udicum has studied the chemical constitution
of the brain, and he holds that, "When the normal composition of the
brain shall be known to the uttermost item, then pathology can begin its
search for abnormal compounds or derangements of quantities." The great
diseases of the brain and spine, such as general paralysis, acute and
chronic mania, and others, the author believes will all be shown to be
connected with special chemical changes in neuroplasm, and that a
knowledge of the composition and properties of this tissue and of its
constituents will materially aid in devising modes of radical treatment
in cases in which, at present, only tentative symptomatic measures are
taken.

The whole drift of recent brain inquiry sets toward the notion that the
brain always acts as a whole, and that no part of it can be discharging
without altering the tensions of all the other parts; for an identical
feeling cannot recur, for it would have to recur in an unmodified brain,
which is an impossibility, since the structure of the brain itself is
continually growing different under the pressure of experience.

Insanity is a disease of the most highly differentiated parts of the
nervous system, in which the psychical functions, as thought, feeling,
and volition, are seriously impaired, revealing itself in a series of
mental phenomena. Institutions for the insane were at first founded for
public relief, and not to benefit the insane; but this idea has changed
in the past, and there is a growing feeling that a natural and domestic
abode, adapted to the varying severity of the different degrees of
insanity, should be the place for the insane, with some reference to
their wants and necessities, and that many patients (not all) could be
better treated in a domestic or segregate asylum than in the prison-like
structures that so often exist, and that the asylum should be as much
house-like and home-like in character as the nature of the insanity would
permit; while exercise and feeding are accounted as among the best
remedies in some cases of insanity, particularly in acute mania.

The new disease called morbus Thomsenii, of which I wrote in my report
last year, has been carefully studied by several men of eminence, and the
following conclusions have been reached as to its pathology: The weight
of the evidence seems to prove that it is of a neuropathic rather than a
myopathic nature, and that it depends on an exaggerated activity of the
nervou