correct prescribing of the proper climate for particular patients requires the knowledge imparted in this book. We hope to see future editions and in them a more extensive presentation of the many varieties of the wonderful climate of California which should be topographically understood in designating residences there for certain patients. The diversity of climate along the Pacific Ocean is as great as that along the Mediteranean and the Riviera, Malta and Venice have there their counterparts.

AMERICAN MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION held its fifty-seventh annual meeting at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 11 to 14. The annual address was delivered by Warren P. Lombard, Professor of Physiology in the University of Michigan, and was followed by a number of interesting papers. The meeting was, on the whole, a successful affair.

HEREDITY vs. ENVIRONMENT in the evolution of the race and the Jukes family are up again in the minds of Dr. Edmond Andrews and of Dr. L. L. Skelton.

Dr. Andrews last May came to the defense of the elder Jukes as not the only sinner on the soil and Dr. Skelton coincides with him. One rises from Dr. Andrews' paper and Dr. Skelton's discussion of it with the conviction that there is not the skel'ton of a chance for the race without preferential mating in the line of higher organic evolution.

Dr. Skelton correctly states that "preferential mating on the part of those of good stock is to be credited with the advancement of the race to its present high condition; and rational selection, determined by knowledge of the way advancement may be obtained, will result in the production of individuals of most perfect and symmetrical parts.

"The Jukes are a conspicuous example of how breeding should not be done. They are an instance of hereditary addition of common characteristics. They illustrate preferential mating. They illustrate the course to spontaneous eure, and obliteration of degenerative forces. They illustrate

the small part played by environment in the production of types of individuals. They are an illustration of criminal heredity."

What the world wants now for its advancement is physiological matrimonial mating leaving out the neuropaths and other pathologics from the pale of conjugal union.

HEDONAL. In the present issue appears an interesting article on Hedonal, and we believe it well worthy of the space we have given it. A drug which has been investigated and commended by such men as Krafft-Ebing, Eulenberg, Mendel, Obersteiner and Riegel is certainly deserving of the attention of neurologists. The article is in no sense a write-up, but a critical study, giving an unbiased view of the therapeutic indications of a new hypnotic.

AMERICAN MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. -Office of the Secretary.-Flint, Mich., Sept. 30, 1901.Dear Doctor: It has been learned that the dates (June 10 to 13) for the Montreal meeting will conflict with those for the meeting of the American Medical Association at Saratoga. The Council has therefore determined upon a change of dates for the American Medico-Psychological Association to the third week in June, and the undersigned, acting under instructions from the Council, have engaged accommodations for the Association at the Windsor hotel, June 17, 18, 19 and 20, 1902. Very truly yours,

T. J. W. BURGESS, Chairman Committee of Arrangements.

C. B. BURR, Secretary.

RUDOLPH VIRCHOW'S PHOTO comes to us with the compliments of Schering & Glatz of New York. The picture is a good likeness of our distinguished friend. We accept it and place it in our studio with pleasure.

The

THE PERIL OF POLITICAL PARANOIA is with us and ordinary statuary freedom is no safeguard against it. morbidly egotistical and murderous political paranoiac, like envy and death, loves usually a shining and prominenț

mark for his victim. That fancied divinity which doth hedge about a king or president, has no place in paranoiac mind. The delusive divine protection is more often with the paranoiac. A political paranoiac armed with a weapon of death and an imaginary divine or self-issued commission to right the world's political wrongs is a dangerous creature for rulers to closely encounter. Political paranoia should be reckoned with in advance rather than after its crimes. An isolated anarchist utopia safe in some desert isle would be the best remedy. When transported anarchists might sing in happy chorus and the civilized world join in

"Good patriots we, for be it understood,

We left our country, for our country's good,"

and Uncle Sam should speed their going.

POLITICAL PARANOIACS prompted to magnicide or regicide, prompted to murder by suggestion of stronger minds if not directed to do it by lot, are fatal contingences to be guarded against in the public functions of government. They menace the best of presidents as well as princes, kings and emperors. Wisdom in the counsels and conduct of the functions of state will take account of them and of their danger. The next blow at an American Chief Executive may not come by pistol or knife but by method more insidious. Let our esteemed Chief Executive be on his guard and not confide too much, with extended hand, to the cranks who compass the killing of men of exalted station.

There are yet other men like the lately executed assassin who would give their egotistic lives for a chance at magnicide that their names might be coupled in death with some one whom the world called great.

A newspaper code of speech ethics, enacted into a statute, with appropriate penalties for defaming the name or character of our President through the press would be a timely, just and prudent enactment. The President of the United States is the people's representative and his charac

ter and good name as well as his person should be protected from personal assault of either newspaper or politician.

THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL PATHOLOGY vol. 1, number 3, published in New York, comes to us enriched by four leading articles, the first by Jul. Morel in The Resident Criminal, the second on Regicide, by E. Regis, the third on Acute Delirium, by Semidalow and V. V. Wiedingammen and the fourth by its able editor, Dr. Robinovitch on the State Duty in Preventing Birth of Crime, and with an entertaining and valuable array of editorials, translations, abstracts and reviews.

WALDEYER ON AMERICA.-Prof. William Waldeyer, lately of the university of Berlin, returned home from the bi-centennial celebration at Yale. When asked for his views on the United States, said: "America is too colossal subject to be interviewed about as the result of a mere fortnight's breathing of its virilizing air."

IN MEMORIAM: DR. JOHN CURWEN. Dr. John Curwen, born at Walnut Hill, near Philadelphia, September 20, 1821, died July 2, 1901. He graduated at Yale in 1841. He received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1844 from the University of Pennsylvania. In his early professional life he was assistant physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane to Dr. Kirkbride. He resigned his office in 1849 and was appointed physician and superintendent to the State Lunatic Asylum at Harrisburg, February 11, 1851. He resigned this position in 1881 to accept the superintendency of the Warren State Hospital for the Insane, which office he held acceptably till June 15, 1901.

He was one of the commissioners to locate and construct the Danville State Hospital, and later for the Warren State Hospital to locate and erect an asylum. Dr. Curwen was during all of his professional life engaged in the care and treatment of the insane for a period of fifty-seven

years and was influential in shaping legislative and public sentiment in the interest of the insane of his state.

Dr. Curwen was an honorary member of the British Medico-Psychological Association, and also member of the American Philosophical Association, the American Medical Association, the State Medical Society of Pennsylvania, president of his own State Society in 1869, and trustee of La Fayette College in 1865, an acknowledged expert in psychiatry and renowned humanitarian.

He had been for a third of a century Secretary of the American Medico-Psychological Society and was once president of that body. He was a frequent and forceful contributor to this journal and to the Journal of Insanity. He was one of the earliest collaborators and subscribers of the ALIENIST AND NEUROLOGIST. His views were vigorous and sound in matters of practical psychiatry. He was sincere, genial and devoted in his friendship and enthusiastic and true in his chosen work. In his life was personified Ray's faithful picture of the good superintendent, the best ideals of the true psychiater. He was a good physician, a worthy friend and an honest man. His life was faithful and his end was peace. To his surviving sister and daughter we offer the tender and sympathetic condolence of one who, in youth, enjoyed his counsel and felt the thrilling, helpful touch of his now vanished hand. The voice that is now stilled was never silent when the duties of his calling or any demand of humanity within the radius of its influence claimed of it to speak. John Curwen was a physician among physicians and a man among men.

DR. SILAS MCDONALD, as we learn from the Medical Herald, died at 9:30 o'clock Friday morning, November 8, at the family residence, St. Joseph, Mo., of catarrhal pneumonia. Dr. McDonald was born in Washington county, Ky., April 18, 1812, and consequently was eighty-nine years, 6 months and 19 days old at his death. He chose the practice of medicine as his profession, attended his first course of lectures at the Transylvania University in 1834, removed to Missouri in 1836, and the following year entered