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Rh , to lively emotions, and sudden frights. Frequently, as in the case of the patient who has been referred to so often, the origin of the disease entirely escapes us.

While suitable medical remedies are no doubt proper in their place, the principal part in the treatment should be given to moral remedies. It is, of course, useless to reason with the patient, or to try to show him how baseless his delusion is; but his attention should be engaged and his mind diverted from the set ideas that tyrannize over it, and a wisely arranged intellectual gymnastics should be prescribed. Physical exercise may also be made of service in turning to the profit of the body a little of the exaggerated activity that torments the mind. A final remedy is sequestration in a sanitary institute. It need not be applied to all patients, but may evidently be of use in cases where the surroundings, the habits of life, and the occupations to which the subject has been devoted, seem to have participated to any extent in the explosion of the psychical troubles.



R. PRESIDENT, The change in the Constitution effected at our last meeting, extending the scope of the Association and dividing it into nine sections, each with a vice-president, whose duty it is to deliver an address to the section over which he presides, has relieved the retiring President from attempting a general review of the progress of science during the past year.

I turn, therefore, to a more special subject, and invite your attention this evening to a sketch of the progress of American mineralogy, since the commencement of this century, with particular reference to the labors of some of the early workers in the science on this continent.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, while great activity existed and rapid advance was made in the study of chemistry and mineralogy in Europe, almost nothing was accomplished in this new country. It is true that students in other departments of science, especially members of the medical profession, in the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, attempted to arouse an interest in mineralogy, believing that the diffusion of a knowledge of this science would be of the utmost importance in the material development of the 