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NEW BOOKS. 267 text-books of insanity, and his concrete descriptions here will be ap- preciated by alienists at a very high value. Now, what has he to offer to the " student of psychology " ? Directly, not very much that could be readily summarised ; indirectly, a good deal. " Idiocy " he defines as " mental deficiency, or extreme stupidity, depending on malnutrition or disease of the nervous centres, occurring either before birth or before the evolution of the mental faculties in childhood ". The vagueness of this definition is only partially reduced in the subsequent exposition. The "causes" (chapter iii.) of the "malnutrition or disease" are such as these : heredity, consanguine marriages, scrofula, drunkenness, gynagogy, fright to the pregnant mother, epilepsy, neuropathic conditions generally. These terms are all highly general and for the most part vague. The statements made under these heads do not assist us much to conceive precisely how the various conditions become ethcient causes. Heredity, for instance, as indeed the author recognises, cannot well be offered as a " cause " until some coherent idea of the notions indicated and focussed by that name is first set forth. For the present, the theory of heredity is only a working hypothesis. Similarly with consanguinity and drunken- ness. For the pathology of these we must go to the researches on the insanities of alcoholism. In this chapter, as in several other parts of the book, one is disappointed to note a somewhat ill-informed antipathy to the pathological applications of Darwinism. To Dr. Ireland's numerous misappreciations, not to say sneers, the Darwinian may retort that reversion and the other notions included under Darwinism are at least an effort after a positive causation of positive phenomena, and that words like " the influence of a formative force inherent in the whole organism which suits the size of the skull to the size of the brain" (p. 102) are a mere restatement of the fact, not even a formal explanation. But to return. The classification of the forms of idiocy (chapter iv.) into twelve varieties genetous or congenital, microcephalic, hydrocephalic, eclampsic, epileptic, paralytic, traumatic, inflammatory, sclerotic, syphi- litic, cretinism, idiocy of deprivation is not altogether congruous with the definition, nor, even from the standpoint of pathology, is it free from cross-divisions ; but it is sufficient for clinical purposes. One of the best parts of the book is the account of the histo-pathology of the brain of the genetous idiot. The later observers have produced abundant evi- dence of "arrested development," nerve-cells diminished in number and abnormal in shape and issuing processes. In some specimens nerve- fibres were found similarly deficient. But after histology has done all it can be expected to do, there remains, even in the idiot nervous system, the " soft play of life," and for further illumination one turns more hope- fully towards the applications of functional analysis, after the fruitful methods of Dr. Pierre Janet of la Salpetriere. The discussion on micro- cephalic idiocy is good, but it would have been better without the useless girding at the " Darwinians ". The discussions all through are essentially physical. In the chapter on "Insanity of Children," we have somewhat more psychology, but it is not correlated systematically with the normal. There is no sustained attempt, as with Dr. Bevan Lewis, to analyse ni'-ntal complexes or apperceptions. But the objective material con- tains many good observations and hints. This chapter and the suc- ceeding chapter on sensory and mental deficiencies of idiots, suffer from the want of a vigorous separation of physical and psychical. The iter mi Methods of Educating Idiots and Imbeciles" contains many first-hand hints on method the time to begin training, the teaching of written and spoken words, the development of the senses, etc. Here functional analysis would be much to the purpose, as has been shown by Laborde's results with the microphonograph in the education of deaf-