an ecstacy will be eventually removed. Of this principle, then, Cardan, whose case has suggested these remarks, evidently availed himself. This remarkable man, who was born at Pavia in the year 1501, and was professor of mathematics at Milan, possessed a temperament which partook strongly of the sanguine description; and this, no doubt, was a predisposing cause, which, with an excess of nervous irritability, materially conspired to render him liable to the trances, which form the subject of the remarkable narrative that he has published in his curious work, De Vita Propria. The symptoms preceding each trance, were those which so very frequently usher in many of the mental paroxysms that we have traced in other diseases, and the pathology of which is so well illustrated by the action of the nitrous oxide or febrile miasma. There was an increased intensity of pleasurable sensations. A peculiar feeling was experienced in the head, which gradually diffused itself from this organ to other parts of the system along the course of the spinal cord. He perceived, as he observes, a kind of separation from the heart, like the issuing forth of the soul, while so serious a departure was felt by the whole body, as if a door had opened; and hence the impression which arose, that he was visited by supernatural impulses. Shortly afterwards, he was less sensible of actual impressions, while spectral illusions of the most vivid kind became the sportive objects of his imagination. The words of those who discoursed to him were but faintly heard, and in time were imperceptible. His organs of touch became less and less sensible to pain, until,

at length, he felt neither pullings nor pinches, nor was he in the least degree conscious of gouty tortures, but only of such causes as were without the body. And, as he adds, when he had naturally no pain, he would excite it by whipping himself with rods, by biting his lips and arms, or by squeezing his fingers. But he acted thus to prevent a greater evil; for, in this complete state of insensibility to painful impressions, he felt such violent sallies of the imagination, and peculiar affections of the brain, as were more insupportable to him than any corporeal suffering which he could inflict upon himself. His pleasurable excitements could therefore be only subdued by exciting acute sensations of an opposite or painful quality.

The general inference to be deduced from the illus trations which I have given is briefly this:-If we would impart to the faint feelings of sleep and syncope a degree of vividness, such as subsists in our cool waking hours, it is immaterial whether the acute impressions to which the organs of sense are subjected be pleasurable or painful. But if, on the contrary, our view should be the depression of intense feelings, this object can be effected in no other way than by opposing to them the influence of acute sensations, similar in their quality of pleasure or pain to such states of the mind as, during the ecstacy, have been rendered proportionally faint and languid,

CHAPTER XV.

WHEN MORBIFIC CAUSES OF MENTAL EXCITEMENT EXERT TO THEIR UTMOST EXTENT THEIR STIMULATING POWERS, THEY OFTEN CHANGE THE QUALITY OF THEIR ACTION, AS FROM PLEASURE TO PAIN, OR FROM PAIN TO PLEASURE.

"Pleasure and pain are convertible and mixed:' "that which is now pleasure, by being strained a little too far, runs into pain, and pain, when carried far, creates again the highest pleasure, by mere cessation, and a kind of natural succession." Lord SHAFTSBURY'S Characteristics.

I SHALL now make a few remarks on those morbific agents, which, when exerting their utmost influence over the states of the mind, have the effect of alternately increasing the vividness of pleasurable and painful feelings. The natural consequence of this action is, that the unconsciousness of grateful and ungrateful ideas undergoes a corresponding alternation. Alcohol possesses a subordinate influence of this kind. To a particular preparation of opium used in the East, the power is ascribed not only of rendering the mind by turns unconscious of pleasure or of pain, but of

eventually inducing proper ecstatic illusions. The traveller Chardin, while recounting the effects of a certain drink prepared with a decoction of the head and seeds of the poppy, remarks, that "there is a decoction" [of this kind] " called Coquenar, for the sale of which there are taverns in every quarter of the town, similar to coffee-houses. It is extremely amusing to visit these houses, and to observe carefully those who resort there for the purpose of drinking it, both before they have taken the dose, before it begins to operate, and while it is operating. On entering the tavern, they are dejected, sad, and languishing; soon after they have taken two or three cups of this beverage, they are peevish, and find fault with every thing, and quarrel with one another; but, in the course of its operation, they make it up again, and each one giving himself up to his predominant passion, the lover speaks sweet things to his idol; another, half-asleep, laughs in his sleeve; a third talks big and blusters; a fourth tells ridiculous stories; in one word, a person would believe himself to be really in a madhouse. A kind of lethargy and stupidity succeeds to this unequal and disorderly gaiety; but the Persians, far from treating it as it deserves, call it an ecstacy, and maintain that there is something supernatural and heavenly in this state. As soon as the effect of the decoction diminishes, each one retires to his own house."

That peculiar insanity which is connected with a melancholic temperament presents analogous pheno"This progresse of melancholy," says Burton, "you shall easily observe in them that they have been so affected; they goe smiling to themselves at first, at

mena.

length they laugh out; at first solitary, at last they can endure no company; or if they doe, they are now dizards, past sense and shame, quite moped ; they are not what they say or doe, all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or ridiculous. Upon a sudden, they whoop and hollow, or run away, and sweare they see or heare players,* divells, hobgoblins, ghosts, strike or strut, and grow humorous in the end.”

From this last illustration it is evident, that when there is an intense excitement of the melancholic temperament, painful and pleasurable feelings become alternately affected by the undue vivifying influence. During the interval that painful feelings are rendered intense, there is a perfect unconsciousness of pleasurable feelings; and (vice versa) during the interval that opposite or pleasurable feelings are excited, there is a similar unconsciousness of painful feelings.

But it is now time that these important phenomena, connected with the vivifying action of morbific causes, should meet with some explanation.

I have before described the influence imparted by the brain and nerves to the sanguineous system. Hence the contractility of the involuntary fibres of the heart and blood-vessels, and the resistance which such fibres make to the dilating power of the blood, during the course of its circulation. Thus, when heat is partially applied to a blood-vessel, its first effect is to increase the dilatibility of the contained fluid, and with it, to give rise to a pleasurable feeling. But, up

Probably the frightful shapes of demons represented in ancient mysteries are here alluded to.