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PICTURES AND BUSTS IN THE ROYALCOLLEGE OF SURGEONS.
THERE has just been published a catalogue, compiled byMr. F. G. Hallett, of the portraits and busts in the RoyalCollege of Surgeons of England, with a short biographicalnotice of each. In the introduction to this catalogue Mr. Hallettwrites : "A wish has been expressed on several occasionsthat a catalogue of the pictures and busts in the possessionof the Royal College of Surgeons of England should becompiled, and although from time to time attempts havebeen made to supply the want, no one has hitherto been ableto give the time necessary for searching the minutes andother records of the College. In publishing this catalogue itis hoped that the short biographies may lend additionalinterest ; and although it is not intended that they shouldbe exhaustive, an endeavour has been made to give as com-plete a record as possible of the appointments held bythose who have assisted in creating the history of the
College." There is no doubt that the catalogue has not beencompiled without considerable research and that the variousnotices of the distinguished men represented in the Collegecollection are accurate and carefully compiled. There is anindex at the end of the catalogue which enhances its value.The catalogue may be looked upon as authoritative as regardsdates and events in the lives of those mentioned in its pages.There are some thirty-one busts and thirty-seven portraits inthe possession of the College, and various plaster casts of busts,engravings, miniatures, sketches &c. The portrait groupsinclude amongst them one representing His MajestyHenry VIII. granting the Act of Union to the barbers andsurgeons, the figures of which are attributed to Hans
Holbein ; a painting, The Dissecting-room, " by T. Rowland-:son, said to represent William Hunter demonstrat-
ing to his class in the Great Windmill-street Schoodissecting-room ; a copy of the picture by Rembrandt, inthe national gallery of the Hague, of Nicholas Tulp and hispupils ; a group of the Council of the College in 1884,painted by Henry Jamyn Brooks. It will not be surprisingto find that the memory of John Hunter has been morehonoured than that of any other, and we find there is a life-size statue by Weekes, a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, acopy of this by Muller, a miniature copy in enamel of thesame picture by Bone and engravings of it by Sharpe ; amedallion by Tassie, busts by Harman and Sir FrancisChantrey, a plaster cast of the above, and a pencil portraitby Sir N. D. Holland, Bart. There are busts of their
Majesties George III. and George IV., by Sir FrancisChantrey ; of the" Right Honourable Lord Grenville," byThomas Phillips ; and of "Dr. Georg Friedrich Louis
Stromeyer," by W. Englehard ; but with these exceptionswe find none but those whose work has contributed to thefame of the Royal College of Surgeons, the names of themajority of whom are known throughout the world. The
catalogue is well printed on excellent paper, and leaves nothingto be desired. We understand that the price of the book wasfixed at half-a-crown at the recent Council meeting, so it iswithin the reach of all taking an interest in the College.
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EXPERI-MENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.
THREE years ago the first Congress of ExperimentalPsychology met in Paris. The second Congress was openedon Monday at University College, London, with Professor H.Sedgwick as President. The Vice-Presidents are Professors
Bain, Baldwin, Ebbinghaus, Ferrier, Hitzig, Liégeois, Preyer,Delbceuf, Richet and Schafer. The honorary secretariesare Mr. F. W. H. Myers and Mr. James Sully. The Congressnumbers about 270 members, including distinguished repre-sentatives from Germany, France, Holland, Roumania andthe United States, as well as from this country.The feature of the first day was the inaugural address of
the President. After welcoming the members of the Congressto this country, more especially those who formed a con-
necting link with the Congress of three years ago, he saidthat the selection of this country for the second Congress,while not in need of any defence, suggested the admissionthat England rather lagged behind in the matter of experi-mental psychology--if the term experimental were takenin the narrow but usual sense to denote investigationunder artificial conditions. If, however, the term were
taken in its wider sense to mean the whole science ofmind, so far as it was based upon observed facts, then,looking at the long line of English psychologists fromLocke and Hume down to Bain and Spencer, no one, hethought, would contest the claim of England to be regardedas the ancient home of psychology. The term "experimental"for the purposes of the Congress, was to be taken as inter-mediate in meaning between the stricter and more lax meaningsalluded to, so that it included all investigations in whichthe reasoning was based upon observations methodicallypursued for a special purpose, even if they were not in thestrictest sense experimental. Reference was made to theconnexion between physiology and psychology, and it waspointed out that the antagonism between what may be calledthe neurological and psychological platforms, which was sostrong twenty or thirty years ago, had now to a great extentdisappeared, for the crude materialism which refuses any reco-gnition to the results of introspection and the psychology whichclaims a realm in which psychical processes are unaccom-panied by nervous processes are equally out of date. Thusit had now become clear that the issue between materialistsand psychologists related to the nature of the causal nexuswhich linked each successive double fact with physicaland psychical antecedents and consequents. l:5ut tne
empirical psychologist might leave this discussion on
one side and content himself with tracing uniformities
among the psychical phenomena which he studied with theirphysical accompaniments, without entering on the questionof their causation. For this task physiology was extremelyuseful, and they recognised this by constituting a section inthe Congress for papers mainly physiological in character.There was also a section for " Hypnotism and Cognate Sub-jects " and they were fortunate in having so many Frenchhypnotists among them and especially from the Nancy school,where the work had been conducted on the broad lines whichhave been generally followed in Europe.The first paper was that of Professor Bain. This dealt
with the relations of introspection and psycho-physicalexperiments as mutual aids in psychology. In comparingthe two methods it was pointed out that in the qualitativeanalysis of mental facts introspection must take the lead ;while in quantitative analysis, or the mensuration of psycho-logical quantities, the experiments of psycho-physics canrender important service. Researches were enumerated inwhich the two methods concur, and it was pointed out thatin all experiment may come as an aid to introspection, butcannot profitably supersede it.
Professor Gruber of Roumania read an interesting paper onColour Hearing, explaining, however, that his subject wasmore extensive than the name implied, as it comprehended allcases in which the stimulus of one sense evoked imagesbelonging to another. Reference was made to the carefulobservations of these phenomena by Mr. Francis Dalton, andthe belief was expressed that the inquiry was still one ofpurely scientific interest, although the persistency of thephenomena suggested the possibility of a law which might inthe future have some practical bearing’.
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A paper by Professor Ribot was read by Professor Richet,and subsequently one by himself entitled "L’Avenir de laPsychologie." It was pointed out that the first problem ofpsychology was the physiology of the brain and the imperfectcharacter of our knowledge of this was emphasised. Thedifficulties of the studies were alluded to and it was pointed outthat by means of comparative psychology some light might bethrown on the causes of madness and crime, and in conclusionthe importance and vastness of the psychological field werealluded to.At the meeting of the Congress on Wednesday several im-
portant papers were contributed in Section A. These werethe more strictly physiological papers. They were as fol-lows :-The Visual Centre in the Cortex of the CalcarineFissure, by Professor Henschen ; the Degree of Localisationof Movements and Correlative Sensations, by ProfessorHorsley ; the Anatomical and Physiological Relations of theFrontal Lobes, by Professor Schafer ; and the FunctionalAttributes of the Cerebral Cortex, by Dr. Waller.On the third day papers were read in Section A by Dr.