Gentlemen,—My first and most pleasing duty in taking this chair is to thank you very warmly for the honour you have done me in placing me here. Recalling the names of those who have occupied this position before me, I am abashed by my sense of my own unworthiness to fill it. When the question of my nomination as President of this Association was mooted, I would fain have stood aside, but the kindly representations of those members who said that it was Ireland's turn for an Annual Meeting made me feel that I could not evade the honourable task which was put upon me, even though I feel that I am very far from being the fittest of my contemporaries to undertake it. I have also been moved to accept your kindness and the distinguished honour you have conferred upon me in the hope that a meeting might be arranged in Dublin in such a way as to further the objects of the Association and to be of advantage to the members, particularly to those who live in Ireland. How far this hope may be fulfilled remains to be seen. I trust, in any case, that our present meeting may be so far successful that all our future Annual Meetings may be working meetings, and that under successors, I hope more competent than myself, the Association may be thereby materially aided in its forward path. For this meeting we have, I am happy to say, a very large and comprehensive programme, the members having heartily seconded the efforts of the General Secretary and myself to bring in good material. I desire no credit for this. I may say, with Montaigne, “I have brought you here a nosegay of sweet flowers; nothing is mine but the string that ties them together.” It is, perhaps, the function of the Chairman of such a meeting as this rather to aid and to suggest discussion than himself to take a very prominent part therein; rather to offer opportunities for others than to make them for himself; rather to be the whetstone than the chisel—

The estimation of vitamin C in the urine has recently been undertaken on a fairly large scale on patients suffering from physical disturbances. Harris (1) and his co-workers investigated 74 hospital patients at Cambridge, and found that 62 (84%) excreted less than the minimum standard, or 13 mgrm. per day. Excluding 19 on special diets, 43 excreted less than 13 mgrm. per day, and the average excretion of 55 was 10 mgrm. per day.

During the last nine months of 1931 a series of 175 cases were tested for syphilis by means of several reactions, and the results were reported in this journal in January, 1932. During the next nine months the work was continued and considerably extended, and we shall here give the further results thus obtained, together with a statistical expression of the findings of both periods combined.

There is probably no disease to which human flesh is heir that attracts, every now and again, such a degree of public attention—that begets such a keenness of personal dread—that so frequently forms the subject of sensational narrative or comment in the public press—that causes to be exhibited so disgraceful an amount and kind of ignorance, superstition, credulity, and cruelty—as hydrophobia. Even cholera is not so formidable a disorder in the public esteem. Its cramps are not always present; and when they are, they are not comparable with the convulsions of hydrophobia. Nor is there any terrifying mental disorder in the case of cholera; whereas, in hydrophobia the morbid mental phenomena are more prominent, serious, and impressive than the motor ones. Moreover, cholera is not popularly believed to be necessarily and in all cases fatal; whereas it is currently supposed that there is no chance of escape from hydrophobia.

Some apology may at first sight appear to be needed for burdening yet further the literature on blood sugar in the psychoses. The following observations, however, require recording, in that they illustrate certain aspects of the relation of the behaviour of the blood sugar level to changes in mental state which are as yet obscure.

The study of eye disorders in maladjusted children plays an interesting and important role in the investigation of psychosomatic problems of child psychiatry. Eye diseases in maladjusted children are frequently caused or aggravated by psychogenic factors. They are also sometimes connected with neurological disorders.