Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/117

Rh here is that devoted to psychology, a science intermediate, in its present state of development, between the exact sciences and those subjects in which individual opinions are more prominent than ascertained facts. About three hundred students of psychology attended the fourth international congress, which met in seven sections, namely: (1) Psychology in its relation to anatomy and physiology; (2) Introspective psychology in its relation to philosophy; (3) Experimental psychology and psychophysics; (4) Pathological psychology and psychiatry; (5) Psychology of hypnotism and related phenomena; (6) Social and criminal psychology, and (7) Comparative psychology and anthropology.

the subjects discussed by the Psychological Congress was the establishment at Paris of a 'Psychical Institute' under the auspices of an international society. This Institute proposes to do for 'psychics' what the Pasteur Institute does for biology and pathology. According to M. Janet, its aims are:

(1) To collect in a library and museum all books, works, publications, apparatus, etc., relating to psychical science;

(2) To place at the disposal of researchers, either as gifts or as loans, according to circumstances, such books and instruments necessary for their studies as the Institute may be able to acquire;

(3) To supply assistance to any laboratory or to any investigators, working singly or unitedly, who can snow that they require that assistance for a publication or for a research of recognized interest; (4) To encourage study and research with regard to such phenomena as may be considered of sufficient importance; (5) To organize lectures and courses of instruction upon the different branches of psychical science; (6) To organize, as far as means will allow, permanent laboratories and a clinic, where such researches as may be considered desirable will be pursued by certain of the members; (7) To publish the 'Annales de l'Institut Psychique International de Paris,' which will comprise a summary of the work in which members of the Institute have taken part and which may be of a character to contribute to the progress of the science. The Institute aims to cover the whole field of psychology, but it appears from the discussions and from those who are interested in the movement that it will favor those more or less occult phenomena which go under the name 'psychical.' Thus the American members of the committee are Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, Prof. J. H. Gore and Mr. Elmer Gates, which is as if the committee on a pathological institute consisted of one physician, a lawyer interested in homeopathy and a faith curist.

experiment demonstrating the relation of mosquitoes to malarial fever, undertaken under the auspices of the London School of Tropical Medicine, has apparently been successful. Its somewhat dramatic character and wide advertisement in the daily papers will prove of benefit both in leading people to take precautions to avoid infection by mosquitoes and in leading to increased appreciation of the importance of experiments in medicine. Drs. Sambon and Low, who have been living in a hut in one of the most malarial districts of Italy since last June, drinking the water, exposed to the night air and taking no quinine, have so far been entirely free from malaria. The converse of the experiment has been equally successful. Dr. Patrick Manson's son, who had never suffered from malaria, allowed myself to be bitten in London on three occasions by mosquitoes fed in Rome on patients suffering from malaria. He suffered an attack of fever and the tertian parasites were found in his blood. Americans, and especially readers of this journal, may be interested to learn that the earliest article on the relation of mosquitos to malaria was published in the for September, 1883. Prof. A. F. King, still living in Washington, contributed an article entitled