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This study is based on the records of 1,970 cases of multiple sclerosis. Of the total, 1,773 represent cases culled from literature and 197 those whose records I have personally studied. Of the latter, fifty-five are from the Vanderbilt Clinic, ninety-three from the Mount Sinai Hospital and forty-nine from the Montefiore Hospital. The object of the investigation was to determine the comparative incidence of the disease in the United States and Europe, the ages (including the ages of onset), average duration, sex, civil status, occupation and nativity. Special study was made of cases reported as hereditary, congenital, familial and infantile. Although the matter of personality (psychic and mental manifestations) does not come within the purview of a statistical study, attention was paid to this aspect of the symptomatology of the disease. With the exception of a few recent reports in the literature, most of the statistical records date back many years, especially those which have appeared in this country. The diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was more rigidly dependent on the Charcot triad in the earlier days and many reports date back to the time when the Babinski phenomenon was unknown and when the significance of absent abdominals in multiple sclerosis was not appreciated. The more elastic conception of the disease on the part of European (more especially German) neurologists may account for some of the differences in the reported comparative incidence of the disease. It may be said, too, that critical study of case reports frequently leads one to doubt the diagnosis. This is especially true of cases recorded as infaotile, congenital, hereditary and familial. I have therefore taken special pains to study, as far as was possible, the histories of many of the cases of multiple sclerosis recorded in the literature, which bore on statistics, especially those of the last mentioned group. I reviewed each of the 197 records of the cases which make up my own study. Another point of importance *Read before the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Diseases,

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