beginning of formal mentation—that is, of conscious ratiocination, as compared to instinctive consciousness and volition. Therefore, I have named this period of man's development, both physically and mentally, the manual. No one has better defined the next stage of man's development than our true-seeing teacher, Major Powell, when he states that the mental step or stage depends on the ascertainment of truth; but man attained both to the perception and formal ascertainment of truth, first through the use, and then through the using of his hands. The survivals of this are as striking as they are abundant. For example, there are no records of any wholly left-handed or even ambidextrous tribe or nation, nor is there any trace of them in art. Man, the savage, fenas for life principally with weapons of war and the chase, of offense and defense. His heart, the most vulnerable part, is on the left side, which he would therefore, even emotionally, turn away from danger. More than this, his condition of life implies always the shield and the club. He has naturally always carried the shield over his heart with his left hand and arm; the club, lance, or sword in the right hand. He has thus acted constantly with his right hand, carried as constantly with the left. It is only natural then, that in ritualistic talk the Zuni should have called the personified right hand the "Taker," the left hand, the " Holder," going so far as to deify the left and right members of the sun-father, as the Elder and Younger God-Twins of War and Chance-one the deliberate, the councellor, and maintainer, the other the impetuous, the proposer, and doer. In this already we have an example of the agency of hand usage in framing mind, or forming both mythic concepts and religious beliefs, along the line of which one might follow far the upward growth of culture in a special people. Our decimal system of enumeration is more cumbersome than the duodecimal system, but we adopted the decimal system because we have pentadactylic hands. Whether we would or not, these hands have imposed on us both the names and the figures for our numbers and numberings. By combining a sense of manual aptitude with the etymology of quantitative terms in, at least, the Zuni language, I will feel my way back, step by step, to the far ancient hand-conception and birth of many such terms. I think it can thus be shown that while the creator of such terms has been the human will, the father of them has been the right hand, the mother of them the left hand; the numerals have been finger-made and sums hand-made; further, that single terms or monophrastic words of many sorts have been single-hand made, and sentence-words or holophrastic terms, have as often been double-hand or gesture-made. The hand of man has been so intimately associated with the mind of man that it has moulded intangible thoughts, no less than the tangible products of his brain. So intimate indeed was this association, during the very early manual period of man's mental growth, that it may be affirmed to be, like so many other hereditary traits, still dormantly existent in the hands of us all to a greater or less degree. For the hands have alike engendered and attended at the birth of not only all primitive arts, but also many primitive institutions, and it is not too much to say that the arts' and institutions of all early ages are, therefore, memorized by them. In other words, their acts and methods in the production and working out of all these arts and institutions survive as impulses within them. It is chiefly through these survivals within the hands that the embryology of the arts themselves may be traced and studied. The method of retracing these lost steps in the growth of the arts surviving in the hands of man is comprised in simply turning these back to their former activities, by reëxperiencing through them, in experiment with the materials and condi 1 tions they dealt with in prehistoric times; times when they were so united with intellect as to be fairly a part of it. That these survivals are so potent still as to make the hands alone fairly infallible guides almost without the aid of mind (save, as it were, to give hypnotic suggestions to them), toward the reconstruction of any work or activity, however compli¬ cated, that was long persisted in during periods in the development of our race; and that such experimentally reawakened hand-faculties work so perfectly and independently in the main that they form almost a sixth sense, a manual-mental method of true divination concerning the lost arts, I shall hope to show in another paper on the Interaction of Hand and Mind in the Growth of Culture. THE SOLAR SPOTS. ARTHUR SCHUSTER. Revue Scientifique, Paris, October 15. daily variation of the magnetic needle is due in great part to causes exterior to the Earth, and there is every probability that the daily variations of the barometer are naught but an electro-magnetic effect due to a real movement of that kind in our atmosphere. A favorite idea of Balfour Stewart will probably prove true: The difference in daily variations at the periods of maximum and minimum of the solar spots will be ultimately explained by the fact that the atmosphere is a better conductor at the time when the solar spots are at a maximum.. The attentive observation of celestial phenomena can provide us with a key to many of the mysteries which astonish us to-day. How long a time, for instance, would have been required to establish the universality of the law of gravitation, if the observation of the planetary movements had not aided philosophers? Does not the most superficial observation of cosmic effects manifest how many of them are still unknown? The enunciation of a problem may aid in solving it. Therefore, I take leave to put some questions which, it seems to me, are not impossible of solution by the human intellect: 1. Is every large mass possessing a rotary movement a magnet? If yea, the Sun should be a powerful magnet, and the tails of comets, which the observation of eclipses shows to extend in all directions around our Sun, are in all probability electric discharges. The action of a magnet on electric discharges being known, the attentive observation of the currents of the solar crown ought to furnish an answer to the question which I put. 2. Does there exist in interplanetary space a quantity of matter sufficient to render it a conductor of electricity? I believe that everything indicates that this question should be answered in the affirmative. The conductivity, however, must be feeble, for otherwise the Earth would be gradually brought to effect its movement of rotation on itself around its magnetic pole. If we admit that the electric resistance of the interplanetary space is sufficient to have produced any appreciable change in the axis of the earth's rotation within historic times, is it not possible that the currents induced, developed in interplanetary space by the revolution of the Earth, may, by their electro-magnetic action, cause a variation in terrestrial magnetism from century to century? It seems to me that here is a question susceptible of a positive answer, and, so far as I can judge, that answer must be in the affirmative. 3. What is a solar spot? It is generally admitted, I think, that a solar spot is something analogous to our cyclones. The general appearance of one of these spots does not show a marked rotary movement, although what we see is in reality determined by the distribution of the temperature and not by the lines of the current. Yet if a certain number of cyclones were united in a group like the solar spots, some of these cyclones would vary their positions in relation to others in a definite manner, and it appears to me that attentive study of the relative positions of a group of spots ought to furnish a decisive argument for or against the theory of their cyclonic nature. 4. If the spots are not due to a cyclonic movement, is it not possible that the electric discharges radiating from the Sun and artificially accelerating evaporation at the surface of this powerful star, cool the parts from which the discharges emanate and thus produce a solar spot? The effects of electric discharges on the aspect of the Sun have been well discussed by Mr. Huggins. 5. May not the periodicity of the solar spots and the connection which exists between two phenomena so unlike as the solar spots and magnetic action on the Earth, be due to an increase, returning periodically, of the conductivity of the space which surrounds the Sun, this increase being produced by meteoric matter circulating around the Sun? 6. What are the causes of the abnormal law of the rotation of the solar photosphere? It has been long known that the groups of spots at the solar equator accomplish their revolution in less time than those situated at a higher latitude; but the spots may have their own special movement. Moreover, Duner has shown, by the change in the places of Frauenhofer's lines, that the beds which produce these lines follow the same abnormal law, the angular velocity, at the latitude of 75 degrees, being thirty per cent. inferior to that near the equator. Now, all the causes acting in the Sun may very well render the angular velocity of the Sun less at its equator than at any other latitude, but could not make the velocity greater at the equator. The only explanation possible, then, is the intervention of exterior action, either in the form of an afflux of meteoric matter, as Lord Kelvin has pointed out, or in some other form. If we admit, with Mr. Welsing, that the bright spots which are found below the photosphere change their position, whatever be their latitude, with a velocity which is the same as that of the spots in the equatorial region of the Sun, we shall have to search for a retarding cause acting on the spots in a higher latitude rather than for an accelerating cause acting on the spots in the region of the equator. The exceptional interest attached to the solar surface appears to me to deserve special attention on the part of physicists. Its explanation will probably furnish the explanation also of many other phenomena. THE WINDING AND CLIMBING OF PLANTS. THE Der Stein der Weisen, Vienna, October. HE phenomena of winding and clasping observed in climbing plants is due to the combined action of the so-called torsion and nutation. Torsion exhibits itself as a twisting of the plant on its longitudinal axis in consequence of an inequality of growth between pith and bark, and variation in structure of the several tissues. Under nutation two forms of movement are distinguished, the bilateral and the rotatory. In the first there is an unequal longitudinal growth preponderating now on one side, and now on the diametrically opposite side of an organ, thus determining a constant change of inclination from side to side. In the second, these oscillations occur on all sides, and the organ in its growth assumes a screw-shaped motion upwards. In ordinary parlance, the distinction between winding and clasping, although very important, is generally lost sight of. The bean winds, the ivy and the vine clasp. Nearly all winding plants follow a right to left spiral. Climbing is not a spiral movement around a prop, but a simple climbing up by means of a support. There is, however, another and more essential distinction between the two habits. Winding is a mere consequence of growth, while clasping is a reflex response of the organ to external stimulus. Take, for example, the ivy. Two distinct sources of stimuli are here called into action-touch and light. The tendrils of the ivy are very sensitive to light, and place themselves in such a position that their growing points are bent at a right angle from the light. Now, as the ivy shoot develops, let us say perpendiculary upwards, the tendrils make a continuous effort at horizontal development. This effort is realized where the tendril is not influenced by the support, as for example, at the upper edge of a wall. It is hence clear that in consequence of the tendency of the tendril to turn away from the light and develop horizontally, it must necessarily exert pressure on the support. The tendril clings tenaciously to it, but in consequence of its upward development this would be of no service were it not that the plant possesses a wonderful organization to which it is indebted for its climbing powers. In consequence of the stimulus due to the pressure of the tendril on the support, the branch throws out near the leaf stipules numerous fine roots which are also sensitive to light, and develop consequently on the shady side of the stalk only, that is the side towards the support. These roots are consequently clasp organs, which ramify freely and, being shaded, attach themselves insidiously to the support. Very remarkable is the behavior of the Capucin-cress (Tropæolum minus), whose horizontal stipules embrace both the support and its own stalk, so as to hold the latter firmly against the former. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the leaves of the plant are sensitive to constant contact, and wind until contact ceases, as it must when each leaf, after completing the loop, returns to its point of departure-the axis-and thence develops in freedom. L IRON IN ANCIENT EGYPT. Biblia, Meriden, Conn., November. ONG before Homer, who gave the heavenly vault the qualification of iron, the same concept was familiar to the oldest Egyptian, for on this score the text of the pyramids leaves no room for doubt. Yea, they even go further, and ascribe this metal to the most powerful and strongest god, the Egyptian Typhon-Seth, thus agreeing with Greek tradition, according to which, on the banks of the Nile, iron is known by the name of "Seth's bones." The idea of an iron sky presupposes an acquaintance with this hardest of all metals, and thus the question is brought nearer, whether or not, contrary to the usual notion, iron was known before copper or bronze, or at least at the same time. The earliest Biblical reports concerning the occurrence and the working of iron (Gen. iv., 22, where Tubal Cain is mentioned as the inventor of the art of working in iron) presupposes for the remotest antiquity, the use of iron as general and widely diffused. When the metals are enumerated in order, as they occasionally are in the Egyptian monumental and papyrus inscriptions, this is the run of their succession: gold, silver, iron, bronze, copper, lead. In these lists, iron always precedes bronze and copper. As early as the text of the pyramids, implements of iron in the shape of hooks are mentioned, which were used in the religious ceremony known as the opening of the mouth. In the sixteenth century B. C., iron pots are named, and Pharaoh himself is called the iron wall for the protection of Egypt. Even in medicine, iron was employed just as it is in our own day; at least this is to be inferred from the medical papyrus in Berlin, according to which, a mixture of iron rust and Nile water is recommended as a cooling application in fever. The name and employment of this metal was evidently extremely familiar to the Egyptians from the earliest times, and there is no indication that, in Egypt, the age of iron necessarily followed upon that of bronze. Perhaps the opinion might be ventured, that in all the instances cited there is reference only to meteoric iron, and this seems to be all the more probable since the designation for iron in the old Egyptian language was a composite word (bi-ni-pe) which signifies "wonderful thing," the wonderful gift of the heavens; but it must be borne in mind that in the times of the Greeks and Romans, too, the very same expression was the common one for iron, and that in the language of the Christian Egyptians or Copts, the same word is used to designate iron, regardless of its origin whether meteoric or telluric. I have devoted especial attention to this example of the iron, in order to prove the important significance which these texts of the pyramids have for the universal history of civilization. Upon all hands are the texts which press home the conviction that, at the time they were written, old as they are, a vast epoch of civilization has already run its course. CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND THEIR MEASURE CELE MENT. VICTOR NIELSEN. Naturen og Mennesket, Copenhagen, August. NELESTIAL photography has now been so developed that an astronomer may sit in his study and with a micrometer examine a photographic plate, thereby securing an exactness of detail unattainable by direct telescopic observations. Half of the astronomical observations will henceforth be done without looking at the heavens. Photographic lenses can be used in ordinary telescopes. In the Danish University Observatory there is a measuring apparatus upon the correction of which two years' labor has been spent. It is now ready, and Denmark is the only country which possesses an adjusted apparatus. Professor Thiele, who is in charge, enjoys, since his work in the Paris Congress, 1887, a universal reputation for measurements on photographic plates. I am at present engaged in measuring and mapping the great Orion nebula after negatives exposed 5, 15, 45, 90, and 240 minutes in the Herényi Observatory. It will take about ten months to finish the work. Much can be done by ordinary photographic glasses. A plate 90 x 65 mm. covers on the equator about 300 degrees. In ten minutes the plate shows more stars than Uranometria Nova, and shows stars of 3d and 4th magnitude. The most recent discoveries are those by Dr. Max Wolf in Heidelberg, who by means of a five-inch wide aplanat, an ordinary photographic glass for an astronomical telescope, discovered five new planetoids in a few months, besides a great many nebulæ. Planetoids show themselves as small streaks on the plate, and the length of the streak represents their course during the time of exposure. RELIGIOUS. THE NATIONAL TRAITS OF THE GERMANS AS SEEN IN THEIR RELIGION. OTTO PFLEIDERER. International Journal of Ethics, Philadelphia, October. TH II. HE Germanic peoples who made inroads into the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries did not at first embrace Christianity in its Catholic form, but in the heretical shape of Arianism. The reason for this lay, not alone in the accidental circumstance that they became aquainted with Christianity first through Arian missionaries, but also in the fact that the Arian conception of Christ as a half-divine Messenger and Vassal of God, in strict subordination to His Master, appealed to them more strongly, and was more intelligible than the complicated doctrine of the Trinity. Even much later, when all the connected tribes in the kingdom of the Franks had been for a long time converts to the Catholic faith through the Frankish royal power, we find the "Heiland" Christ described in the Saxon "Harmony of Gospels," very much after the manner of a German tribal king. He travels through the country under the direction of the highest heavenly king, His father and lord, to advise and to warn, to overcome the hostile and to die for His chosen ones. The Apostles accompany Him as retainers and all Christians belong to His host and are pledged to His service. These Christianized Germans rejoiced in their strength and valor, and were as far removed from the Augustinian feeling of human nothingness. wickedness, and depravity, as from the ascetic, primitive Christian sentiment of renunciation of the world and the longing for heaven. Still there were not wanting points of contact between the feeling and thought of the early Germans and the new faith. They had strong sentiments of loyalty for their leaders, and they looked on Christ, first of all, as a man struggling and suffering in a human way, and sacrificing Himself for the salvation of His chosen ones. Although Christ did not die in the battle-field, in the thick of combat, still His death could be easily conceived of as the self-sacrificing death of a warring hero, more especially since the Church had long ago designated the demoniacal realm of the worldly prince, ¿. e., Satan, as the real opponent of Christ, and had regarded the human enemies to whom He succumbed as instruments of Satan:-A superhuman hero contending with superhuman enemies—the magical powers of hell-and at first succumbing in this struggle, though to the advantage of His chosen ones, whom He rescues from the blighting spell of magic, and afterwards, as a Divine Conqueror, leading them to battle and victory. This whole series of conceptions lay so exactly in the trend of the early German faith that the transition to the Christian belief in salvation was attended with no great difficulty. Hero-worship was a sentiment natural to them, and not less so, intense admiration for death heroically met. They considered such an end a voluntary and salutary sacrifice, in accordance with the decision of deity, and to be rewarded by admission to the blessed company of the gods. This was the common, essential idea, running through all phases of German belief, heathen as well as Christian. Whether this thought was hidden beneath the veil of myth, or whether the struggle between Christ and Satan, around which the Christian drama of salvation turns, appeared only as a higher form of the mythical combats of gods and heroes, there always lay concealed, under the mythical form, an `elevated moral idealism, no other than that cardinal ethical truth which, from the beginning up to the present day, forms the unchanging kernel of evangelical truth-namely, that universal salvation is bought with the deeds and sacrifices of heroic love and faithful devotion. The Greek Church had made Christianity a transcendental metaphysics, the Roman Church had changed it into a theocracy, resting upon the sacramental, wonder-working power of the priests; the German, on the other hand, brought to Christianity uncorrupt vigor and purity of heart, active personal self-esteem, and strong moral sympathy. On this soil the Christian mission of salvation could develop its inexhaustible wealth of bliss-giving seeds, and could sow, for mankind to reap, the changeless truth of its ethical idealism. At first there was no thought of criticising the ecclesiastical forms of dogma and hierarchy which they had received simply as an inheritance from the superior antique culture; still they soon put into these inherited forms a deeper meaning, more expressive of inward feeling. This process, growing in strength, was, in time, to burst the old forms asunder, and to create a purer development of the Christian idea. They did not seek for Christianity in the depths of metaphysical speculation, like the Greeks, nor in outward ecclesiastico-political organization, like the Romans, but they perceived it in a fashion calculated to touch their emotions directly, namely as the victorious contest of the divinely good principle with the godless powers of evil. In this fight, the divine hero, Christ, through his sacrificing death, became the leader and bondsman of struggling mankind, which is pledged to follow him faithfully and to continue the warfare for his Kingdom, until victory shall reward them. A brave, warlike spirit, a ready, death-defying courage, and a steadfast fidelity in the service of the leader-these are the characteristic qualities which the Germans brought to Christianity. By means of them they were able to grasp more deeply, and to assimilate more completely, than other nations, the ethical significance of Christianity. Through these qualities they were finally enabled to free Christianity from the bonds of dogma and ecclesiasticism which held it for the first fifteen hundred years of its existence, and to make it a part of the real life of mankind. And if there were strong points of contact between Germanism and Christianity, it stood from the first in decided opposition to ascetic renunciation of the world and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In contradistinction to the Church which had separated God and the world by a chasm, the Germans, by their mouthpiece, Master Eckart, of Strasburg, declared that in the soul of man a divine spark exists, which makes it capable of legitimate union with God. Thus German mysticism, breaking down the barrier between God and the world, struck a blow at the ascetic, hierarchical views of Church and world in the Middle Ages, and prepared the way for freedom in religion and for individualism in morals. THE HISTORY AND DEFINITION OF HIGHER IN CRITICISM. THE REVEREND HOWARD OSGOOD, D.D. N the United States for the past ten years higher criticism has beer more talked about than it ever has been in Europe. Hier criticism is said to be a science, having proved its claim to that distinction by its results. The attachment to, and defense of, the term, higher critic ism, in America has been largely due to the vehement advocacy of Dr. Briggs and some younger scholars, who would make this term stand for all progress in Biblical criticism. But the fact that Dr. Briggs traces the genesis of the higher criticism to Du Pin and Bentley, who wrote a century before Eichorn, who invented it, is destructive of his whole labored evolution of the so-called science, for both of these proceeded on the plain, simple, common-sense principles of general criticism, both of text and contents. This endeavor to give form and feature and laws of life to the unscientific, and elusive higher criticism, the invisible, fateful Lorelei of a German stream of thought has not the merit of the first demand of science, an induction from and correspondence with all the known facts in the case, accuracy of definition, and cohesiveness of statement. It utterly reverses the dictum of Eichorn, for Dr. Briggs makes textual precede higher criticism, while Eichorn makes the higher precede and give laws to textual criticism. The only effect this advocacy of an unscientific definition can have is to lead some whose logical powers are weak, and others who have no time for investigation, to believe that a balloon or a parachute is the symbol of all true progress, and that the man who prefers the limited express for land, and the best steamship for sea, is an enemy of all true progress, a stubborn traditionalist, and a "dogmatician." Professor Francis Brown, in the Homiletic Review, April, 1892, says: "Higher criticism Ideals with the human element in the Bible, and with that under certain aspects only. It has to do simply and only with the literary problems furnished in the Bible. It aims to learn the structure and authorship of the different books, to study the literary form of the Bible as distinguished from other biblical natters. It is concerned with literary phenomena, with historical situation, with anything that throws light on the problem of how, when, and by whom the books of the Bible were composed. The Higher or Literary criti cism deals only with the literary form of the Bible." Here, again, while higher criticism is by name distinguished from literary criticism, by all its aim and sphere it is made synonymous with literary or historical criticism, and at last it is called higher or literary criticism. Dr. Brown is an excellent scholar, and usually writes simply, clearly, and to the point. But all his acumen is not sufficient to make a distinction between higher and literary criticism that will bear the slightest scrutiny or that he himself can preserve. A century of intense activity of criticism of all literatures has brought forth new worlds of thought, and introduced severer and more accurate methods of proof; it has destroyed many illusions and restored many defaced portraits. We cannot be too thankful for all the real gains it has brought, and the surer paths it has pointed out. But the history of criticism of literature has proved that nothing is more illusive than the attempted divisions of criticism into certain spheres, and the names given to these divisions. Every leading German critic makes his own divisions and appellations, but fails in getting others to agree with him. Germany has been the most fertile in these attempted and rejected divisions and definitions. France and Holland, whose criticism has borne some of the best fruit, have steadily resisted the allurements of these shadowy divisions, and have been content to place all their work simply under the comprehensive term, criticism. Of all the attempted divisions of criticism, the most unscientific and meaningless, is that of higher criticism. Its emptiness becomes more plain with every attempted definition. WHE THE RELIGION OF WHITTIER. S. M. CROTHERS. Literary Northwest, St. Paul, Minn., October. HEN I think of Whittier, I think of a phrase of Paul, The hidden man of the heart." There is an outward man, a man whom we know, or think we know. This man has his theology as he has his politics; apart from himself, he is the creature of circumstances; he speaks the word of the passing day, and is content. But, beneath that outward man, there is a man hidden and unknown. And beneath the formal statements which have expressed what the outward man would have other men think he believes there is the thought, passion, faith of this hidden man of the heart. There has always been beautiful and simple living in the world, for the hidden man of the heart has gone on his way unmindful of all the fluctuations of the world's fashion. We are indebted to Whittier, not for any new thought, but for a greater trust in the pure instincts of humanity. In him the faith of the hidden man is revealed, and people of every creed say "this is our religion." No man has expressed more tenderly his appreciation of Christianity. But it is always the Christianity of the spirit rather than of the letter; the Christianity of Thomas á Kempis and Tauler and Fenelon rather than that of ambitious churchmen. His love of the past never blinded him to the needs of the present. The inner light which he trusted was one that illumined the onward path. I know how well the fathers taught, I reverence old-time faith and men, faced with absolute freedom the new thought of the new world. The power is lost to self deceive But the sound deafens, and the light To Whittier both answers were true. In Jesus of Nazarethhe saw a great spiritual power. But his habitual attitude was not that of one who looked only backwerd. He believed also in the "Christ to be." To him Christ was a growing ideal of excellence. Christianity, as he interpreted it, became the religion of humanity. All doctrines that in any way limited the divine love or the human hope, fell away from his mind. A believer in immortality, he accepted it as a law of nature. Eternal life was a manifestation of eternal love. Therefore well may nature keep Equal faith with all who sleep; Christian grave and heathen mound. Though he loved contemplation rather than controversy, he felt the influence of the intellectual unrest of our times. He acknowledged frankly the limitations of thought, and the darkness around us, and yet amid the darkness he walked courageously. He had one clue-the love of God which grew out of the love of goodness. I cannot better express his attitude of mingled doubt and faith, or rather of that faith which be found beyond his doubts, than in his own words The steps of faith fall on the seeming void and find the rock beneath. This was a manly faith that dared follow a path that to others seemed to lead to the void of unbelief, but he ever found the rock beneath. Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee For the low note of waves upon a shore Changeless as heaven? MISCELLANEOUS. WRITERS' CRAMP. C. FALKENHORST. Gartenlaube, Leipzig, October. S man is endowed with a higher measure of the supreme gift, intelligence, than any other animal, so also he enjoys, in his hand, the noblest specimen of nature's workmanship. Think only of the various bodies which man is capable of grasping from the largest requiring bọth hands, to the smallest seed or the finest hair, and in each case it will be seen to subserve its purpose so effectively that one might suppose it had been designed for that especial task only. Such were the views of Galen, who regarded the hand as only a piece of mechanism, and modern investigators have raised it to the rank of an organ of sense. And how great indeed are the powers of the hand! How quickly can the fingers move. A trained pianist can bend and contract the fingers six times in a second, and a violinist can move the middle finger ten times in a second, and each of these several movements is adapted to a prescribed purpose. How rapidly the hand of a trained writer glides over the paper? How many distinct movements must the several muscles or the fingers, the hand, and the fore-arm execute in forming the letters of a word! Is it strange that the hand wearies of the task and that, under certain circumstances, the continuous strain becoming more than it can endure, it finally breaks down? Who has not heard of the dreaded malady known as writers' cramp? Sometimes the malady advances almost imperceptibly, attended with occasional, pricking pains, and twichings of sometimes one finger and sometimes of the whole hand; sometimes there is a trembling, with uncertainty in writing, and the pain extends to the whole arm. Sometimes it assails the rapid writer suddenly, without any preliminary forewarning. "One writes," says Julius Wolff, the distinguished specialist in this department "boldly, and apparently with perfect freedom. Suddenly there is a sharp twinge in one finger, or a contraction of the whole hand, and pricking and twitching makes itself felt, the pen is dropped or flung away, pain is experienced in the whole arm, the hand moves involuntarily, now right, now left, the fore-arm is raised, the fingers are no longer under the control of the will. They bend and contract convulsively, all heedless of the messages which the anxious brain transmits to them through the channels of the nerves. How terribly such loss of power reacts upon the mind is indescribable." This painful malady is not, however, confined to people who write continuously; everyone who has to earn his living by handicraft is liable to it. Sewing and knitting, piano and violin-playing, telegraphing, stenographing, drawing, painting, and even milking have furnished victims of the dread malady, "neurosis of the hand." It is true, writers' cramp is not a dangerous malady in the medical sense of the term. It does not imperil life, but in a social sense it is a very severe infliction, incapacitating man for further labor, or at least for a continuance of his previous occupation. Some victims of the disease, deprived of the use of the right hand, resort to the left, but the disease is insidious, and soon shows itself in the other hand. And what, until recently, rendered the affliction still more terrible was that science stood helpless in its presence. Sometimes a measure of relief was indeed afforded; a cure— never. The first advances were made by the recognition of several varieties of the disease. It was known that it might originate in disturbances in the brain and spinal marrow, and it was soon found that the disease traceable to these sources was |