And the same may be said with reference to statistics as commonly tabulated. These having reference but to the surface showings, the after-the-mischief-is-done results, and so often obtained under misleading constraint or other unfavorable influences, are scarcely capable of even hinting the significance of real conditions, and especially of tendencies that have existed antecedent to the individual breakdown. For instance, such statistics as those compiled by Dr. Wise (see State Hospitals Bulletin, vol. i, page 157), when subjected to the requirements of an accurate causative consideration, easily lend themselves to the criticism made by the author himself, who says, "The careful inquirer can receive no reliable information from the study of insane hospital statistics except the bare fact of the number of insane persons under care and treatment." Yet a glance at his tables shows that forty-two per cent of the cases admitted to the New York State hospitals for the year ending September 30, 1895, are to be noted as suffering from constitutional degeneracies, and so presumably to be incurable. The more than twenty per cent of cases of insanity reported to have had hereditary antecedents, although undoubtedly as accurate as possible under the circumstances, merely chronicle the more obvious matters, and must necessarily have left out of account all the less obvious but in many respects even more important ones. And so with all the other series thus far published. They are good as indicating where we are to look for some of the steps toward insanity, but for the most part they are quite inadequate for a basis of comprehensive discussion or anything like accurate conclusion.