I. General Remarks. — It has frequently appeared to me that a rapid and easy method of staining according to Nissl would be of great advantage. It has been my routine practice to cut a fresh section and to stain according to Bevan Lewis in every case of insanity in which an autopsy had been obtained, and from that to record a few microscopic notes. A fairly complete description of neuroglial changes could thus be recorded, but only in a minor degree the changes which had occurred in cell protoplasm, i. e. cytological changes and various degenerations. For this one has to stain according to the method of Nissl, a method which stands out supreme for this purpose. But even Nissl's method is by no means perfect, and there are many drawbacks and imperfections. Hardening in alcohol causes considerable shrinkage; in fact, the main part of the cell is occupied by the nucleus. Alcohol also largely dissolves out fat, and therefore fatty degeneration cannot be shown. Again, it is not every asylum laboratory that has equipment for Nissl's method, but every asylum has the means of making a Nissl preparation according to a way I am about to describe.

The increasing role of psychiatry in the medical curriculum in Denmark is described. The general schedule of psychiatric teaching to medical students is outlined, emphasizing some of the special features of the Danish tradition. Roughly speaking, six per cent of all curriculum time is devoted to psychiatry. Clinical psychiatry, medical psychology and human sexuality are described separately. Interesting new possibilities for psychiatry in connection with a current curriculum reform, allotting more time to clerkships, elective periods and liaison teaching are pointed out.

Among not a few less agreeable influences pervading lunatic asylums, there is one under whose effect every person concerned in the general management of those institutions is sure to come, viz., the architectural. No asylum superintendent is to be found, who has not various plans of renovation and improvement for his own institution, who does not see precisely the constructional arrangements which the insane require, and who has not, very generally, floating before his mental vision, asleep or awake, some grand scheme for a model asylum. Nor is this to be wondered at, when it is considered that the asylum building is the machine through and by which the superintendent is to work out and develope his system of moral management; that, in short, it is an instrument of cure, of the adequacy, utility, and perfectness of which he must be the best judge.

The experience and meaning of grief differs with the progression of self-awareness of the experiencer in his ontogenetic evolution from utter dependence to differentiated integration. Autonomy, achieved by very few adults, carries with it the connotation of transcendence over mere obedience and conformity to the canons of society. This is different from deviance in two important respects. Deviance is a movement in a horizontal direction away from cultural dominance, and therefore could manifest itself in antisocial activities. Autonomy, being a movement in a vertical direction, is supra-cultural and non-conformist rather than antisocial. All this has a great deal to do with existential grief, the experience of which can change according to the level of ontology of the experiencer. The following operational definitions are needed to treat the subject of ontological grief in a meaningful manner.