W. H. R. Rivers. M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S., F.R.C.P.

We regret to have to announce the death of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, who died on June 4, 1922, after a short and painful illness, aged 58. He had become famous in the fields of anthropology, physiology and psychology and his work constituted a valuable nodal point bringing these three sciences into relationship with each other. He was elected an Associate Member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1920 and had recently expressed his intention of being present at the forthcoming International Congress in Berlin.

Of Dr. Rivers' extensive labours in other fields this is not the place to speak. At the close of the War his interest was strongly directed towards psycho-analysis and he at once perceived the relationship existing between the psycho-analytical discoveries and the facts of social anthropology. From this period dates an interesting brochure entitled 'Dreams and Primitive Culture', in which he laid strees on the resemblance between the Freudian mechanisms of dream-formation and similar processes at work in the formation of savage customs. He privately expressed his regret that he had not been trained in psycho-analysis before his visits to Melanesia, where he carried out most of his field work in ethnology. After his return to Cambridge, where he took up an important position as Director of Scientific Studies, he had no further opportunity of pursuing his study of psycho-analysis and his writings that emanate from this period became less sympathetic towards the subject.

Though Dr. Rivers' interest in psycho-analysis appears to have been aroused at a conjuncture in his life that did not favour his undertaking a deep study of it, we deplore in his death the loss of of man who did much to introduce this study to younger workers, who was a distinguished man of science in other fields and who possessed a charming personality that no one who knew him can ever forget.