DISEASES: GF MEMORY: 
AN ESSAY IN THE FPOSTTIVE- PS.YCHOLOG Y. 
By TH. RIBOT, 
Author of ‘‘ Heredity,”’ etc. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY WILLIAM HUNTINGTON SMITH. 
12mo0. Cloth, $1.50. 
‘“Not merely to scientific, but to all thinking men, this volume will prove 
intensely interesting.”"-—New York Observer. 
“M. Ribot has bestowed the most painstaking attention upon his theme, 
and numerous examples of the conditions considered greatly increase the value 
and interest ot the volume.’—Philadelphia North American. 
““* Memory,’ says M. Ribot, ‘is a general function of the nervous system. It 
is based upon the faculty possessed by the nervous elements of conserving @ 
received modification and of forming associations.’ And again: ‘Memory isa 
biological fact. A rich and extensive memory is not a collection of impressions, 
but an accumulation of dynamical associations, very stable and very responsive 
to proper stimuli. . .. The brain is like a laboratory full of movement where 
thousands of operations are going on all at once. Unconscious cerebration, not 
being subject to restrictions of time, operating, so to speak, only in space, may 
act in several directions at the same moment. Consciousness is the harrow gate 
through which a very small part of all this work is able to reach us.’ M. Ribot 
thus reduces diseases of memory to law, and his treutise is of cxtraordinary 
interest.”—Philadelphia Press. 
“The general deductions reached by M. Ribot from the data here collected 
are summed up in the formulation of a law of regression, based upon the physio- 
logical principle that ‘degeneration first affects what has been most recently 
formed,’ and upon the psychological principle that ‘the complex disappears 
before the simple because it has not been repeated so often in experience.’ 
According to this law of regression, the loss of recollection in cases of general 
dissouution of the memory follows an invariable path, proceeding from recent 
events to ideas in general, then to feelings, and lastly to acts. In the best- 
known cases of partial dissolution or aphasia, forgetfulness follows the same 
course, beginning with proper names, passing to common nouns, then to ad- 
jectives and verbs, then to interjections, and lastly to gestures. M. Ribot sub- 
mits that the exactitude of his laws of regression i3 verified in those rare cases 
where progressive dissolution of the memory is followed by recovery, recollec- 
tions being observed to return in an inverse order to that in which they dis- 
appeared.”’—New York Sun. 
‘*To the general reader the work is made entertaining by many illustrations 
connected with such names as Linneus, Newton, Sir Walter Scott, Horace Ver- 
net, Gustave Doré, and many others.”"—Harrisburg Telegraph. 
‘““The whole subject is presented with a Frenchman’s vivacity of style.”’"— 
Providence Journal. 
“It is not too much to say that in no single work have so many curious 
cases been brought together aud interpreted in a scientific manner.” —Bort.n 
Hwening Traveller. 
‘Specially interesting to the general reader.’’—Chicago Interior. 
For sile by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of rri-e. 
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
