of insane persons which would not equally apply to the appearances on dissection of persons who had died from other causes than manja. Indeed there is nothing in the appearance of the brain itself to show it to be the seat of thought. Spurzheim, it is true, holds that the faculties of the mind are double, and says, that each hemisphere of the brain contains a distinct set, and quotes Tiedman for the case of a man, who was insane on one side, and observed his insanity with the other. Gall also speaks of a minister who con stantly heard on his left side reproaches and inquiries, and turned his head on that side to look at his assailants. This is hunting after

Phrenology with a vengeance.

The exciting causes to madness are various and uncertain.

"The causes which I have been enabled most certainly to ascertain," says Dr Haslam in his excellent work on insanity, "may be divided into Physical and Moral. Under the first are comprehended repeated intoxication; blows received upon the head; fever, particularly when attended with delirium; mercury largely and injudiciously administered; cutaneous eruptions repelled; and the suppression of periodical or occasional discharges and secretions; hereditary disposition; and paralytic affections." "By the second class of causes, which have been termed moral, are meant those which are supposed to originate in the mind,

or which are more immediately applied to it. Such are the long endurance of grief, ardent and ungratified desires, religious terror, the disappoint ment of pride, sudden fright, fits of anger, prosperity humbled by misfortunes; in short, the frequent and uncurbed indulgence of any passion or emotion, and any sudden or violent affection of the mind.

It has been considered that intellectual labour frequently produces insanity; that those who are in the habit of exercising the faculty of thought, for the perfection and preservation of the reason of others, are thereby in danger of losing their own. Crighton enumerates as an exciting cause to madness, "Too great or too long continued exertion of the mental faculties, as in the delirium which often succeeds long continued and abstract calculation; and the deliria to which men of ge nins are peculiarly subject." :

66

1.." We hear much of this," says Haslam, “from those who have copiously treated of this dis ease, without the toil of practical remark; whose heads, become bewildered by the gentlest exercise, and to whom the recreation of thinking be comes the exciting cause of stupidity or delirium. What species of delirium is that which succeeds long continued and abstract calculation? Newton lived to the age of 85 years; Leibnitz to 70; and Euler to a more advanced period: yet their several biographers have neglected to inform

us that their studies were checquered with delirious fermentations. The mathematicians of the present day (and there are many of distinguished eminence) would conceive it no compliment to suppose that they retired from their labours with addled brains, and that writers of books on insanity should impute to them miseries which they never experienced." "What is meant by the deliria to which men of genius are peculiarly subject, I am unable, from want of sufficient genius and delirium, to comprehend."

It is easy to believe that vanity and ambition. operating on minds puny by nature and undrilled in intellectual exercises to attempt to grasp that which they are unable to embrace-have frequently produced insanity. Dr. Reid says, he attended an idiotic man of erudition, whose head in its best estate was a mere repository for other men's ideas, not a soil out of which an idea ever grew. But it is worthy of remark, that mathematicians and natural philosophers have in general attained a considerable age. So that abstract calculations, or correct thinking upon any subject, do not appear, even with the aid of delirious visitations, to shorten the duration of human life.

The following extract from Dr. Pinel is in direct variance with the former supposition, and may be thought amusing when it is remembered that it is written by a physician,-one of the select few.

"It is well known, that certain professions con

duce more than others to insanity, which are chiefly those in which the imagination is unceasingly or ardently engaged, and not moderated in its excitement by the exercise of those functions of the understanding which are more susceptible of satiety and fatigue. In consulting the Registers of the Bicetre, we find many priests and monks, as well as country people, terrified into this condition by the fear of hell torments; many artists, painters, sculptors, and musicians; some poets extatized by their own productions; a great number of advocates and attornies. But there are no instances of persons, the exercise of whose professions require the habitual exercise of the judging faculty; not one naturalist nor a physician, nor a chemist, and, for the best reason in the world, not one geometrician."

The Doctor must have intended to be jocose in complimenting Advocates and Attornies on the possession of ardent imaginations unmoderated by the functions of the understanding. Members of courts of law are pretty generally anxious to exercise the JUDGING faculty.

It is an old opinion, and continues still to prevail, that maniacs are influenced by the change of the moon. In the fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, verse 24, will be found the word “Zeλnviakoμévovs,” which is rendered in the English version, those which were lunatic. Hippocrates, a philosopher, and correct observer of natural phenomena, does

D

not appear, however, to have placed any faith in this planetary influence.

This popular superstition is important, from the consideration that the existing law in this country, respecting insane persons, has been established on the supposed prevalence of this lunar regulation. A commission is issued de lunatico inquirendo, and the commissioners are particular in their enquiries whether the patient enjoys lucid intervals, a term properly connected with the word lunacy; for when insanity is supposed to be periodical, it is a fair inference that the patient is rational in the intervening spaces of time. Dr. Haslam, however, says, that he kept, during two years, an exact register, but without finding, in any instance, that the aberrations of the human intellect corresponded with or were influenced by the vicissitudes of the moon.

It is more than probable that this supposition originated in the case of some female, who happened to become insane, from a particular cause, when the moon was at its full. On the recurrence of the same cause, at the end of four weeks, when the moon would again be at its full, her mind would almost inevitably become more violently disturbed. This is a necessary coincidence, and should be distinguished from effect.