From time to time it is confidently asserted in the public Press that not only is insanity rapidly on the increase in English prisons, but that the present system of administration is largely responsible for this state of affairs. Such statements appear to be circulated without a real knowledge of the facts, and they tend to unsettle and mislead the public mind. With the object of showing that imprisonment, as at present conducted, has not the deteriorating effect on the nervous system that it is alleged to have, the following tables, founded on an examination of Table E, Commissioners of Local Prisons, Report, England, 1895, have been prepared. Before entering into statistical details it may not be out of place to state that increased interest has recently been displayed in things pertaining to criminality and to the physical, moral, and intellectual characteristics of the criminal. There can be no doubt that the somewhat extravagant views held by a section of continental criminologists have met with a ready acceptance in certain quarters in this country. Attempts have been made to prove that the stigmata, physical and psychical, said to have been observed amongst Italian criminals, are also present in English felons. These stigmata are to be found in varying and uncertain proportion amongst a part of the population of our prisons, but not, in my opinion, to such an extent as to warrant the assumption that there exists a special criminal type or a distinct criminal neurosis. Receding foreheads, square chins, large ears, and tattoo marks are but poor data on which to base a pathological criminology, but safer ground is reached in the presence of contorted and narrow palates, of heart disease, and tubercular affections, of the after-effects of syphilis and intemperance, all of which are to be frequently met with amongst criminals.

Last summer, in the course of a tour in the United States and Canada, I visited a number of Asylums for the Insane, jotting down my observations and impressions at the earliest opportunity after leaving the respective establishments. They are now submitted in a condensed form in these notes; and I trust that they may convey to the readers somewhat of the interest experienced by myself during my visits. It is almost superfluous to say that the physician-superintendents received me most courteously, and their kind attention will ever be suggestive of pleasant recollections in connection with my trans-Atlantic trip. Without further preface, I shall proceed first to give a short account of the Michigan Asylum,* visited 13th June, 1868.

Cox et al's paper addresses an issue that has long been assumed to be a central aspect of brain function – the interplay of different neurotransmitters – but for which we have very little evidence so far. It is currently unclear whether these findings will have implications for the treatment of those with cocaine or other substance dependence.

Interest in the acid base metabolism in mental disease has existed almost as long as the relevant estimations have been available to clinicians. In the period from 1920 to 1938 many careful and accurate determinations of the factors involved were carried out, both in Europe and the United States of America. The results, while being sometimes equivocal, for the most part showed that there was no demonstrable change between those suffering from schizophrenia or depression and a normal hospital population. Since 1938 little interest appears to have been taken in the hydrogen ion concentration of the blood and the pCO2 in mental disease. During recent years great progress has been made in the apparatus for the determination of blood pH and pCO2 and fairly recently it became possible to estimate the first of these three places of decimals with a reproducibility of 0·005 of a pH unit and an equivalent accuracy for pCO2. In view of this great improvement in the apparatus available, it seemed worth while to estimate the blood pH and pCO2 in a large number of chronic mentally ill patients. The facilities and the patients were available in Hollymoor Hospital, so we decided to see whether with the much more delicate instruments now available it was possible to demonstrate any significant difference in the blood pH and pCO2 between schizophrenics and other mentally ill patients.