xlviii Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



anomalies which may be either atavistic or simply indicative of an arrest 

 of development, or in other words, the more numerous are the signs of 

 degeneration. 



Mingazzini, then, arrives by this more direct route at the same 

 conclusion as Fere in his recent work on the Neuropathic Family, that 

 while degenerative stigmata exist and are of great value to the neurolo- 

 gist and the criminologist, yet it is and will forever remain impossible 

 to define a " criminal type" as a fixed morphological entity. 



Not the least valuable part of the work is the bibliography ap- 

 pended to each of the chapters. These are full, though by no means 

 complete, the American literature having been most neglected. Such 

 a book is of the greatest value, not merely, perhaps not chiefly, for the 

 new facts which it contains, though these are by no means inconsider- 

 able, but for the illumination which it throws over the entire field, re- 

 veahng the points both of strength and of weakness and pointing the 

 way for coming investigators. 



c. J. H. 



Catalepsy.^ 



This study is confined to catalepsy as observed in mental disease. 

 The author considers that here it has only the value of a symptom and 

 that it may develop in almost all mental diseases. The cataleptic states 

 which appear in the course of the psychoses are characterized by the 

 slowness of their invasion and termination and by their duration. 

 Their progress is more often remittent than intermittent. They are 

 usually incomplete, partial. They coexist with an augmentation of 

 the muscular tension and an enfeeblement of voluntary psycho-motor 

 activity. They appear to be due in general to disturbances of percep- 

 tion which abolish the sensation of fatigue or render it confused and 

 which determine the persistence of the motor images transmitted, with 

 their corresponding excitations. In the great majority of cases hys- 

 teria takes no part in the production of the cataleptic states observed 

 in mental diseases. When it coexists with a psychosis it may produce 

 in the course of the latter catalepsy of the hysterical type. Cataleptic 

 phenomena may be simulated by the insane who are dominated by a 

 delerious idea or an hallucination ; by individuals who are not insane 

 who wish to exempt themselves from some social burden. In these 

 cases the myographic curve and the curves of the pulse and the respi- 

 ration can unveil the deception. c. j. h. 



1 Le Maitrk, Paul. Contribution k I'^tude des Etats Cataleptiques dans 

 les Maladies Mentales. Fart's, G. Steinheil, 1895, PP- 96> 2 plates. 



