Dr. Baker said that he would like to turn the attention of the Association to certain lines of investigation that seem to promise much if properly carried out. He did not recall instances in which, if he could carry the investigation far enough, he could not find that antecedent to conception there was a deterministic condition of the parental mind, in the form of a stress brought about by deprivation. Take, for instance, cases of sexual obsession. So many times he had found that one of the parents, or both of them, had lived a life of absolute sexual stress, of the order of deprivation. He would not go into the details, but simply spoke of the general fact to indicate a line of investigation. Take, again, parents who, during their child-bearing period, are eager for property and yet, who, to a certain extent, are deprived of the benefits of property. Such a stress of mind, or emotion, or body, if you please, seems to be the ground-field in which the child gets the predisposition to an imperative conception or obsession, which will be developed later on. He did not say it is so universally; but he did say that when he had an opportunity of carrying the investigation far enough, he could not recall an instance where he had not struck the dire influence of stress upon determining the predisposition of the child.With reference to the influence of hypnosis in the treatment of these conditions, he confessed that he was not enough of a hypnotist to bring about the result claimed. He would rather take ten times the pains to engage such people in a straightforward development of the mind, by putting them at Emerson's essays, or geometry, or some new science; by giving them a hold upon something new to work with, than to use all the hypnosis that he was capable of bringing about.