rev. H. Hawkins, Chaplain of the Colney Hatch Asylum, was allowed a place in the same Journal. The then Editors were Drs. Clouston, Hack Tuke, and Savage. On the 5th June of the same year a meeting was held at the house of Dr. Bucknill, 39, Wimpole Street, to consider the subject of the “After-care of Poor and Friendless Female Convalescents on leaving Asylums for the Insane.” There were present Dr. and Mrs. Bucknill, Miss Cons, Dr. D. Hack Tuke, Mr. W. G. Marshall, Dr. Harrington Tuke, and others. A paper on the above-named subject was read. It was moved by Dr. C. Lockhart Robertson, and seconded by Dr. Hack Tuke—“That this meeting do form itself into an Association.” The names of Dr. S. Duckworth-Williams and of Dr. Savage were added to those already given. It was moved by Dr. Robertson, and seconded by Mr. W. Gr. Marshall—“That Dr. Bucknill be invited to take the office of President.” Also moved by Dr. Harrington Tuke, and seconded by Dr. Bucknill—“That the Rev. H. Hawkins take the office of Secretary.” These resolutions were unanimously carried. Later in the summer a meeting of ladies to consider the same subject was held at 84, Portland Place. Miss Cons consented to accept temporarily the office of Ladies' Secretary. Later in the same year another meeting was held at Dr. Bucknill's.

The Lunacy Bill of the present session has advanced so far in its parliamentary gestation, that it will almost certainly escape the fate of its predecessor of last year.

The object of this communication is to draw from the members of the Association the modern treatment of fractures as adopted in institutions for the insane. It is obvious that the various plans, as practised in hospitals, must be considerably modified in asylums. For instance, to strap and bandage a case of fractured ribs, secundum artem, taxes any medical officer, unless the patient is quietly disposed and clean in his habits. However, with skill and a fairly docile patient, there should be little difficulty in the management of ordinary fractures of the bones below the elbows and the knees. From time to time one reads of cases of fractures of the ribs occurring in asylums, remarkable autopsies being recorded. It is difficult sometimes to give a correct history of their causation, and, in consequence, much opprobrium has been unjustly cast on asylum officials. It is believed by not a few that there is a peculiar affection of the ribs in the insane causing them to fracture readily. It is said, too, that it is common in general paralysis. Dr. Christian has stated in the Journal of Mental Science, January, 1886, that he is decidedly opposed to the idea that general paralytics are more liable to fracture of the bones. He gives 250 cases, and says, “I can assure you, gentlemen, I have not come across a single case of fracture among them.” But no figures of the kind can be relied upon unless verified by post-mortem examination. It is not uncommon to find in the mortuaries of ordinary hospitals and asylums, and in the dissecting-room, specimens of fractured ribs, the causation of which is unaccounted for. With our present pathological knowledge of the osseous system we must withhold our verdict.