TRANSACTIONS OF TIIK SECTIONS. 671 



jects of dreaming and insanity, which have hitherto heen little 

 cultivated witli this view, he considered as capable of being pro- 

 secuted on sound philosophical principles, and as likely to yield 

 curious and important results respecting the laws of association 

 and various other processes of the mind. 



The practical purposes to which mental science may be ap- 

 plied, Dr. Abercrombie considered briefly under the following 

 heads : 1. The education of the young, and the cultivation of a 

 sound mental discipline at any period of life. In all other de- 

 partments we distinctly recognise the truth, that every art must 

 be founded upon science, or upon a correct knowledge of the 

 uniform relations and sequences of the essences to which the art 

 refers ; and it cannot be supposed that the only exception to 

 this rule should be the highest and most delicate of all human 

 pursuits, the science and the art of the mind. 2. The intel- 

 lectual and moral treatment of insanity, presenting a subject of 

 intellectual observation and experiment, in which little com- 

 paratively has been done, but which seems to promise results 

 of the highest importance and interest. 3. The prevention of 

 insanity in individuals in whom there exists the hereditary pre- 

 disposition to it. He gave his reasons for being convinced that 

 in such cases much might be done by a careful mental culture, 

 and that irremediable injury might arise from the neglect of it. 

 4. Dr. Abercrombie alluded to the importance of mental science 

 as the basis of a philosophical logic j and concluded his address 

 by some observations on the dignity and importance of medi- 

 cine, characterizing it as one of the highest pursuits to which 

 the human mind can be directed, as it combines with the cul- 

 ture of a liberal science, the daily exercise of an extensive bene- 

 volence, and thus tends at once to cultivate the highest powers 

 of the understanding and the best feelings of the heart. 



Notice of some Experiments on the connexion between the 

 Nervous System and the Irritability of Muscles in Living 

 Animals. By Dr. J. Reid. With Observations by Dr. 



Alison. 



Although physiologists are still divided in opinion as to the 

 question whether nerves furnish a condition necessary to the 

 irritation of muscles, {i.e. whether every stimulus which excites 

 a muscle to contraction acts on it through the intervention of 

 nervous filaments,) they have now very generally abandoned the 

 once prevalent theory, that the irritability of muscles is derived 

 fi-om the brain or spinal cord, i.e. that muscles are continually 

 receiving, through their nerves, from those larger masses of the 



