EDITORIAL. 



HUMAN AND COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY. 



It has long been held and assiduously taught that the compara- 

 tive method offers the only means of approach which is adequate 

 to prepare the student for the study of the human brain. But 

 when the beginner takes up the study of comparative neurology, 

 either by the aid of the existing manuals and memoirs or by a direct 

 appeal to the specimens themselves, so far from finding his path 

 easy, he is quite likely to find himself completely submerged in a 

 mass of detail largely uncoordinated and with only very indirect 

 application to the anatomical and physiological problems of 

 human neurology. Accordingly, comparative neurology continues 

 to be regarded as a specialty too intricate and technical for prac- 

 tical use, even pedagogically. 



Now, it is unquestionably true that the comparative method is 

 more fruitful (one may say more absolutely indispensable) in neu- 

 rology than in any other department of morphology; but it must be 

 admitted that, up to the present time, this has been more patent to 

 the investigator than to the elementary student. What is wTong ? 

 Certainly something rather fundamental, for the beginner should 

 be the first to profit by a genetic mode of approach. 



We have had for many years an enormous literature on com- 

 parative neurology, a mass of material which is increasing pro- 

 gressively more rapidly each year. And yet as a whole it is in- 

 choate and indigestible. The periodic critical reviews of this liter- 

 ature (the term digest is inappropriate to most of these amorphous 

 and distasteful compends) serve chiefly to impress the reader with 

 its bulk and inaccessibility. As a rule they leave on the mind no 

 clear impress of definite progress. There have evidently been no 

 coordinating principles running through this series of researches, 

 and mere descriptive detail has accumulated as an inert mass until 

 it threatens to block the wheels of progress of investigation. 



Dr. Barker's text-book, "The Nervous System and its Con- 

 stituent Neurones," met the difficulty in the only practicable way. 

 The nervous system was analyzed into its functional systems and 



