president's address. 25 



radium salts have been allowed to mix in minute quantities with such 

 fluids, are wanting in precision and detail, but the microscopic particles 

 which appear in the circumstances described seem to be of a nature 

 identical with the minute bodies well known to microscopists and recog- 

 nised as crystals modified by a colloid medium. They have been described 

 by Rainey, Harting, and Ord, on different occasions, many years ago. 

 They are not devoid of interest, l)ut cannot be considered as having any 

 new bearing on the origin of living matter. 



Psychology. — I have given a special heading to this subject because 

 its emergence as a delinite line of experimental research seems to me one 

 of the most important features in the progress of science in the past 

 quarter of a century. Thirty-five years ago we were all delighted by 

 Fechner's psycho- physical law, and at Leipzig I, with others of my day, 

 studied it experimentally in the physiological laboratory of that great 

 teacher, Carl Ludwig. The physiological methods of measurement 

 (which are the physical ones) have been more and more widely, and with 

 guiding intelligence and ingenuity, applied since those days to the study 

 of the activities of the complex organs of the nervous system which are 

 concerned with 'mind ' or psychic phenomena. Whilst some enthusiasts 

 have been eagerly collecting ghost stories and records of human illusion 

 and fancy, the serious experimental investigation of the human mind, and 

 its foi'erunner the animal mind, has been quietly but steadily proceeding 

 in truly scientific channels. The science is still in an early phase — that 

 of the collection of accurate observations and measurements — awaiting 

 the de^•elopment of great guiding hypotheses and theories. But much 

 has been done, and it is a matter of gratification to Oxford men that 

 through the liberality of the distinguished electrician, Mr Henry Wilde, 

 F.R.S., a lectureship of Experimental Psychology has been founded in the 

 University of Oxford, where the older studies of Mental and Moral 

 Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics have so strong a hold, and have so 

 well prepared the ground for the new experimental development. The 

 German investigators W. Wundt, G. E. Miiller, C. Stumpf, Ebbinghaus, 

 and Munsterberg have been prominent in introducing laboratory methods, 

 and have determined such matters as the elementary laws of association 

 and memory, and the perceptions of musical tones and their relations. 

 The work of Goldschneider on ' the muscular sense,' of von Frey on the 

 cutaneous sensations, are further examples of what is being done. 



The difficult and extremely important line of investigation, first 

 scientifically treated by Braid under the name ' Hypnotism,' has been 

 greatly developed by the French school, especially by Charcot. The 

 experimental investigation of ' suggestion,' and the pathology of dual con- 

 sciousness and such exceptional conditions of the mind, has been greatly 

 advanced by French observers. 



The older work of Ferrier and Hitzig on the functions of the parts of 

 the brain has been carried further by Goltz and Munk in Germany, and 

 by Schafer, Horsley, and Sherrington in England. 



