St. Peter, Minn., Oct. 22, 1906.
To the Editor:
—Laboratories in hospitals for the insane in the Middle West are not so uncommon as the editorial in The Journal, October 6, would imply. There are a number of them, andthe laboratory in this hospital has been in existence since 1894. This laboratory was started as an adjunct to the clinical work of the hospital, rather than as a place to study the morbid histology of the brain, although the latter has not been neglected; and the "continued careful study of the rich material in these institutions" has shown us that they are unworked mines of clinical and pathologic wealth in general medicine, which have been overlooked and ignored, while time and attention has been given to the study of the morphology of the brain, and the histology of its cortex; as if in them was constituted the pathology of insanity,