“We have not found any reasons supporting the opinion generally entertained that the community are more subject than formerly to attacks of Insanity.”— Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1861.

On the border-land of Lunacy lie the criminal populations. It is a debateable region; and no more vexed problem comes before the Medical Psychologist than this—viz: where badness ends and madness begins in criminals. The inmates of Asylums and of Prisons are so nearly allied that “thin partitions do their bounds divide.” From large experience among criminals I have come to the conclusion, that the principal business of Prison Surgeons must always be with mental diseases; that the number of physical diseases are less than the psychical; that the diseases and causes of death among prisoners are chiefly of the nervous system; and in fine that the treatment of crime is a branch of psychology.

Few are the readers, and we cannot boast to be of those few, who have been at the pains to toil through the many and voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Indeed, it would not be far from the truth to say that there are very few persons who have thought it worth their while to study him at all seriously; he is commonly accounted a madman, who has had the singular fortune to persuade certain credulous persons that he was a seer. Nevertheless, whether lunatic or prophet, his character and his writings merit a serious and unbiased study. Madness, which makes its mark upon the world, and counts in its train many presumably sane people who see in it the highest wisdom, cannot justly be put aside contemptuously as undeserving a moment's grave thought. After all, there is no accident in madness; causality, not casualty, governs its appearance in the universe; and it is very far from being a good and sufficient practice to simply mark its phenomena, and straightway to pass on as if they belonged, not to an order, but to a disorder of events that called for no explanation. It is certain that there is in Swedenborg's revelations of the spiritual world a mass of absurdities sufficient to warrant the worst suspicions of his mental sanity; but, at the same time, it is not less certain that there are scattered in his writings conceptions of the highest philosophic reach, while throughout them is sensible an exalted tone of calm moral feeling which rises in many places to a real moral grandeur. These are the qualities which have gained him his best disciples, and they are qualites too uncommon in the world to be lightly despised, in whatever company they may be exhibited. I proceed then to give some account of Swedenborg, not purposing to make any review of his multitudinous publications, or any criticism of the doctrines announced in them with a matchless self-sufficiency; the immediate design being rather to present, by the help mainly of Mr. White's book, a sketch of the life and character of the man, and thus to obtain, and to endeavour to convey, some definite notion of what he was, what he did, and what should be concluded of him.*

My first duty is to repeat my most cordial thanks to you for the high honor you have done me in electing me to be your President; my next to proceed at once to the delivery of the address which your successive Presidents are expected to give. I feel reluctant to depart from the order laid down by our Secretary, but perceiving that it is my duty to guide your proceedings, and as the business to be brought before you is two-fold, I will divide my address. This morning I will examine into the organization and objects of the association, since these must come before you, and in the afternoon, if time permit, will make a few remarks on the progress and prospects of Mental Science.

As the necessity of providing accommodation for chronic cases of insanity in lunatic asylums, as well as for the aged and infirm, or chronic, cases in workhouses, is becoming more and more urgent, and is engrossing the attention of those concerned in the relief of the poor at the present time, it occurred to me, that enquiry into the causes of death amongst chronic cases of the insane might be a very fit subject to bring before the members of this association.

This case was in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary under the care of Dr. Gairdner, who sent me for examination portions of the cerebral hemispheres, the pons Varolii, the medulla oblongata, and spinal cord. The following were the chief and most prominent symptoms:—

Imperfect articulation and srvaying gait, characteristic of General Paralysis of the Insane, inequality of pupils, well marked delusion as to the origin of the disease; acquired habits of lying, swearinq, and stealing.

I give here, as of interest in relation to this question of the alleged increase of lunacy, a few figures compiled chiefly from the Poor Law Board returns, illustrating the relations of pauper lunacy to the pauperism of the country and to the population generally.

Lord Brougham's career has repeatedly been the theme of mingled admiration and regret—admiration of his remarkable talents and eloquence; regret that one so gifted should have failed to sustain the position and reputation which he once enjoyed.

I purpose to consider in a few pages sundry so-called classes or varieties of insanity, which have given rise to no little dispute. Opinions with regard to these are still at variance, and so it conies to pass, that when we have to approach them, not from a therapeutical, but from a forensic stand-point, we are, by the ingenuity of counsel, launched amidst a multitude of seeming discrepancies, and it is suggested that nothing definite or certain is known about the whole subject. By a closer examination of the cases we see in practice, we shall find, I think, that the greater part of these doubts and difficulties will disappear.

“All theories of the human mind profess to be interpretations of Consciousness: the conclusions of all of them are supposed to rest on that ultimate evidence, either immediately or remotely. What Consciousness directly reveals, together with what can be legitimately inferred from its revelations, compose by universal admission all that we know of the mind, or, indeed, of any other thing. When we know what any philosopher considers to be revealed in Consciousness, we have the key to the entire character of his metaphysical system.”

In an address I had the honour to deliver before the St. Andrew's Medical Graduates Association in November last, I took the opportunity briefly to direct the attention of those practitioners of medicine who are not specially engaged in the treatment of the insane, to the great importance of recognizing the influence of mental action on physical disease. I ventured to press the fact that the most scientific physicians have fallen into the error of studying, with too exclusive a care, the observable conditions of the body, healthy or diseased, and those agents or agencies for curing diseases which produce the most obvious effects—such as knives and other instruments, anæsthetic vapours, active drugs, heat and cold, electrical shocks, and the like. I admitted that as the pure physical existence is the groundwork and the primary necessity of the highest form of living thinking thing, it is by nature the first duty of the healer to make that corporeal frame pure and whole, but I insisted that it is equally his duty to study what shall enter by the senses or windows of the mind, and though invisibly entering, be potent forces for evil or for good. Because an agency is not visible, not tangible, is it, I asked, less real? If a man lose his mind by the failure of his blood, that, it is said, is plain to understand, for it is physical; but if some horror come upon the man through his mind, so that, like poor Horatio, he is be-chilled

“Almost to jelly by the act of fear, Stands dumb, and speaks not,”

is not that, too, physical?—an action direct of mind on matter, reversing the physics of the body, and creating disease? It must be so; and in the study of this action, from the universe into the man, there lies, I maintained, a world almost unknown.

I do not pretend to have anything original to bring under your notice; but, solely with the desire of contributing toward the attainment of precision in the employment of remedies, I venture to ask the attention of the Society for a short space of time to a few remarks upon the use of the Bromides in certain of the Neuroses.

The more general adoption of the “Cottage System” for the boarding out of harmless and incurable lunatics is regarded by many as the only remedy for the increased demand for Asylum accommodation, for the reduction of expenditure, and for the prevention of the overgrowth of Asylums. In Scotland the suggestion meets with the approbation of high authority—in England it does not. I have experienced no small reluctance in coming forward now to express my opinion of the working of the system as it now exists in Scotland, and to narrate my experience of it derived from actual inspection; but conceiving it to be a fair field for discussion, I enter upon it in the full hope that, however much my views may militate against the opinion of the advocates of the “Cottage System,” they will be accepted as unbiassed by aught but a desire to promote the welfare of the lunatic and the public at large.

Dr. Lockhart Robertson, in the April number of the “Journal of Mental Science,” raises the very interesting question whether the increase of late years in the registered number of the Insane in England and Wales represents an increase, real, or apparent only, in the amount of insanity amongst the population at large. After a laborious collection and study of the statistics relating to insanity, Dr. Robertson arrives at the conclusion that the increase is apparent rather than real—in other words, that the number of registered lunatics has largely increased, but that the amount of insanity amongst the population at large evidences a decline, particularly of late years. As a contribution to the study of this question, I venture to offer a few statistics referring to the insane population in the District of the County and City of Waterford.

This institution for lunatics is situated near Hamburg, about a mile from the general hospital, and part of it was first opened in December, 1864. It is one of the most recent and complete asylums in Germany, and, the number of beds having been recently much increased, can accommodate about 370 patients. The land was cheap at the time of the construction, and therefore the grounds in which the buildings stand are very large; they are partly used as a farm. The principal building has the form of a square, open at one side, with numerous projecting portions, especially in the centre, where the administration is located, and officers' dwellings, kitchen, wash-house, and baths are found. The blocks which form this incomplete square have corridors running at one side, by which, however, they are not connected in the usual manner, but the connection is broken at the corners. The passages are 12 feet wide, lofty, and ventilated by end windows; they are warmed by hot water pipes.

Last summer, in the course of a tour in the United States and Canada, I visited a number of Asylums for the Insane, jotting down my observations and impressions at the earliest opportunity after leaving the respective establishments. They are now submitted in a condensed form in these notes; and I trust that they may convey to the readers somewhat of the interest experienced by myself during my visits. It is almost superfluous to say that the physician-superintendents received me most courteously, and their kind attention will ever be suggestive of pleasant recollections in connection with my trans-Atlantic trip. Without further preface, I shall proceed first to give a short account of the Michigan Asylum,* visited 13th June, 1868.

In the first two parts of this essay I entered into the subject of the bibliography of aphasia, as illustrated by the French, German, Dutch, British, and American writers; the third part contains a detailed account of the clinical history of cases that have fallen under my own immediate observation; the fourth treats of the different forms and varieties in which loss or lesion of articulate language is met with in practice; whilst in the fifth part I have considered the subject in reference to the question of Cause, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment.

Well sang the Psalmist: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there.” Thou too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least Force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not when it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the north wind it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without force, and utterly dead?

When we find, as recorded in the book of Samuel, that the great Psalmist resorted to imposture and “feigned himself mad and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard;” we cannot be surprised if minds less gifted should, for whatever purpose, assume the character of a madman. The beautiful conceptions of Shakespeare unfold to us in its highest fulness the rôle to be sustained by the player who is “but mad in craft.” We are told how Hamlet:—

Repulsed,
Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;
Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;
Thence to a lightness, and by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we mourn for,

and how Edgar, amid all his witless jabbering, himself exclaims aside :—

To wander over the whole field of medico-legal uncertainties would lead us amongst railway injuries, criminal cases of every kind, disputed wills, and various subjects, psychological and non-psychological. Such a wide scope is not the object of this paper, but I wish to place before you some facts of an important department, which I trust will, sooner or later, be brought seriously before the profession and the legislature.