Dr. Falciola has collected a large number of papers upon the growth of nails and the changes noted after disease, which he has tested by his own observation. He is not disposed to agree to the assertion of Parisot and Paget that the state of the nails is an index of trophic alterations in the body, although he admits that their growth is affected by a general disturbance in the economy of the organism. He found that in melancholy the growth of the nails is slower. The increase of the nails is somewhat irregular, being greater at one time than another, and differing in each finger, although there is a general equality in growth, which is more marked in the three middle fingers. The nails of one hand do not grow at exactly the same rate as in the other. He fails to find either marked acceleration or slowness of growth in states of mental depression or mania. In general he finds that the study of the growth of the nails in insane patients appears to support the views of Kraepelin on the clinical unity of all those types of mental disease which writers generally wish to treat as distinct, but which, in truth, only represent different episodes of one fundamental malady.

William W. Ireland