Take this card and run your eye over it. It wiU save
time. It is a guide to the note-takers so that a certain
order may prevail in our histories of cases."

"I see, I see. No organ is left unexamined. But
how can you get the time? And you must have a
whole arsenal of tools, if I may judge by the recent
survey made of my own throat and eyes."

I laughed, and my resident doctor regarded this
other physician with suppressed amusement, being
himself a youngster who, by habit, eased the frictions
of life with the precious ointment of mirth.
"Yes," I said; "I can, of course, make personally
the whole study of a case. As a rule, here, where
there is so much to be done that has to be done
thoroughly and rapidly, one man goes over the eyes
and other sense-organs, and one over the secretions,
which may exact hours of work."

"And," added Vincent, "there are electric testings,
I see. And reflexes ! What on earth are they?"

This doctor who asked what a "reflex" meant was
fast becoming too much for my resident, whose eyes
were flashing with mirth, and narrowing to imminence
of laughter. I touched his arm, as a warning, and
went on: "Reflexes? Oh, reflex acts. I strike on a
spot, say, below the knee, and a certain muscle in-
stantly and in health always replies by a movement.
There are many such. I might call them muscle-in-
stinct acts."



CHARACTEEI8TICS. 69

"I see," returned Vincent. "It becomes clearer to
me if I think of some of our instinctive acts as intel-
lectual reflexes. There ought to be a new word — in-
stinctions."

And now my resident cast a look of solemn wonder
at this reasoning ignoramus.
