REVIEWS 567 



vast majority of neurologists and psychiatrists who have investigated this matter. 

 Dr. Bolton might with advantage have referred to the researches of Forster 

 and Tomasczewski ; these observers have removed small cylinders of brain during 

 life by the Neisser-Pollak puncture method, and even within such a limited amount 

 of material have found the living spirochete in 40 per cent, of sixty cases. 



The author takes no account of the fact that a positive Wasserman reaction 

 of the cerebro-spinal fluid is found by reliable observers in go to 98 per cent. 

 His opinion that " dementia paralytica is a branch of mental disease, and that 

 the subjects of this form of mental disease would, if they had not been syphilised, 

 have suffered from one or the other of the types of primarily neuronic dementia," 

 is not likely to be accepted until he brings forward much more weighty and 

 conclusive evidence than is contained in this work. We are surprised to find 

 no mention made of the researches of Alzheimer, nor of the Stabchenzellen, which 

 this very reliable observer regards as characteristic of the histology of general 

 paralysis. The reader may be ignorant of the pathology of this disease, but it 

 is questionable whether he will be enlightened by the simile in the following 

 statement : that he had prepared silver chrome preparations which prove that 

 the larger neurones lying in the interspaces " resemble halfpennies lying in a 

 two-inch wire mesh more than anything else " ; neither can the deduction that 

 follows be readily comprehended : " // must therefore be accepted that the most 

 characteristic and the obviously syphilitic member of the trinity of cortical changes 

 can exist in gross for?n in the absence of dementia paralytica? He refers, how- 

 ever, in this passage to the existence of the plasma cells. Dr. Bolton should 

 study the literature before stating that " This is important and positive histological 

 evidence in favour of my arguments that dementia paralytica is mental disease — 

 syphilis of the encephalon— and not the latter alone." Plasma cells in the peri- 

 vascular sheaths are evidence of chronic irritation of toxins invading the lymphatic 

 system of the brain, and that they are found so constantly in cases of general 

 paralysis is because the toxins of spirochetal colonisation exist just the same 

 as in sleeping sickness, which is dependent upon the trypanosome invasion of 

 the central nervous system. 



The chief and considerable merit of this book is the original work and 

 deductions regarding the histology of the cortex cerebri and its evolution in 

 structure and function in their application to Amentia and Dementia. It hardly 

 fulfils the functions of a text-book on the Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology of 

 the brain, nor will it serve as a text-book on Psychiatry ; nevertheless Dr. Bolton's 

 position as an original investigator and alienist physician should make his work 

 widely read and appreciated by all who are interested in the subject of the 

 Brain in Health and Disease. 



F. W. MOTT. 



Nature and Nurture in Mental Development. By F. W. Mott, M.D., 

 F.R.S., F.R.C.P., LL.D. Edin. [Pp. xii+151 with diagrams.] (London: 

 John Murray, 191 4. Price 2>s. 6d. net.) 



The excellent series of Chadwick Lectures by Dr. F. W. Mott, F.R.S., which 

 originally appeared in the October and January numbers of this Journal (1913 

 and 1914 respectively), have now been republished in an expanded form in this 

 small book, which will be welcome to all teachers at schools and to educational 

 departments throughout the world. The work is quite intelligible to any educated 

 person, and gives a fairly complete review of the subject, while it also contains 

 many original observations and interesting quotations. Dr. Mott is such an 



