_January 27._--The electrical treatment has been relinquished. He has also taken one douche at a hydrotherapeutic establishment, but expressed his dissatisfaction and vowed never to return. He then departed to undergo a "water cure" in the country, since when he has vanished entirely from observation. More than once we have had occasion to notice that the degree and extent of such neck and arm convulsions as are provoked or exaggerated by the act of writing vary with the level at which the patient has to write. With elevation of the arm the movements are weak and easily mastered; conversely, lowering of the arm augments them in a marked manner. We repeat, however, that in all these cases the handwriting itself is not interfered with. It is quite otherwise with writers' cramp, the so-called "graphospasm" or "mogigraphia." This condition is purely and exclusively a disorder of the function of writing, depending for its exhibition on the exercise of this function, else is its existence concealed. For this reason it ought to be differentiated from the tics, although, by its development in obvious neuropathic or psychopathic subjects, it is closely linked to them. One of Oppenheim's cases was a lady whose husband suffered from paralysis agitans; in her case, fear of becoming affected with the same disease led to the development of writers' cramp. Sometimes it occurs in families, and it may be a concomitant of genuine tics. In spite of the affinity between these two sorts of functional disturbance, we do not feel it incumbent on us to enter on a detailed study of scriveners' palsy in this place. TICS OF THE LOWER EXTREMITIES--WALKING AND LEAPING TICS Tics of the lower limbs are infrequent, and seldom isolated. One of the most habitual of these is the "kicking tic." Sometimes one leg knocks against the other, as in O.'s case, or it is kicked out in front, or to the side, or even backwards, after the manner of a horse. Tonic convulsions of the leg muscles have been observed to give rise to phenomena analogous to tonic tics. Tonic contractions restricted to a particular muscle, or group of muscles, and accompanied by relaxation of the antagonists, have been christened by Ehret[103] "habit contractures" and "habit paralyses." Their characteristic feature is the fact of the contracture being voluntary in origin. For instance, an individual wounds the inner margin of his foot, and learns to escape the pain by throwing his weight on the outer side. Voluntary contraction of the adductors of the foot passes gradually into an involuntary stage, giving place to spasmodic contraction, and the simultaneous inactivity of the antagonists--in this case the peronei--leads ultimately to their atrophy.