While the Association is engaged in considering the proposals of the Statistical Committee, it may be helpful to note what has been written about insanity from the point of view of a librarian. The following extended classification has been found adequate for the arrangement of some 1,500 books and pamphlets relating to this subject. An authors catalogue is easily prepared upon the usual dictionary plan, but it assumes a wide knowledge of literature, not only as a matter of history, but also as an incessant and overmastering growth. A subjects catalogue, on the other hand, is the method of importance to workers who, with the least possible delay, want to ascertain what has been written on all or any of the various aspects of the main subject engaging attention.

Excluding debtors (who are non-criminal prisoners), a local prison is one containing persons charged with an offence awaiting trial, or convicted and serving a sentence of imprison ment of less than two years. A convict prison contains con victed prisoners sentenced to three or more years' penal servitude. All prisoners sentenced to penal servitude have been while awaiting trial, or are for a short time after sentence, detained in a local prison, and thus come within the cognisance of the medical officer there.

The subject of tuberculosis in asylums is by no means a new one. On the contrary, many have written upon it, probably long before Dr. Clouston, forty-two years ago, published his well-known remarks. It would be neither profitable nor desirable to enter here upon a discussion of the individual views expressed from time to time, but for many interesting and instructive observations it is only necessary to turn to the papers presented to this Association of recent years by Drs. Crookshank, Blair, France, Weatherly, Drapes, and others. This being so, you will not expect to hear anything new from me; in fact, I do not think I can lay claim to a single original observation; but as no one paper deals with any large portion of the procedure to be observed in combating the spread of tuberculosis in our asylums, and as my attention has, for the last nine or ten years, been directed to the problem of how to reduce the death rate without any great expenditure of money, I have thought it well to introduce a discussion rather on the actual details of procedure than on the principles involved, in order to stimulate the expression of opinions of all sorts; for it is evident that there are many equally good and efficient ways of arriving at the object which every asylum medical officer desires.

My paper will not be a lengthy one, and should perhaps be prefaced with an apology. For it contains no new facts, nor have I the results of any investigation to communicate.

Any drug which interferes with the workings of the higher cerebral functions is rightly regarded with suspicion, and the question of giving or withholding it is always open to doubt. Hence the difference of opinion with regard to the administration of hypnotics. In prescribing them the advantages have to be weighed against the disadvantages, and when that is done, and the former are in excess, then whatever disadvantages there may be have to be accepted since they are in the minority.

When any belief tends to reappear in various races from age to age and under various conditions of civilisation and education, it acquires a special interest because it probably depends on some general trait in the mental organisation of our species.

The last time I had the pleasure of addressing a meeting of this Division the subject I discussed was the different forms of insanity met with during the period of adolescence, and it was suggested that it would be interesting to investigate the cases at the other end of the scale—that is, those connected with the incidence of decay and old age, and to compare them with the previous cases.

There is a fairly general opinion amongst those engaged in asylum work that the classical type of general paralysis is less frequently met with relatively than formerly. This may be due partly to an increased number of so-called atypical cases, and possibly also to cases now being diagnosed as general paralysis, either ante or post mortem, which were not formerly looked upon as such. With a view to finding out the frequency of the chief phenomena of the disease as it is now met with in asylum practice, the following data, both pathological and clinical, have been compiled. The cases examined were (1) all the male cases admitted to the West Riding Asylum, Wakefield, from January 1st, 1896, to December 31st, 1902; (2) all the male cases admitted to the London County Asylum, Horton, Epsom, from its opening in the early part of 1902 to March 31st, 1905; and (3) all the female deaths at Horton.