FATIGUE. 489 



Hei-e possibly the primary evil is a constitutional defect of the energies 

 relatively to the normal resistances. Such relative defect is apt to be 

 brought to light by any course of life that makes considerable demands 

 on the nervous energies, and shows itself in the failure to maintain the 

 unitary functioning of all the many neural systems and sub-systems that 

 make up the brain. The systems tend to become functionally separated from 

 one another, because the supply of energy is insufficient to overcome the 

 resistances of the highest levels of the brain and to keep open the con- 

 necting channels ; hence each neural system tends to function inde- 

 pendently of the rest, and each, being removed from the reciprocal 

 control and inhibition normally exerted by all the rest, may function in 

 excess, or, on the other hand, may lie dormant. Hence we get the 

 curious pictures of overactions combined with partial defects of action, 

 of hyperaesthesia with anaesthesia, of local contracture and paralysis, of 

 incapacity for effort and violent convulsions, of fixed ideas and of easily 

 changed convictions, of extreme suggestibility and extreme obstinacy. 

 And in extreme cases we get the falling asunder of the neural basis 

 of unitary personality into two or more functional systems, each of which 

 becomes more or less fixed in its isolation ; and we thus get the most 

 strange of all the functional disorders — the cases of divided or multiple 

 personality. 



Body Metabolism in Cancer. — Report of the Committee, consisting of 

 Professor C. S. Sherrington (Chairman) and Dr. S. M. Copeman 

 (Secretary). (Drawn up by the Secretary.) 



The report now submitted has reference to a continuation of work 

 on the chemical constitution of the gastric secretion in cancer, of which 

 a preliminary account was communicated to this Section at the last 

 annual meeting. 



Professor Benjamin Moore and his colleagues had published in the 

 ' Proceedings of the Royal Society ' the account of an investigation 

 dealing with this question in the human subject, in which they set out 

 reasons for their conclusion that the amount of free HCl in the gastric 

 secretion of patients suffering from cancer, in situations other than the 

 stomach, was invariably diminished or might even be absent altogether. 



In view of the results obtained by these observers it was decided, 

 thanks to the cordial co-operation of Dr. Bashford, the Director of the 

 Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories, to make use of the large 

 amount of material at the disposal of that fund for the purpose of deter- 

 mining, with other constituents, the relative amount of physiologically 

 active HCl in the stomach contents of mice suffering from transplanted 

 and from ' spontaneous ' cancer ; controlling the results by examination 

 of normal mice under identical conditions of feeding and period of 

 digestion. 



The experiments of which this report forms a brief summary were 

 commenced in December 1905, and have been continued up to the end 

 of June in the present year. A detailed account of the work will appear 

 in the forthcoming number of the ' Proceedings of the Royal Society.' 



It should be premised that under the term ' pliysiologically active 



