which disturbs the others) can, in nearly nine hundred and ninety-nine cases in a thousand, according to the usual proportion in this country, control all manifestation of morbid emotion or judgment, but that the thousandth case is the madman.

Is it not then a matter of wonder and admiration, that with all the disturbing causes, moral and physical, which the ignorance of man causes or omits to obviate, the proportion of the insane should be so exceedingly small? and is it any objection to the belief of a superintending Providence, that, in a world obviously intended for progressive education, one single case in a thousand is permitted to be beyond the control of our faculties. The advance of science has already shewn us the means of obviating many of the causes of mental derangement, and there is strong reason to believe that we shall yet make extensive progress in the same direction. I please myself with the hope of being instrumental to this blessed result.

While diseases are permitted to afflict every other part of our bodies, it is not surprising that so complicated an organ as the brain should be liable to the same influences; and there seems no reason to doubt that, in the wonderful system of which we form so insignificant a portion, physical evil and imperfection, as well as physical pain and moral obliquity, are permitted portions. The inequality in the functions and powers of the two thinking organs is the very essence. of that variety of character and conduct which makes the world what it is. Without the existence of much evil, a large portion of the good that ennobles humanity could not be called into action were no offence ever given, there could be no forgiveness-did no one fall

into misery, benevolence and compassion would lack their object, and charity would be unknown-were all wise and prudent, there would be no need of guidance and control-were the child's brain perfect at first, all the duties of the parent, the proper exercise of which is his occupation and his happiness, could not be required. Patriotism, honesty, veracity, self-restraint, humility, perseverance, fortitude, self-denial, courage, and a hundred other virtues, must be unknown, if their corresponding defects did not exist. No! "All worketh together for good." The world neither may, might, can, could, would, should, or ought to be anything but what it is. It was intended to be exactly that which our limited faculties observe, but can neither entirely comprehend nor fully appreciate. Let us be careful to fill our own part in it, and leave the rest to Providence.

CHAPTER XX.

DIFFICULTY OF DECIDING THE POINT AT WHICH INSANITY BEGINS.-MATHIEMATICIANS AND ARTISTS.-INCREASE OF MENTAL POWERS.-MADNESS OF VOLITION.NEGLIGENT VOLITION.-POWER OF CONTROLLING HEREDITARY TENDENCY TO INSANITY.-SELF-CONTROL OF LUNATICS.-MEDICAL JURY.

THE embarrassment of a young practitioner, on being called to decide on the fact of insanity in a patient, is one of the most anxious and distressing things he will ever have to encounter in the course of his professional life; and it requires a greater degree of moral courage than falls to the lot of most men to make such a decision as he can reflect on afterwards with satisfaction. I was very early placed in this painful position, and could not, even then, reconcile it to my sense of justice, that a man's liberty should be entirely dependent on the intelligence, or even the honesty, of a youth of three-and-twenty. I believe myself to have always acted impartially on these occasions; but can perfectly remember the shame and annihilating selfabasement with which I listened to the reproaches of a venerable gentleman thrice my own age, whom I had entrapped into a madhouse under the pretext of taking him to visit a friend. I have never been able to persuade myself that such stratagems are ultimately beneficial, for the just indignation felt at the deception neutralizes the benefit of restraint, and is a great aggravation of the patient's unhappy lot. unhappy lot. On other

occasions, before I was five-and-twenty, I had to give written answers to interrogatories from Doctors' Commons on twenty abstract propositions respecting the nature and essence of insanity, when not only was I entirely ignorant of the modes of deviation from reason, but of almost every one of the causes of aberration; yet, on these answers of a flippant young man depended the liberty, and more than the liberty, of a fellow-creature.

I speak now of a period five-and-thirty years ago, when the treatment of insane persons was so brutal and senseless, that condemnation by a medical certificate amounted to the infliction of a punishment greater than that which the law imposes for serious crimes. Dr. Conolly has well described the effect on the patient's mind, on the first dawn of reason, when thus confined; and justly dwells on the distressing importance of a decision which was to be attended by consequences so formidable. The abstract question of sanity or insanity was a trifle compared with the question, "Shall this man be subjected to loss of liberty and to brutal cruelty?" It is a slight thing in the present day for a medical man to be called to pronounce a case to be or not to be hydrophobia, but at the period when the affirmative was followed by the infliction of suffocation (as I have heard an old gentleman say he twice witnessed), it might well give a man pause ere he pronounced an opinion which virtually amounted to the awful sentence of death.

These strange and inconceivable anomalies in our law have been ameliorated, but not entirely removed. I do not doubt that some thirty or forty years hence men will look back with incredulous wonder at the

history even of the present day, in respect to the whole management of the law of lunacy, just as we refer with horror to periods within my own time, when twelve, fifteen, and, on one occasion, two-and-twenty persons were hanged in one morning at the Old Bailey, many of them for crimes which would now perhaps be expiated by six months' imprisonment and the treadmill; yet in those days these sacrifices to the violated majesty of the law (as they were called) excited horror in very few minds, and the abolition of the practice would never have been effected, but by that small and powerful instrument-the goose-quill.

The line of demarcation between insanity and reason is like that between soberness and drunkenness. It requires no sagacity to distinguish the extremes, but the gradations are infinite, and the boundary evanescent or imperceptible. Yet it is not so difficult to decide. the point at which it is right to interfere. A jury 'de lunatico inquirendo' declares the time arrived when the patient shall not be entrusted with the care of his own property-the policeman pronounces the same verdict when he takes charge of the purse and watch of the man he finds drunk in the street. In the latter case the period of recovery is known, and it is known that the recovery will be complete; but in the former case the assumption of the right to control the actions of the man with disordered brain is, I believe, for life, and does not admit of being superseded by his recovery; if so, it is a great defect in the law. We require an inquest with temporary powers, long before the case arrives at the point which justifies perpetual restraint. The Lettres de Cachet,' in their origin (before they were abused for political purposes), were only granted