paw. 
a et 
TI 
almost unconscious and completely organised—a degree typified 
by the memory of the expert musician, the skilled artizan, 
accountant, or surgical operator. Dr. Sydney-Turner went on to 
point out how the views of Scotch and other psychologists are 
limited to a certain phase of memory. He emphasized the con- 
tention that memory can exist without localisation in time, this 
representing only the extent of consciousness in the act of 
memory and nothing more. He defined the anatomical 
mechanism of memory as the production of certain associations 
of impressions made upon the nerve cells. He found it necessary 
to add one more classification to the degrees of memory—con- 
sisting solely of reflex impressions which are fixed by long 
experience during the evolution of species. This he described as 
the bridge between individual and hereditary memory. They 
must remember that the impressions they received were not im- 
pressed on an inert substance, as in the case of a stamp on a pat 
of butter or a dieon metal. They were recorded in living matter, 
and it was only reasonable to suppose that as nutrition supplied 
new material, so this new material occupied the same place and 
had the same functions as the old. So that memory directly de- 
pended on nutrition. Turning to a novel theory, he asked was it 
going too far to say that there might be an atomic memory—that 
each portion of germplasm carried in itself a memory capable of 
entering into well-defined associations with any other portion 
when opportunity was given ? 
Coming to mental disease, the Lecturer said its onset was 
indicated not by intellectual disorder, but by changes in the 
character of the individual. An attack was rarely so sudden but 
that there had been some preliminary indication, often so slight 
as not to be recognised. Dealing with the many phases of mental 
disease, he said temporary amnesia generally made its appearance 
suddenly and ended abruptly. It embraced periods of time 
which might vary from a few minutes to several years. Epilepsy 
in its various forms gave the best examples of this ; and a dream 
gave a good illustration of the mental state of epileptics. Dreams 
of which all remembrance vanished on waking were very common ; 
others persisted in our waking moments, but were soon lost. All 
of them had at some time tried vainly to recall a dream— 
pleasant or otherwise—of which only an impression remained. 
The explanation was that the states of consciousness which form 
the dream were extremely weak. They seemed to be strong at the 
time, and were so, not of their own strength, but because no 
stronger state existed to force them into a secondary position. 
At the moment of waking the conditions changed, and 
images disappeared before perceptions, perceptions before 
a state of sustained attention, and this last before a fixed idea 
or full external consciousness. Periodic amnesia was more 
remarkable for the information it gave as to the existence of an 
