THE METHODS OF NEUROLOGICAL RESEARCH. IF activity in neurological research is to be gauged by the annual output of neurological literature, it may safely be declared to be in a flourishing state. Were the truth told, it would be admitted that no one can keep himself abreast of this production, in any literal sense, for the task of summarising and assimilating the unending series of papers, monographs and books dealing with aspects of neurology and nervous disease amounts to a practical

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... lity. Journals in various languages endeavour to supply their readers with periodical resumes of the results of neurological investigation as they appear, yet even so it may be permitted to question whether the average worker is not so occupied with his own pursuits that he has little leisure for scanning and absorbing the discoveries of others. Every now and then articles of outstanding merit compel attention because of the real acquisitions to knowledge which they contain, and these eventually reach the stage of being incorporated in textbooks, but for one paper of this description there are ten or twenty which can scarcely be said to furnish any genuine contribution to neurological doctrine. Any attempt, however, to curtail literary activity in respect of neurological research would be at once inadvisable and impracticable. In not a few instances contributions of a minor character have as a fact paved the way for distinct advance, while many more ambitious communications are shown in the event to have led nowhere. The path towards the goal of exact knowledge is strewn with the bones of dead theories. It would be easy to provide illustrations of neurological hypotheses that have had their day and ceased to be. Who now hears of the treatment of tabes by dilatation of the urethra, or by suspension ? Who makes a diagnosis of urinary paraplegia, or of cerebral hyperaemia ? On the other hand, in many instances the accretions to knowledge have been so gradual that they are with difficulty assigned to any single contribution, having in some Topsy-like fashion really " growed." 142 Protected by copyright.