66 



NATURE 



[September 27, 19 17 



attacking is inertia, the acceptance of theoretical views 

 which in practice mean doing little or nothing, either to 

 cure patients or to add to knowledge. According to 

 the reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy, the re- 

 covery-rate of mental diseases in this country is to-day 

 no higher than it was in the seventies of last century. 

 Are we then to rest satisfied with the pessimistic appeal 

 to "hereditv," when even those who use this as an 

 excuse for their inertia admit that " we have no definite 

 knowledge of what is inherited"? 



G. Elliot Smith. 



T. H. Pear. 

 The University of Manchester, September 12. 



Through the courtesy of the editor of Nature I 

 have had the opportunity of reading the long comment 

 made bv Prof. Elliot Smith, the distinguished anatom- 

 ist, and by Mr. T. H. Pear, the equally able psycho- 

 logist, upon my review of their little volume entitled 

 "Shell-shock." As was pointed out, the authors show 

 a lack of' practical knowledge of the law as applied 

 to the insane, yet they assert that the main object of 

 the essay is to secure a change in the statutes in order 

 to provide the establishment of clinics in which, to use 

 their own words, patients "afflicted with mental dis- 

 turbances can be treated while still sane," a problem 

 with contradictory implications, but which is interpreted 

 in the introduction to be "the painful probing of the 

 public wound, the British attitude towards the treat- 

 ment of mental disorder." As has been stated in the 

 review, this was a corollary that did not seem to follow 

 from the essay, a view also shared by the Spectator (Sep- 

 tember i), which says that "the authors' assumption, 

 by the way, especially after the statements quoted from 

 the first chapter that the unfavourable termination of 

 shell-shock will be insanity, seems to us somewhat 

 gratuitous." One of the reasons given by the authors 

 for seeking a change in the law is the fact that doctors 

 in British asylums have no adequate knowledge of 

 psychiatry to enable them "to co-operate with the 

 medical schools and the teaching staffs of general hos- 

 pitals." I claim to be fairly intimate with the know- 

 ledge of mental diseases possessed by asylum physicians 

 in this country, and I agree with the two authors' 

 view of their own criticism, viz. that it is well open to 

 the charge of being '" superficial, uninformed, and even 

 spiteful" (p. 115), although it is graciously allowed 

 that "there are exceptions to this general statement." 



The first pre-requisite in a review is to ascertain the 

 author's opinions upon fundamental facts, and the 

 treatment described in this volume is based upon the 

 authors' views of the hereditary transmission of disease 

 and of the relationship between mind and matter ; and 

 because they regard the psvK:hic as the predominant 

 partner, they practically ignore the physical treatment 

 of shell-shock and dwell at length upon the psychic 

 remedies ; no adequate place is given in etiology to 

 physical weariness, fatigue, exposure, exhaustion, and 

 the various forms of toxaemia, but an almost exclusive 

 place is given to psychic trauma. The reviewer is 

 criticised for not referring at length to psychological 

 analysis and re-education, but as these are the acknow- 

 ledged methods employed by all investigators into men- 

 tal disturbances and are not original, they needed no 

 special elaboration. The reviewer has long taught in 

 his clinical class that the elementary procedure in the 

 treatment of mental cases has been along the lines 

 of the three "E's," viz. explanation, education, and 

 encouragement. In regard to dreams, all psychiatrists 

 realise the occasional help obtained from the latent 

 dream, but the key of interpretation of the manifest 

 dream depends upon the varying code vocabularies em- 

 ployed, and at the moment a certain school is inclined 

 to lay inordinate stress (in the reviewer's opinion) upon 



NO. 2500, VOL. 100] 



the interpretation of dreams, yet it is the vogue, and 

 this, like other fashions, is entitled to its day. 



The authors quote with some surprise my record of 

 33 per cent, of shell-shock cases with a neurotic family 

 history, and erroneously conclude that the remaining 67 

 per cent, furnish negative evidence of heredity. As the 

 reviewer pointed out, it would be necessary to ascertain 

 the full family history in each of the remaining cases 

 for at least three generations — which would be impos- 

 sible — before these percentages could be considered to 

 be trustworthy negative evidence ; and at best the pedi- 

 grees obtained by the clinician are of the most brief 

 and meagre kind. The authors consider it to be a 

 social stigma to belong to a neurotic family, heedless 

 of the fact that the neurotic people do the work of 

 the world, and in startling contrast to the quip of a 

 leading psychiatrist that he would rather be the off- 

 spring of a lunatic than of a churchwarden ! The 

 authors are eager to proclaim that the essay was written 

 for the medical as well as the lay reader, and the 

 reviewer accepts the correction whilst adhering to the 

 view expressed that it will be most interesting reading 

 for the latter, although rather "thin" stuff for the 

 former. 



When critics are at bay and without missiles of 

 offence, a favourite device is the ignoratio elenchi, or 

 the fallacy of the irrelevant, which then becomes a 

 welcome weapon, and the authors conclude their com- 

 ment by endeavouring to hold up the reviewer to 

 obloquy because he had ventured to suggest a locus 

 resistentiae minoris in the victims of shell-shock. 



Robert Armstrong-Jones. 



The Convolvulus Hawk-moth. 



Hitherto Sphinx convolvuli has been reckoned one. 

 of the rarer insects in Scotland. In the last fifty 

 years I know of only two authentic records of its 

 occurrence in Wigtownshire ; but this autumn it is 

 abundant. One came into my house on September 7 ; 

 a correspondent in Perth, a well-known entomologist, 

 tells me that he has examined eight specimens taken 

 in that neighbourhood, and a lady in this county, also 

 a trustworthy observer, counted Seven of these fine 

 insects hovering round tobacco plants in her garden 

 and darting their long probosces into the flowers. It 

 is difficult to imagine the cause of the appearance of 

 these moths in such numbers after many years of 

 absence. 



The immensely increased area now under potatoes 

 might be expected to result in a corresponding increase 

 in the number of death's-head moths. Unfortunately, 

 however, the habit of all the Sphingidae is to pass the 

 pupa stage buried in the ground, which, in the case 

 of the death's-head, is cultivated land, and the great 

 majority of pupae are destroyed in the course of tillage. 

 Herbert Maxwell. 



Monreith, September 22. 



Vitality of Lice. 



I HAD occasion recently to examine microscopically 

 some head-lice {Pediculus capitis) under water, and I 

 noticed a phenomenon to which I have been unable to 

 find any reference in standard works. 



On first being placed into water contained in a 

 watch-glass the lice struggled, but after a short time 

 there was no activity visible, and life appeared to be 

 extinct. After three-quarters of an hour I poured out 

 the water from the watch-glass and dried the lice. In 

 a few seconds they showed manifestations of life, and 

 within a minute resumed their normal activity, internal 

 metamorphosis and metabolism being visible. This 

 led me to further experiments, and I find that after 



