566 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 173. 



end to be attained is a physical as well as a 

 mental cure, and the means, in the present 

 state of knowledge, at any rate, are mainly 

 physical means. The psychologist knows prac- 

 tically nothing about the laws which govern the 

 influence of mind on body. The principle of 

 suggestion is so obscure in its concrete work- 

 ing that the most practiced and best-informed 

 operators find it impossible to control its use or 

 to predict its results. To give countenance, 

 in this state of things, to any pretended system 

 or practice of mind-cure, Christian science, 

 spiritual healing, etc. , which leads to the neglect 

 of ordinary medical treatment, is to discredit 

 the legitimate practice of medicine and to let 

 loose an enemy dangerous to the public health. 

 ' ' Moreover, such things produce a form of hys- 

 terical subjectivism which destroys sound judg- 

 ment and dissolves the sense of reality which 

 it has taken modern science many generations 

 to build up. Science has all along had to com- 

 bat such wresting of its more obscure and unex- 

 plained facts into alliance with the ends of prac- 

 tical quackery, fraud and superstition ; and 

 psychologists need just now to be especially 

 alive to their duty of combating the forms of 

 this alliance which arise when the new results 

 of psychology are so used, whether it be to sup- 

 plement the inadequate evidence of ' thought 

 transference,' to support the claims of spiritual- 

 ism, or to justify, in the name of 'personal lib- 

 erty,' the substitution of a 'healer' for the 

 trained physician. The parent who allows his 

 child to die under the care of a ' Christian 

 science healer,' is as much a criminal from 

 neglect as the one who, going but of step fur- 

 ther in precisely the same direction, brings his 

 child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France 

 and Eussia experimenting in hypnotism on well 

 persons has bsen restricted by law to licensed 

 experts ; what, compared with that, shall we 

 think of this wholly amateurish experimenting 

 with the diseased? Let the 'healer' heal all 

 he can, but don't let him experiment, to the ex- 

 tremity of life and death, with the credulity and 

 superstition of the people who think one 

 ' doctor ' is as good as another." 



GENERAL. 



At a stated meeting of the Board of Over- 

 seers of Harvard College on April 13th it was 



voted to concur with the President and Fellows 

 in their votes appointing Alexander Agassiz, 

 LL.D., Director of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, as professor emeritus. 



MA.JOR JrRAED and Medical Director Tryon 

 have been in attendance at the Congress of Hy- 

 giene, Madrid, as delegates from the medical 

 departments of the army and navy of the 

 United States. 



The Council of the Linnsean Society, Lon- 

 don, has decided to award the Society's gold 

 medal this year to G. C. Wollich, in recogni- 

 tion of his investigation of the biological con- 

 ditions of the deep sea. 



We regret to record the death, on April 17th, 

 of Dr. Jules Marcou, the geologist and a writer 

 on a wide range of scientific subjects. Dr, 

 Marcou was born in Salius, France, seventy- 

 five years ago. 



Sir William Turner, F. K. S , professor of 

 anatomy at Edinburgh, has been elected a cor- 

 responding member of the Berlin Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Sir Samuel Wilkes has been re-elected 

 President of the Royal College of Physicians, 

 London. 



The French Minister of Public Instruction 

 has announced that the prize of the value of 

 $1,000, founded by M. Angrand for a work on 

 American archisology, has been awarded to Dr. 

 Hamy for a study of The Gallery of Amer- 

 ican Antiquities in the Museum of Trocadero. • 



The Municipal Council of Paris has author- 

 ized the erection of the monument to Charcot 

 by Falguiere on the Place de 1' hospice de la 

 Salpetriere. 



M. Felix Faure, President of the French 

 Republic, has consented to preside at the first 

 session of the International Medical Congress 

 to be held in Paris in 1900. 



Professor Frederick Starr, of the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago, has lately returned from a 

 trip to TVIexico, in which he began a study of 

 the physical types of the southern Mexicans. 

 Four tribes were visited — Otomi, Tarascan, 

 Tlaxcalan, Aztec. Careful descriptive notes, 

 measurements and photographs were made. 

 One hundred men and twenty-five women, in 

 each tribe, were examined. A series of fourteen 



