The student who utilizes this volume cannot but emerge from his study a more thoughtful person than he was at the period of his entry. He will have seen that clinical rules of thumb cannot be followed to advantage, and that, on the contrary, surprises are to be expected and prepared for. Let the recognition of this fact, if it seems to increase the difficulties in the way of diagnosis, not lead to pessimism in that respect, or to hopelessness in therapeutics. On the contrary the writers’ bias is towards the worth-whileness of clinical efforts and an increased respect for accuracy and thoroughness in the utilization of modern methods of research. The chance is indeed held open that even the gaunt spectre of “General Paresis” may prove to be less terrible than it seems, and for this hope good grounds are given. It is in this way made clear, on the strength of anatomical evidence of much interest, that even if in the treatment of a given patient, the time arrives when a fatal or unfavorable result seems manifestly foreshadowed, it may be still worth while to renew the treatment with fresh zeal, for the sake of combatting some symptom or exacerbation, for which a locally fresh process furnishes the cause. Another noteworthy principle here emphasized and illustrated is that the relationship between “functional” (hysterical, neurasthenic, migrainoid) symptoms and the signs (or symptoms) of organic processes is clinically important and worthy of much further study. This is a matter which, in a general sense, has interested me for many years. Above and over the “organic” hovers always the “functional,” as representing the first indication of the marvelous tendency to repair, or substitution, for which the resources of nature are so vast. Yet this functional tendency also has its laws, of which, in their turn, the organic processes display the action in quasi diagrammatic form. Hysteria, neurasthenia, migraine, etc., do not arise _de novo_ in each case, but conform to typical, though not rigid, formulas, susceptible of description. I have recently had the opportunity to study in detail an analogous series of transitions between the movements (and emotions) indicative of apparently purposeless myoclonic movements (on an epileptoid basis) and the movements of surprise, engrossment, purposeful effort, the excitement and joy by which the former were excited and into which they shaded over. Taken altogether, this book represents work and thought in which, for amount and kind, the neurologists of Boston may take just pride. JAMES J. PUTNAM. ST. HUBERT’S, KEENE VALLEY, NEW YORK. _August, 1917._ Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.