EDITORIAL: BASAL METABOLISM AFTER ARTIFICIAL MENOPAUSE

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puzzling problems or so apt to be led astray by some alluring will o' the wisp. We should not be too impatient if practical results are slow of realization. Psycho-analysis may be developed into an effective curative procedure. But for the present we have greater reason to hope for the disclosure of practicable

means of prevention. And the achievements of mental hygienists in closely comparable undertakings give us warrant for the belief that even in this obscure field the patient continuance in well doing will ultimately bring, ample reward.
W. H. HATTIE

THE DIFFICULTIES OF RESEARCH

men in John Ervine Hunter, of Sydney, Australia. Few men have made for themselves at so early an age so high a reputation for scientific research, and those w-ho were fortunate enough to meet him and hear hiim lecture on his visits to Canada and the United States, will remember well the clearness of his teaching, and the evidences he gave of intellectual powers far above the average. All the more was this apparent in the ease with which he dealt with one of the most difficult problems in physiology, namely, the part played by the sympathetic nervous system in the tone of skeletal muscle. It has continually baffled physiological workers, but under Hunter's guidance its intricacies were unfolded w-ith a lucidity which was as attractive as it was masterly; and his work seemed to bear promise of much fruit in surgery. Since then, however, this particular line of research has not developed in accordance with that promising start. Hunter's conclusions seemed unassailable; the surgical operations evolved from them by his colleague Dr. N. D. Royle appeared to be successful. And yet, as

THREE years ago the scientific world the result of further experience and lost one of its most brilliant yrounger critical analysis, we now find these conclusions disproved and their application to surgery of no avail. We have already given details of these criticisms,* and will here do no more than reflect on the peculiar difficuilties that beset investigations in physiology. John Hunter like many other of our intellectual leaders, has been found to be not infallible, but so much the more do we mourn his premature death. We have no doubt that if he had lived, the present confusion into which our conception of muscle tone has relapsed, would not have come about. Either he would have forestalled the critical dissection which has shown that his views were erroneous, or else he would have directed the investigations to a happier issue. As it is, we know now that we have seen the filling of another page in the history of physiology with the story of a search which if not entirely unavailing, is apparently further from its goal than when it was being illuminated by the genius of young John Hunter.
H. E. MIACDERMOT

* Canad. M. Ass. J., Nov., 1926, xvi, 1363.

THE BASAL METABOLISM AFTER THE ARTIFICIAL MENOPAUSE*

SINCE the time of Aristotle and Galen, observations and experiments too numerous to number, have been recorded on the changes accompanying the meno* John T. King, Johgns Hopkins Nov., 1926, xxxix, No. 5.

Hlosp.

Bull., Balt.,

pause whether it be physiologically or artificially produced. In spite of all this work, much remains obscure and much of the data, as recorded, is contradictory. That the menopause is usually accompanied by an increase in weight, was an