cover to cover. It is pedantic and prolix, but shows shrewd perception or vivid imagination on the part of its author. It is caustic and censorious, both as to methods of management and the lunacy laws of Great Britain with which the author is evidently familiar. Its interest for us, lies in the little mirrors held up of formulas in expression and the suggestion of biased attitudes in examination. Alfred Hardie, in love with the daughter of a sea captain who had been defrauded by Hardie's father, was committed to the asylum through conspiracy. The examining physician was prepared to find him insane and could not escape prejudice from the early impressions introduced into his mind. Alfred's sister is innocently a party to the wrong. Dr. Wycherley was called.

"Papa," said Jane, "poor Alfred sleeps very badly; I hear him walking at all hours of the night."

"I thought as much," observed Dr. Wycherley; "Insomnia is the commonest feature. To resume; the insidious advance of morbid thought is next marked by high spirits, or else by low spirits; generally the latter. The patient begins by moping, then shows great lassitude and ennui, then becomes abstracted, moody and occupied with a solitary idea."

Jane clasped her hands, and tears stood in her eyes, so well did this description tally with poor Alfred's case.

"And at this period," continued Dr. Wycherley, "my experience leads me to believe that some latent delusion is generally germinating in the mind, though often concealed with consummate craft by the patient; the open development of this delusion is the next stage, and, with this last morbid phenomenon, incubation ceases and insanity begins. Sometimes, however, the illusion is physical rather than psychical, of the sense rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night; the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic character of hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These, the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but, being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are the ordinary antecedent symptoms characteristic of the incubation of insanity, to which

are frequently added somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, physical excitability-a disposition to knit the brows-great activity of the mental faculties or else a well-marked decline of the powers of the understanding-an exaggeration of the normal conditions of thought-or a reversal of the mental habits and sentiments, such as a sudden aversion to some person hitherto beloved or some

"And, oh, doctor," said the distraught sister," he knits his brow often and has given up his studies, won't go back to Oxford this term."

66

'Exactly," said the doctor, " and seeks isolation and is a prey to morbid distraction and worry, but has no palpable illusions, has he?"

"Not that I know of," said Mr. Hardie.

"Well, but," still objected the persistent and well meaning but misguided sister, "did he not say something to you very curious the other night about Captain Dodd and fourteen thousand pounds?"

Mr. Hardie's blood ran cold. "No," he stammered, "not that I remember."

"Oh, yes he did, papa. You have forgotten it, but at the time you were quite puzzled what he could mean and you did so," she put her finger to her forehead, and the doctors exchanged a meaning glance.

Descriptions of Alfred's admission under deception, his discovery that he was a prisoner, his attempts to escape, his frenzied conduct giving confirmation to the belief in his insanity, his interviews with the physicians, with the attendants, with the Lunacy Commission, with the erotic Mrs. Archbold, are given at intolerable length. The formulas of expression, the misinterpretation of testimony, the prejudiced viewpoint, the sufficient sprinkling of the plausible to carry along the exaggerated and the improbable are strongly suggestive of the story of a manic-depressive patient in the period of elation. It reads very much like the subtle prevarication of the more intelligent patients of this class, but is for us worth reading as showing the desirability of avoiding mannerisms, formalisms, and machine-like methods in dealing with the insane. Reade's own mental organization was peculiar. He

was litigious, quarrelsome, and intolerant, and has been called by a noted alienist "a splendid crank."

Other physicians beside the psychiatrist come in for a scoring in "Hard Cash." Alfred's fianceé, with unrecognized symptoms of love, is discovered by Mr. Osmond to have hyperæsthesia, or as the unprofessional person would say, "excessive sensibility."

Dr. Short, subsequently called, discovered a slightly torpid liver; a titled London surgeon that the heart was the peccant organ and the court physician, a somewhat morbid condition of the nervous system. It remained for the charlatan Sampson to discover the true malady.

To turn from this story and that of Christie Johnston, writtenin the same revolting spirit, to the "Bonnie Brier Bush," is like emerging from slime and ooze into the bright, crisp air of sanity and sunshine. Profound gratitude is owing to Ian MacLaren for the tribute paid the medical profession in the description of MacLure. “The Bonnie Brier Bush" is sweet to read, but he who fears the expression of emotion and would preserve a reputation for rigidity would do well to peruse it in the solitude of his room. It is a tale of devotion to duty and points to high appreciation on the part of its author of the physician in fact.

GENERAL REMARKS.

On the whole the lay novelist has treated the doctor fairly, but the story faithful to the alienist remains to be written. Who will attempt this task? So far as the literature of the subject is concerned, the story of the asylum or hospital for the insane is. the tale of wrong doing. Dr. Critier is a scoundrel, the physicians. in "Hard Cash" are mercenary and repellant. Professor Hieronymus, in a story by Amalie Skram, is cold and egotistical and Dr. Wilson, in "A Wheel of Fire," represents nothing we regard as desirable in one having to do with the care of the insane. We may, however, comfort ourselves with the reflection that the appetite for the sensational is no longer so largely fed by the penny dreadful and that were there ever reasons for the animadversions of a Charles Reade, the time has long since gone by.

General hospitals once shared public disfavor as witnessMiddlemarch. Then came popular appreciation of hospitals and

as time goes on they are more and more frequently called into requisition. The asylum of long ago had its horrors no doubt, but its present day successor is the refuge of the mentally afflicted. It justly commands public support and confidence and the story of its work is the story of the lives of devoted men and women inspired by exalted ideals and deep conscientiousness, working along scientific lines toward the amelioration of a trying affliction.

PSYCHIATRY AND EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.'

By R. S. WOODWORTH,

Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.

Psychology and psychiatry have grown up in relative isolation from each other. Medicine, "the mother of the sciences," was less intimately connected with the birth and early life of psychology than with the origin of most of the other sciences. The study of the mind was first undertaken in systematic form by the philosophers, and this association remained for many centuries a controlling one in the history of psychology. Even at the present day, the question whether psychology should more properly affiliate with philosophy or with the natural sciences is regarded as a fit subject for discussion, and opposing views on it are expressed by eminent psychologists. Students of other sciences are sometimes inclined to deny the right of psychology to call itself a natural science, and for two reasons. On the side of method, there is still much that is current in psychological books and discussions that appears to the student of empirical science quite strange and foreign in tone. And on the side of results, doubt is expressed whether psychology really has anything to teach, which common sense and common observation have not sufficiently acquainted us with. Psychology seems sometimes to be engaged in an "elaboration of the obvious," in stating familiar facts in obscure phraseology, or at the best in putting together familiar facts into systematic shape, without adding to the store of facts. Whatever may be the proper abstract definition of a science, in the concrete we demand that a science which we are to study shall do more than classify and label facts that we already know; we require it to teach us something new; and on the practical side we wish it to guide our action where common sense is inadequate to meet the situation. These requirements are abundantly met by the physical, the natural, and the medical sciences; in comparison with these, psychology, the

1 Annual address before the American Medico-Psychological Association, at its sixty-second annual meeting, Boston, Mass., June 12-15, 1906.