The past year has not been notable for any special events in American psychiatry, though the usual amount of activity has existed. There has been no retrogression, and signs of a better future ahead as regards political control of charitable institutions have appeared in quarters where they are most welcome. In Illinois, for example, where for ten years past politicians have controlled the institutions, recent events have made reform in this regard a political issue, and both parties are, so to speak, tumbling over each other in their zeal to utilise it to their own advantage. The scandal that excited this was not abuse of patients or bad financial management, for neither of these has been proven, but the assessment of employés for political purposes, which has at last aroused the public conscience. The outcome can hardly fail to be good, and we may hope at least for a better state of affairs than existed even before the politicians took control. It is a slow work educating the public as to the political neutrality of hospitals for the insane, but it is being done, and the prospect is that they will before very long be as free from the abuses of partisan politics in Illinois as in any of the older states of the Union. I have spoken of this matter in previous letters, but it is right that I mention it again, for it is the chief fault of our public institutions, and the one that is more than everything else responsible for their failings.

The dinner held after the quarterly meeting was well attended, and a very happy evening was passed. Colonel Gascoyne's speech was duly appreciated after the visit to the County Asylum. He said that the Committee had great confidence in Dr. Legge, who had done so much to bring the old institution up to date; but their unhappy experience was that the County Council were always backward in granting large sums of money. Still, they had to consider that they were providing for a small town—a town which brought nothing back to the ratepayers in hard cash. No doubt that is the average unenlightened view of the County Councillor who does not serve on the Asylum Committee, but our recollection of Mickleover is that much money has been judiciously spent, and that, irrespective of humanitarian considerations, there is a recovery rate which shows that many patients are annually restored to usefulness and thereby rendered self-supporting.

At the “Congrès des Médecins Aliénistes et Neurologistes” Dr. Ernest Dupré, of Paris, gave a lecture on the self-accusing insane, studied from a medico-legal point of view. He made first an ætiological and clinical study of the idea of self-accusation; and second, a medico-legal study of the conditions created by these patients, and the duties of magistrates and of the physicians commissioned to report upon their mental condition.

At the annual meeting of the Association of German Alienists (held at Munich on April 14th and 15th, 1902), one of the first items of business was the appointment, at the instance of Professor Hoche, of Friburg, in Baden, of a statistical committee to collect information on all occurrences regarding the insane, especially suicides and crimes committed by insane persons, judicial condemnations of the insane and the weak-minded, the admission of sane persons to asylums; in short, all the incidents which go to show the defects of the lunacy law and the need for its reform. In this way it is hoped that they will be in a position to give material help to the State in the framing of new lunacy legislation.

The Italian scientific production in the domain of psychiatry has been, in 1902, rich, important, and varied; and although our young alienists spread themselves over the whole field, yet they neglect somewhat the practical side—the application of the theoretical views and conclusions to great questions, such as the hospital treatment of the insane, the overcrowding of the asylums, family care, etc. These have not yet been settled, but the younger section of alienists will finally, by their enthusiasm, find a solution.

The following is a brief notice of the Russian Literature of Nervous and Mental Diseases: