Within the last few years advances have been made in research in epilepsy which have resulted in new hope for the sufferer and physician alike.

It is just twenty years ago that I read a paper on the “Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease” before this Society. William McDougall, whose recent death we all deplore, was in the chair. What I then said about psychogenesis could be safely repeated to-day, for it has left no visible traces, or other noticeable consequences, either in text-books or in clinics. Although I hate to repeat myself, it is almost impossible to say something wholly new and different about a subject which has not changed its face in the many years that have gone by. My experience, however, has increased and some of my views have matured, but I could not say that my standpoint has had to undergo any radical change. I am therefore in the somewhat uncomfortable situation of one who, on the one hand, believes that he has a well-founded conviction, but, on the other hand, is afraid to indulge in the habit of repeating old stories. Although psychogenesis has been discussed long ago, it is still a modern, even an ultra-modern, problem.

The difficulties inherent in reducing schizophrenic thinking to the conditions of an experiment have led to a variety of attacks upon the problem. Of these, the attempts to subject thinking disorders to methods of quantification have so far yielded little of value. That this has been the case can be readily understood when one considers what heterogeneity of psychopathology is included under the term “schizophrenia”. Moreover, the thought of schizophrenics is apparently of the same order of complexity as the thought of normal persons, and its qualitative characteristics are even less well known. Under present conditions the qualitative approach seems to promise a greater and more useful field. Where tests have been employed with advantage in studying schizophrenia it has been chiefly their by-products that have deserved attention.

Though detailed knowledge of the autonomic nervous system is comparatively recent, the initial conceptions of its nature have undergone very important modifications during the time it has been known. This is mainly due to the fact that originally the anatomical discovery was taken up by investigators in various branches of clinical medicine, physiology and pharmacology, and made a special subject for detailed research. Especially did the dualism which is so remarkable a feature of the autonomic nervous system give rise to a number of theories about the relationship of the two components.