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disappointments unless the public will give a larger measureof support to your efforts and those of the ladies and

gentlemen who give the fund such invaluable voluntaryassistance....... To those who know as I do the homeconditions of many of our humbler citizens in Central, East,and South London the possibility of any reduction in

the number of children who will have a chance of this

happy and health-giving fortnight in the country this

year can only be contemplated with dismay and profoundregret." Sir William Collins, who is chairman of the

education committee of the London County Council as

well as surgeon to two well-known charities, has had

exceptional opportunities for knowing the conditions underwhich the poor of London live and we trust that his

testimony as to the needs of some of London’s little oneswill have the effect of bringing to the coffers of the

Children’s Country Holidays Fund the money which is so

urgently needed. Subscriptions may be sent to the officesof the fund, 18, Buckingham-street, Strand, London, W.C.

PRIZE-GIVING AT ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL.

Dr. W. B. Cheadle presided over the distribution of prizesto the successful students of St. Mary’s Hospital MedicalSchool on June 29th. The ceremony was held in the Medical

School of St. Mary’s Hospital and the prizes were given awayby the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone,who, addressing himself to the students, observed that

in no profession more than the medical was it essential

to maintain the highest ideal of honour, and, more-

over, there was no profession which brought out more

the good qualities of a man. He particularly emphasised theimportance of concentrating the mind upon the particularcase presented for consideration and he reminded his hearersthat in the practice of medicine there was scope for

individual thought and independent research. Passing on tothe discussion of the use and abuse of athletic sports he gaveit as his opinion that sports ought not to be made the objectof life but should be viewed as means whereby a man’s life-work could be better done.

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THE MYSTIC ELEMENT IN MEDICINE.

Professor F. Dercum of Jefferson Medical College, Phila-

delphia, in an interesting address delivered in May last at thetwentieth anniversary of the foundation of the PhiladelphiaNeurological Society, dealt with the subject of mysticism inmedicine. Since time immemorial superstition and magichave played a r6le in the treatment of disease. 4000 years

ago the Egyptian healers subjected their patients to

mysterious " passes " and manipulations, after which the

patients were enveloped in the skins of sacred animals

and conveyed to holy places where the treatment mightbe completed. The practice of uttering words and phrasesin a hysterical delirium by healers supposed temporarilyto be possessed

" of a god or spirit is also of veryancient date. The priestesses of Delphi and of other

Greek temples did so in ancient times and the Shamansof Siberia and the priests of many savage and barbaroustribes still practise rites in which they pass into somnam-bulistic and hysterical states and give utterance to

words which are regarded by the people as inspired by thegod or spirit invoked, or do extraordinary deeds to cnre

disease. Thus in Siberia, says Professor Dercum, the priest,after his invocations, will " suck the part of the body of thepatient which aches the most and finally take out of hismouth either a thorn, an insect, a stone, or some other

object, which he then asserts to have been the cause of thepain." Rubbing and massage have been used for centuriesbut the ancients combined them with movements and passeswhich were believed to have a magic virtue. CæliusAurelianus prescribed friction by the hand for the cure of

pleurisy and gave instructions for the manipulation of theinsane and of epileptics. It is said that " when the manipu-lations were carried to excess the patients fell into a

[hypnotic] lethargic sleep." Agrippa in the sixteenth

century and the famous Paracelsus and van Helmontwere among the earlier advocates of the doctrine

of an animal magnetism. Magnets were used to heal

illnesses, the theory of animal magnetism and the heal-ing of the sick by the aid of magnets being constituentsof the popular belief of the Middle Ages. Metals were also

regarded by many as being possessed of mysterious virtuesin the treatment of disease, an old belief traceable throughPaul of Ægina and Galen to Aristotle. Lenoble in 1754 andHall in 1774 are said to have effected wonderful cures bymagnets, the theory of these operators being a specialdevelopment of the popular belief to the effect that the

heavenly spheres exercised a magnetic influence over humanbodies and that the correct use of magnets was the onlymeans of rectifying those ailments which arise from dis-turbance of the animal magnetism of the body. Many ofthese beliefs and practices, says Professor Dercum, were theprelude to the methods developed by Mesmer during thecentury following. While mesmerism was at its height threeschools of animal magnetism sprang up. The first, thatto which Mesmer himself belonged, asserted that the effectsobtained were due to physical agencies alone. Themeans employed were friction, touches, passes, and grasp-ing, the resulting phenomena being explained on the theoryof a magnetic fluid or ether passing from the magnetiser tohis subject or vice versd. The school of Barbarin maintainedthat faith was the principal factor required, in consequenceof which they were known as spiritualists. To their mindsall physical means were merely accessories. The third

school, that of the Marquis de Puysegur, occupied a middleposition, explaining the results obtained by physical or

psychical means as the case required. The adoptionof hypnosis and its scientific study by the schools of Parisand Nancy three decades ago are regarded by ProfessorDercum as the beginning of the scientific era, the work of

Charcot, Richer, Liebault, and Bernheim having gone far toexplain the nature (physiological process) of hypnotism andits relationship especially to the great neurosis hysteria.More than all others these two schools have succeeded, heconsiders, in placing the practice of hypnotism on a scientific

,

basis. The special development of metallo-therapy, how-

ever, Professor Dercum regards as having proved nothingbeyond the fact that " suggestion " plays the most importantpart and that the metals do not act by producing " emanat-ions " or other subtle effects comparable with invisibleradiations.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THE "REST" TREATMENT.

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia has published inthe Journal of Servoits and Mental Disease for June

an interesting account of the mode in which he was

led to evolve the method of treatment of neurastheniaand other nervous disorders by rest. Very often itis found that discoveries made through accident proveto be of value and this, says Dr. Mitchell, was the

way his cliscovery was made. During the Civil Warbetween the North and South States " a great many cases ofwhat we called acute exhaustion fell into the hands of Dr,

M-, Dr. K--, and myself. These were men who, beingtired by much marching, gave out suddenly at the end of someunusual exertion and remained for weeks, perhaps months, ina pitiable state of what we should call to-day neurasthenia."In these cases occurring in the war the neurasthenia, says Dr.Mitchell, came on with strange abruptness. It was moremarked in intensity and also more certainly curable thanare most of the graver male cases of to-day." Complete