in any spirit of criticism but for the purpose of pointing out the necessity of utilizing such facts as may be available. There is nothing new about this suggestion. It was strenuously advocated by Louis, the founder of one of the greatest French schools of medicine many years ago. This was referred to by his pupil and admirer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his farewell address to the Harvard Medical School in 1882 in the following words: "The 'numerical system,' of which Louis was the greatest advocate, if not the absolute originator, was an attempt to substitute series of carefully recorded facts, rigidly counted and closely compared, for those never-ending records of vague, unverifiable conclusions with which the classics of the healing art were overloaded. The history of practical medicine had been like the story of Danaides. 'Experience' had been, from time immemorial, pouring its flowing treasures into buckets full of holes." A determined effort has been made by the American Psychiatric Association to correlate the activities of the various state hospitals for mental diseases and utilize the great wealth of clinical material within the walls of these institutions for such studies as may promote the advancement of psychiatry. With this end in view a committee was appointed at the annual meeting at Niagara Falls in 1913 to formulate a plan for the compilation of statistical data relating to mental diseases. The conclusions reached by this committee are illustrated by the following quotation from their report in 1917: "That the statistical data annually compiled by the various institutions for the insane throughout the country should be uniform in plan and scope is no longer open to question. The lack of such uniformity makes it absolutely impossible at the present time to collect comparative statistics concerning mental diseases in different states and countries, and extremely difficult to secure comparative data relative to movement of patients, administration and cost of maintenance and additions. The importance and need of some system whereby uniformity in reports would be secured have been repeatedly emphasized by officers and members of this Association, by statisticians of the United States Census Bureau, by editors of psychiatric journals, and by administrative officials in various states. We should know accurately the forms of mental disease occurring in all parts of the country; we should know the movement of patients in every hospital for the insane; we should know the cost of maintenance of patients and the amounts spent for additions and improvements in every state hospital; we should be able to compile annually complete data concerning these and other matters, and compute rates and draw comparisons therefrom. Such data would serve as the basis for constructive work in raising the standard of care of the insane, as a guide for preventive effort, and as an aid to the progress of psychiatry."