one object has attracted the attention of both, if the consideration of it be painful, one of the brains can will the interruption of the conjoint process, can make war-and if the subject have not been long enough under contemplation to defeat the attempt to discard it, we can "call another cause." In like manner we can choose among the topics before us that which we will to consider, and the more energetic brain can control the course of thought in its fellow; we then ponder, investigate, or study.

It appears almost certain that sensation and perception are not performed by the same organs which exercise the purely reasoning faculties, from the consideration that while we are fully exerting the latter, the former are in a great measure suspended, and their impressions cease to influence the intellectual machinery. I have elsewhere alluded to the wellknown fact, that when both brains are deeply engaged in study we are almost unconscious, not only of every thing which is passing around us, but even of internal sensations, or rather of phenomena which under ordinary circumstances would excite sensation. A man speaks to us, we do not hear him; we look at him, but do not see him; we are subjected to cold or hunger, or we have an uneasy seat which gives at other times positive pain, we do not feel them; an offensive odour pervades the room, we do not smell it-or rather, we do not perceive it—although an impression made on this last organ will sooner recal our scattered thoughts than any other. The organ of smell is, of all the senses, the seat of the most powerful associations; forgotten scenes are brought back to the mind more vividly and intensely by an odour to which we have been long

unaccustomed, than by all the other senses put together. I can well recollect, at the age of fifty-five, a long train of events, persons, and conversations, brought back to my mind with a flash, by the odour of Mareschal powder (formerly used to imitate red hair, then in fashion), when these impressions had been utterly forgotten and extinct for five-and-forty years. Had any portion of the conversation I had heard so long ago been related to me previous to the perception of the odour, I should have denied its truth. I remember a very affecting incident of this kind betraying the long kept secret of a lady of rank by the ungovernable impulse it created; but the parties are living, and I forbear.

The enormous relative magnitude of the olfactory ganglia in the horse, compared with the same organ in the hare-hound, and other animals which track their prey by the scent, would seem an argument against the connexion of size and power so strongly contended for by phrenologists.

Y

CHAPTER XXII.

HYSTERIA.-HYPOCHONDRIASIS.-HYDROPHOBIA.

THE disease called Hysteria, a word which originally signified that it was confined to females, is well-known to be occasionally inflicted on the other sex. We sometimes see this affection in young men of sedentary and studious habits. It is probably a disturbance of the brain from reflex action, and in both sexes mainly under the control of the will. Men are taught to be ashamed of any manifestation of this malady or passion, as unmanly, and the efforts they make to overcome it are generally successful; but many a man of acute feelings must remember instances, in his own person, where the effort has been one requiring extraordinary energy and perseverance-success often doubtful and sometimes impossible. Among females of a certain age, just advancing to womanhood, the disorder propagates itself by sympathy with great rapidity, and will spread in a short time throughout a large school, if the head of the establishment be a feeble-minded person, or the medical attendant of too suave and timid a disposition. On the other hand, I know more than one lady in that position, who makes it a point to declare to every new comer that she "does not allow hysterics," and by throwing a very large bason of cold water in the face at the first symptom, drenching the clothes, and making it necessary to change every article of

dress, establishes such a wholesome terror, that the disorder is entirely expelled from the school.

I believe this form of disease to be generally the consequence of reflex action of the great ganglionic centres on the brain, excited sometimes perhaps by a trifling disturbance in their functions, or even by irregu larity of digestion; and that, except where such a temperament has been criminally encouraged, the affection is always controllable by the will. That, in fact, such control is one of the habitual offices of the brain; and that, were not the attention occupied by the necessity of earning a living, or attending positive duties, Reason would be very often temporarily unseated from a perfectly avoidable cause. This also is one of the forms of what Mr. Barlow describes, as "Man's power over himself to prevent or control insanity."

Whatever be the temporary state of the sensorium produced by this

"Monster ill, that mimics all the rest,"

it may become the permanent state of the mind by neglect; and my own opinion is, I think, confirmed by that of Dr. Conolly, that the loss of reason, the loss of power to control morbid influences and volitions, is much more frequently attributable to desuetude than to disease.

The moral treatment of the insanity that is not idiopathic or sporadic-that is, not depending on actual disease of the organ of thought, nor on the peculiar brain of the individual-is therefore of more importance than the strictly medical treatment; and it is on this ground that the medical superintendent of an asylum ought to have the entire selection of his agents

-a subject on which I have much to say, on a fitting

occasion.

In the first Livraison (Plate III.) of Cruveilheir's great work, is a representation of the entire disorganization and enormous enlargement of all the cervical ganglions of the sympathetic, on the left side, down to the arch of the aorta. The ganglia are transformed into a fibrous mass of from ten to twenty times their original size, and so hard that, as M. Cruveilhier expresses it," ils crient sous le scalpel." These strangely decomposed bodies were connected with all the cervical nerves in their course, which nerves, however, exhibited no signs of disease.

I would dwell a little on this case, for I am much mistaken if we cannot draw from it valuable inferences, which have not presented themselves to the narrator. It is most unfortunate that no account whatever could be obtained of the previous state of the patient. We will suppose then that these ganglia, which were of the consistence of hard cartilage or of the prostate gland, had long ceased their peculiar functions, and could not convey any impression whatever to the brain; still, if they are intended by nature to convey any impression whatever, there was a time, at the commence ment of disease, when they must have conveyed disor dered impressions and produced disordered sensations, by reflex action, through the cervical nerves. May not analogous maladies, in their early stage, cause many of those anomalous symptoms which hypochondriacs vainly attempt to describe? and may not at least one of the cerebra have been so far injured or disturbed by the further progress of disease or disorder, as to give the state of conscious delusion? thence pass on till it defies