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Rh distribution; and along with them are usually found other spots, usually on the opposite side of the body, pressure upon which awakes the patient. We have here an undoubted argument in favor of the view according to which attacks of sleep in certain hystero-epileptics are mere modifications of the typical convulsive and delirious seizure.

The researches of Althaus have led him to formulate the axiom that "nervous diseases are not, as is commonly asserted, more frequent, but on the contrary less numerous, in large towns than in the country, and it is probable that their occurrence is powerfully influenced by race." He adduces a table in which the percentages of deaths from nervous diseases (as recorded in the Registrar-General's returns) for London, the southwestern counties, and Wales are 10·66, 11·20, 15·38, respectively. He has found that "Wales exceeds all English counties so strikingly in this respect that neither density of population, nor climate, nor difference of occupation will account for that circumstance." He is therefore inclined to attribute this difference to another circumstance, viz., the difference of race—a conclusion that is borne out in a certain measure by the undoubted greater prevalence of hysteroid symptoms among the Latin, and perhaps also the Slav and other Eastern races, as compared with those of Germanic origin.

It is probably in considerations of this nature that we shall find an answer to the question often asked in this country by those who do not roundly attribute all or most of the symptoms of hystero-epilepsy to shamming or exaggeration, "How is it that such cases never come to our notice?" Is it not because of those racial differences which run deep in the nervous constitution of individuals? At any rate the presence of "the Soho sleeper" among us will, let us hope, modify the somewhat insular skepticism still lurking among medical men on this side of the Channel.

The subject of prolonged sleep and trance is intimately connected with that of apparent death. Though there is no doubt that most of the dreadful tales concerning the premature burial of persons supposed to be dead have no foundation, save in the imagination of the public, we have ample proof of the possibility of such mistakes occurring in the absence of a careful examination of the body. Every one has heard of the fatal tragedy in which the greatest anatomist of his time, Vesalius, played such an unfortunate part. Being called upon, during his stay in Spain, to perform the autopsy of a patient who had died suddenly, he proceeded to open the body, when, to the horror of the bystanders, at the second sweep of the knife unmistakable signs of life were given!

It is difficult to imagine how in the case of patients subject to cataleptic seizures, and known by their friends to be so, periods of suspended animation, however protracted, could ever lead to premature