physical development consequent on this neglect, are strikingly evident among our female patients. The various causes of insanity usually classified under 'ill health, intense mental and bodily effort, grief, domestic unhappiness,' &c., may very frequently be traced, in their pri mary influences, to the one cause of the want of physical stamina." In a previous report the same physician says: "Not one girl in ten in these days enjoys really sound rugged health." For the correction of this state of things he knows no remedy but the enforcement through life of health-giving active exercise. This alone can give "strong, and vigorous health, perfect digestion, and no nervousness. An English girl, accustomed to all weather and thick shoes, considers a half a dozen miles a trifling walk, and she takes it day after day. The ma jority of American girls, with their thin shoes, would regard such a walk as nearly impossible."†

Hereditary Predisposition.-Insanity is, of all diseases, most certainly known to be hereditary; though the predisposition may not show itself in every family, or may not be developed into obvious disease in many of its members. Though children often escape insanity, the hereditary susceptibility is seen in the grand children. It is believed that the predisposition is more frequently inherited from the mother than the father. "I have seen in one hospital, two sisters from one family, and a brother and sister from another; also a father and his daughter. In New-York city there are cases of several insane in one family. I know a mother and daughter who have been in the Blackwell's Island Hospital; another daughter has been insane at times, another is always partially idiotic. They all inherit an eczema which produces insanity when it recedes to the brain."

Idiosyncracy. The word signifies an abnormal sensibility to drugaction, or such relations to a certain drug as that drug produces in the prover symptoms that occur in no other person in a sensible degree, and which bear no analogy to the symptoms which others experience. Of such idiosyncracies we have examples in persons who are liable to attacks of "hay asthma" and "rose catarrh."

As generally employed, the word idiosyncracy means only "susceptibility unusually acute, but not abnormal sensibility." Some persons are peculiarly susceptible to certain influences, as to certain diseases. Some have a peculiar susceptibility to certain remedies, and may succeed in obtaining symptoms from it that others fail to perceive.

Claude Bernard says, we may take it for granted that, not only mor bid, but, also, physiological predispositions exist in man as well as in the lower animals. Even in the best health, in which the individual retains his own peculiar habit of body, he is more liable to some dis

* Report of the Hartford Insane Asylum, 1860.

† Report of 1848.

eases than to others; and many conditions that are habitual to one individual can be mated with another, by bringing him down to a similar state of health, and this is to be done by operation through the nervous system.

The difference between different races of horses consists more in the difference between nerves than blood. An irritable, sensitive, highly organized nervous system is in fact the peculiarity which separates the race-horse from one of the diminutive ponies from the hilly countries.

The difference between individuals may be naturally expected to be far more tensive in man than in other living beings. Hypnotism is a peculiar state which can only be produced in a small number of highly sensitive and nervous patients; and all the phenomena of somnambulism fall under a similar general rule. It is, therefore, evident, that idiosyncracies are only peculiar susceptibilities which exist in the normal state in various individuals.

In conditions of disease, the vital powers of the living body are changed, so that medicinal agents and poisons do not produce the same effect that they do in health. In some diseases medicines, even in massive doses, have very little power: 1. Because absorption is almost suspended; and 2, because the nervous system is strongly depressed. Where secretion is over-excited, the absorbent surfaces lose their properties. The inner surface of the salivary gland in a state of health, rapidly absorbs strychnine and woorara; when secretion is rapid, absorption is more slow. In cholera no substance whatever is absorbed. from the intestinal walls while the characteristic discharge continues. In mania absorption is suspended. After the crisis is past it is restored.

RELIGIOUS MELANCHOLY.-THEOMANIA.

In this form of insanity the patient thinks himself the subject of Divine anger. How far such an opinion as an article of permanent belief is entirely unreasonable must depend much upon the theory of the Divine government that the individual may have adopted. Dr. Gooch thought that a large portion of the race had good reason for apprehensions on the subject of a future life. "When we consider," said he, "the certainty of death and the magnitude of the question involved, it seems more reasonable to feel anxiety and even terror about it, than indifference. But experience shows that people so long as they keep their sound senses, bear the thought with sufficient lightness for all the uses of this world." Dr. Johnson made the following distiction be. tween religious melancholy and that interest in religious subjects which their importance may well justify. "Madness frequently discovers

itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend, the poet Smart, showed the disturbance of his mind by falling on his knees and praying in the street, or any other unusual place. Now, although rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are many who do not pray, and yet their understanding is not called in question."

The incipient stage of religious melancholy is pourtrayed by Crabbe, in the description of the young female who earnestly desired to escape from earth. She says:

"And here is something, sister, in my brain,

I know not what-it is a cure for pain;
But is not Death! no beckoning hand I see,
No voice I hear that comes alone to me;
It is not Death but change: I am not now
As I was once, nor can I tell you how :
Nor is it madness-ask and you shall find
In my replies the soundness of my mind:
O! I should be a trouble all day long;

A very torment if my head were wrong."
At times there is upon her features seen

What moves suspicion.-She is too serene.
Such is the motion of a drunken man

Who steps sedately just to show he can."

Mental Extravagance.-Men devoted to abstraction and fiction lose the realities of life in an ideal world of their own. Their excentrici ties then are not extraordinary. They create and converse with their own imaginary beings till it is not strange if their views of real life should become absurd. The question is, do their productions arise from a heated imagination or are they the result of calm reflection, invention, and profound observation.

Rousseau had powerful and luxuriant imagination which could clothe the most common-place objects in splendid and illusory forms; but we see also in the man intense morbid imagination. His favorite dogma was that natural was superior to civilized man. He saw humanity only as it may now be seen amid the superficial false splendor and the revolting corruptions of the rich, and degradation of the poor of a great city; and then set his imagination to picture out the contrast between this perverted civilization and an imaginary life of simple nature. Having not seen savage life he painted it as he fancied it might be, associating with it everything virtuous, delightful and happy. The influence of the imaginative writers has softened many of the rough features of our nature, but they have also cultivated an abnormal effeminate sentimentalism; raised extravagant theories and airy castles that the uncultivated heart wildly hopes to see realized, without furnishing true instruction in the way by which they may be reached.

Imagination, poetry, and eloquence kindle the unregenerate mind into ungovernable passions, which take possession of whole communities. Thus Cæsar was murdered by his friends. Henry the Fourth of France by Ravaillac, and Kotzebue, the poet by an infatuated German student and in our own time, demagogues play upon the passions of the multi tude; and men exert their power in exciting revolutions which they know not how to control or direct to good objects.

The success of M. Esquirol in demonstrating the existence of partial insanity has led to a more humane administration of the criminal law; but it is not to be denied that medical men have often been influenced by acute counsellors to detect a case of monomania or "moral insanity," where a little better education and wholesome restraint ought to have made a good citizen. The plea of moral insanity has become so common in criminal cases, that scarcely any murderer omits to try its efficiency, and we regret that medical testimony in such cases is not more highly respected. In a late murder trial in this city the judge in his charge to the jury said, he "could make very little of the medical testimony, either in the case then before him, or any other that he had been called upon to hear." The frequency of this form of derangement, which is in fact much more common than any other, indicates the great importance of considering the most effectual modes of controlling or preventing it. The best view of it we find is that given by the Rev. J. Barlow, late Secretary of the Royal Institution, in a small work " On Man's Power over Himself to Prevent or Control Insanity." The principal position contended for by this author is, "that the difference between sanity and insanity consists in the degree of self-control exercised by the individual." Now, when we consider in how many cases insanity is caused by self-indulgence, and by want of that rigid discipline of mind which of all things is the most important lesson, he is required to learn between the cradle and the grave, we see the importance of inculcating everywhere self-culture and self-control. In the first report to which we turn, of 256 cases of insanity produced by physical causes, we find 127, or more than one-half resulted from defective moral control. Of these 64 became insane from abuse of stimulant drinks; from masturbation, 23; libertinism, 24; use of mercury, 16. Among the other usually named moral causes of insanity we find "domestic griefs, reverses of fortune, jealousy, injured selflove, religious enthusiasm." But do not these ordinary trials of temper and moral courage come to us all, and exert what influence they can? And might not some of them, if not moderated by firmness, humility, and correct ideas of the uncertainty and brief direction of human happiness, pervert the powers of reason. The man of strong mind may be agitated by passion, or lured to evil indulgence by temptation; but he represses the wild thoughts that rush through his mind, and seeks for

VOL. II.-27.

better and truer impressions from without or from within; "the man of weak mind yields to them, and then he is insane." Dr. Connolly truly says: "Seeing that any feeling in excess-the love of pleasure, or of ease, or of money, or of expense, or of applause, or that of selfdenial, or anger, jealousy, hope too sanguine, or sorrow too much indulged-may become independent of the restraint of the comparing powers," we must perpetually inculcate the importance of cherishing "that governing and protecting action of the mind by careful cultivation and exercise."

"Whoever will converse with lunatics, will soon be satisfied that a very small portion of them consists of persons whose talents have been regularly and judiciously cultivated. The advice of Crabbe, if followed, would have saved many an unhappy mortal from the sad experiences of insanity:

"But ah! though time can yield relief,

And soften woes it cannot cure;
Would we not suffer pain and grief,

To have our reason sound and sure?
Then let us keep our bosoms pure,

Our fancy's favorite flights repress;
Prepare the body to endure,

And bend the mind to meet distress."

Prichard describes as moral insanity that variety called by Pinel "manie de caractere." It is a slight perversion of the instincts and affections which renders the individual a scourge to all around him, and which is yet unattended with any mental delusion. These are turbulent, unmanageable beings, choleric in disposition, committing various censurable acts, which they are always ready to justify by plausible reasons; and who become to their friends and families a continued source of inquietude and grief. They commit mischief for amusement, malice, or wickedness, and are incapable of application or labor. They break, disarrange, and destroy everything. Individuals afflicted by this partial perversion of the disposition, commit out-of-theway actions, and maintain the most singular and absurd conversations, well knowing all the while what they do and what they say. The understanding suffers no lesion; the patient is enabled to justify his proceedings with a surprising connection and lucidity of ideas and expressions. There is but an instinctive perversion,-a general exaltation of the bad propensities, but rarely to the extent of insanity. When this perversion of the affections complicates ordinary insanity, the "lunatic becomes the most insupportable of beings, creating eternal confusion and quarrels among the other inmates, and their attendants, which seems the chief object of their lives."

Since we cannot here go into the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, it is proper to refer to one or two of the best authorities on