intervals chased out, through the door, by a blast of wind. I tell the nurse that, although the door is opened, I am afraid we will soon be blown up, if she does not put out the gas; she answers that there is no occasion for it, as we are in no danger, and I had better sleep, as if sleep were to come at my command. In my restlessness, I fancy that there is the head of a wolf, with glaring eyes, on the bolster; I pray for a long time; the head disappears. I am a little refreshed, but cannot sleep. My mind soon turns to other fantastic thoughts. I am no longer an inmate of the infirmary. I am kept a prisoner by my persecutors in a small house, where they endeavour to smother me by shutting the door and lighting a fire of straw in the middle of the room. The mother and sister are more implacable than the others, and appear to enjoy my torments. Whilst I am a prey to great sufferings, and scarcely able to breathe, I hear from the street a voice which I immediately know to be the voice of my brotherin-law. I wonder that he has come from Paris to Ireland. answers that he has come with my sister for the purpose of settling as a French teacher. I turn then his attention to my present miserable state. I implore his assistance; I entreat him, in the name of my sister and of our former friendship, to deliver me; but he laughs at my supplications, and even joins with my persecutors, whom he also excites to show no mercy and to take no heed of my cries, as there is nobody at hand to hear. I hear him walking up and down the street; he is with my sister; they both say, repeatedly — Il est perdu, il n'est pas perdu. Eh bien! Oui, il est perdu. Tant pis pour lui.

He

At daybreak the visions disappear for a little time. My lips are parched from crying; my feet are now cold. I complain to the nurse. They give me a drink of milk, and place a jar of hot water at my feet. I remain thus quiet, and as if prostrated, until the doctor comes in on his round. He inquires of my state; feels my pulse; asks if I could sleep last night. He is told that I was noisy, speaking about dangers, praying aloud, &c., and that I would take no laudanum. He kindly remonstrates with me, saying that everything is prescribed for my good. (That medical gentleman was well known to me, and he also knew me very well, as I used to give lessons in French to his family.) Unfortunately the subordinates have a rough way of discharging their duty. They, in my helplessness, illtreat me, threaten me now with a stick, now with the red-hot poker, which they approach to my mouth. In these illtreatments and menaces my delirious imagination sees nothing but a continuation of the tortures inflicted on me by my enemies. I look upon the night-nurse, the day-nurse, and especially on the infirmier, as people under the power of Satan, whom my prayers alone can drive away.

Their drugs, too, I consider as being made by an evil hand, and only calculated to soil my soul. I have made up my mind to accept of nothing, except water or milk.

In the course of the day, I come to think that my mother is dead, and that my eldest sister has arrived, and wants to see me. She stops with my brother-in-law and my other sister; but she cannot obtain any information about the place where I am kept. My persecutors re-appear; I find myself in another house quite unknown to me. Besides the family, there are strange faces, equally hostile. They want me to sign a promise of forty pounds, in return for my release. I consent to their request, but when the signature is given, they wont let me go; they now say that they must have their revenge. I am stretched on a mattress, tightly fastened with ropes and leather straps. I can hardly move my head. Presently my legs are stripped, and the toes of my feet covered over with a thick layer of fat meat. What do they intend to do? From their conversation I at last learn that my toes are to be devoured, along with the meat, by a huge dog of theirs, whom they have taken care to keep in good appetite for the occasion. The dog cannot be got for some time, during which I am a prey to frightful apprehensions. He is brought in by two men, and rushes, from the first, upon my feet, which he dreadfully mutilates. I hear the cracking of the bones under his teeth; I again cry and weep pitifully. There are many people-men and women-around me. They all seem to enjoy the spectacle, and take no notice whatever of my cries and tears. I have lost all remembrance of what followed; I suppose that I fainted. The fit, however, was short; for at night I have the following dream. (Let it be understood that all my dreams are nothing but visions; for they take place when I am wide awake, and when my eyes are open; my properly styled dreams have left no recollections in my mind.)

(To be continued.)

ART. VI.-ON SOME UNRECOGNISED FORMS OF MENTAL DISORDER.

BY FORBES WINSLOW, M.D.

In the ordinary practice of medicine we occasionally meet with cases of disease which are at variance with our past experience and à priori notions, set at defiance our preconceived views of morbid physical phenomena, resist every attempt to embody them within the nosological chart, and which repudiate all reduction to any of the acknowledged orthodox pathological standards or tests. These affections are anomalous or pseudo in their charac

ter, are, with difficulty defined, not easily diagnosed, occasionally escape observation, and often resist, too successfully, the operation of the best directed remedial measures. If, among the diseases more particularly implicating the ordinary organic functions of life, we witness these pseudo or eccentric deviations from the recognised pathological character, à fortiori, are we not justified in anticipating that in the subtle, complicated, varied, and often obscure affections of the cerebral matter, deranging the operations of mind, we should have brought within the sphere of our observation extraordinary, anomalous, and eccentric deviations from certain pre-determined, morbid, cerebral, and psychological conditions? It is the purport of this essay to illustrate some of these spurious morbid mental states. It is not my intention to discuss that vexata quæstio, what constitutes insanity, or to lay down rules by which we may successfully trace, in every case, the line of demarcation between the sane and insane condition, passion and insanity, eccentricity and mental derange

ment.

With the view of avoiding this discussion, I have preferred confining my remarks to those unrecognised forms of what may be properly termed mental disorders. I presume it to be a generally admitted axiom that the mind may be disordered without being insane, using this phrase in its strictly legal acceptation. These conditions of morbid thought may be considered by some as only degrees of insanity; but I would suggest that this term be restricted to those mental affections accompanied by positive aberration or derangement of idea, associated with loss of controlling power, clearly justifying the exercise of moral restraint; and to those morbid conditions of the intellect which sanction an appeal to the protective influence of the law. In other words, I would confine my remarks to those cases in which the mind may be said to be pathologically disordered but not legally insane. Have we in practice sufficiently appreciated this distinction? Fearful of committing ourselves to an opinion that might authorize an interference with the free agency of the subject, and justify the use of legal restraint, have we not exhibited an indisposition to admit the existence of positive mental disorder, even in cases where it has been obviously and painfully apparent? This excessive caution-originating in motives that do honour to human nature-has often, I fear, been productive of serious, fatal, and irremediable mischief.

The subject under consideration is one, I readily admit, of extreme delicacy, but one, nevertheless, to my humble conception, of incalculable importance to all sections of the community. It is beset with difficulties and surrounded by dangers. In the hands of the inexperienced, the ignorant, the indiscreet,

and the wilfully designing, the facts that I have to record, and principles which I purpose to enunciate, might be productive of much mischief; but, I ask, ought any apprehensions of this kind to deter me from entering upon this important inquiry? The subject of latent and unrecognised morbid mind is yet in its infancy. It may be said to occupy, at present, untrodden and almost untouched ground. What a vast field is here presented to the truth seeking and philosophical observer, who, to a practical knowledge of the world and human character, adds an acquaintance with the higher departments of mental philosophy and a knowledge of cerebral pathology. How much of the bitterness, misery, and wretchedness so often witnessed in the bosom of families arises from concealed and undetected mental alienation! How often do we witness ruin, beggary, disgrace, and death result from such unrecognised morbid mental conditions! It is the canker worm gnawing at the vitais, and undermining the happiness of many a domestic hearth. Can nothing be done to arrest the fearful progress of the moral avalanche, or arrest the course of the rapid current that is hurling so many to ruin and destruction?

This type of morbid mental disorder exists to a frightful extent in real life. It is unhappily on the increase, and it therefore behoves the profession, as guardians of the public health, as medical philosophers engaged in the loftiest and most ennobling of human inquiries, as practical physicians called upon to unravel the mysterious and complicated phenomena of disease, and to administer relief to human suffering, to fearlessly grapple with an evil which is sapping the happiness of families, and to exert their utmost ability to disseminate sound principles of pathology upon a matter so intimately associated and so closely interwoven with the social well-being of the human race. These unrecognised morbid conditions most frequently implicate the affections, propensities, appetites, and moral sense. In many instances it is difficult to distinguish between normal or healthy mental irregularities of thought, passion, appetite, and those deviations from natural conditions of the intellect, both in its intellectual and moral manifestations, clearly bringing those so affected within the legitimate domain of pathology. Are there any unfailing diagnostic symptoms by means of which we may detect these pseudo forms of mental disorder with sufficient exactness, precision, and distinctness to justify the conclusion that they result from a deviation from the normal cerebral condition? This question it will be my duty to consider. The affections of which I speak are necessarily obscure, and, unlike the ordinary cases of mental aberration of every day occurrence, they frequently manifest themselves in either an exalted,

depressed, or vitiated state of the moral sense. The disorder frequently assumes the character of a mere exaggeration of some single predominant passion, appetite, or emotion, and so often resembles, in its prominent features, the natural and healthy actions of thought, either in excess of development or irregular in its operations, that the practised eye of the experienced physician can alone safely pronounce the state to be one of disease. I do not refer to mere ordinary instances of eccentricity, to certain idiosyncrasies of thought and feeling, or to cases in which the mind appears to be absorbed by some one idea, which exercises an influence over the conduct and thoughts quite disproportionate to its intrinsic value. Neither do I advert to examples of natural irritability, violence or passion, coarseness and brutality, vicious inclinations, criminal propensities, excessive caprice, or extravagance of conduct, for these conditions of mind may, alas! be the natural and healthy operations of the intellect. These strange phases of the understanding-these bizarreries of character-these vagaries of the intellect-these singularities, irregularities, and oddities of conduct, common to so many who mix in every day life, and who pass current in society, present to the philosophical psychologist many points for grave contemplation and even suspicion; but such natural and normal, although eccentric states of the intellect, do not legitimately come within the province of the practical physician unless they can be clearly demonstrated to be morbid results-to be positive and clearly established deviations from cerebral and mental health. It has been well observed by Dr. Coombe that a brusque, rough manner, which is natural to one person, indicates nothing but mental health in him, but if another individual, who has always been remarkable for a deferential deportment and habitual politeness, lays these qualities aside, and, without provocation or other adequate cause, assumes the unpolished forwardness of the former, we may justly infer that his mind is either already deranged or on the point of becoming so; or if a person who has been noted all his life for prudence, steadiness, regularity, and sobriety, suddenly becomes, without any adequate change in his external situ ation, rash, unsettled, and dissipated in his habits, or vice versá, every one recognises at once in these changes, accompanied as they are by certain bodily symptoms, evidences of the presence of disease affecting the mind through the instrumentality of its organs. It is not therefore the abstract feeling or act that constitutes positive proof of the existence of mental derangement, but a departure from, or an exaggeration of, the natural and healthy character, temper, habits of the person so affected.

These forms of unrecognised mental disorder are not always accompanied by any well marked disturbance of the bodily