mainly because so many insane persons have been possessed by religious hallucinations. Excited to excess, every emotion and passion is capable of bringing on madness-if so, religion, calculated as are its tremendous considerations to influence our feelings, may well be supposed, by possibility, to be a cause of insanity. But still, though the hallucination be a religious one, the real source of insanity may be the very reverse of religion, and thus the religious hallucination itself, rather be the effect, than the cause of insanity. Generally, those who go mad through religion, as it is called, are people of susceptible temperaments, or very weak heads. Injudicious preachers, addressing themselves, as they chiefly do, to the weak and uninformed, may readily shake an addled understanding. It is quite idle, to impute the effect, as most people do, to the mysticism of the tenets inculcated, or to the intenseness, with which abstract theology is cultivated, or to the subject of religion being impressed too ardently on persons too young or too much uninformed to comprehend it. It is obviously much more to the purpose to look to the condition in which the perceptive and reasoning powers actually were, before religion appeared to bring on derangement. Dr. Burrowes's great experience goes to show that the effect springs immediately from some perversion of religion, or the discussion or adoption of novel and extravagant doctrines, at a juncture, when the understanding, from other causes, is already shaken. Nor does he recollect one instance of insanity, arising apparently from a religious source, where the party had been undisturbed about opinions. It appeared to him, always to originate during the conflict between opposite doctrines before conviction was determined. While the mind is in suspense from the dread of doing wrong in matters of conscience, and the balance is poised between old and new doctrines, involving salvation, the feelings are excited, says he, to a morbid degree of sensibility. In so irritable a state, an incident, which at any other time would pass unheeded, will elicit the latent spark, and inflame the mind to madness. Dr. Halloran, who had capital opportunities for observation, remarked, that in the Cork Lunatic Asylum, where Catholics in proportion to Protestants are ten to one, no instance of mental derangement, from this cause, occurred among the Catholics, but several among protestant dissenters. The fact is-and very important it is to the present purpose-Catholic ministers will not permit their flocks to discuss the subject of doctrines-distrust in these matters-doctrines or discipline-is denounced at once as stark heresy. The moment of peril-as to insane effects we mean-is when old opinions in matters of faith are wavering, or the adoption of new ones recent, and not yet quietly subsided;

and from this peril the Catholic is obviously protected, whilst the Protestant, with our freedom of discussion, is pre-eminently exposed to it. The Methodists are charged with making more lunatics than any other sect; but the truth seems to be-which explains the matter very satisfactorily-their converts are more numerous than those of any other sect, in the class to which such doctrines are mainly directed, and they have had, besides, we take it, almost a monopoly of the weaker heads in that class.

But these moral causes-numerous as they are, and capab e of exciting lunacy to a fearful extent-are very far from being the most general causes of insanity. It is only where the frame is highly susceptible, or where the cause is vehement or excessive, that morbid effects are produced by them. The direct physical causes are far more extensive in their occurrence, and among these the very chiefest is hereditary predisposition. Esquirol-a man of no slight authority in these matters-assigns 150 out of 264, in his private practice; and Dr. Burrowes-of at least equal weight and experience—says, he has clearly ascertained this predisposition in six-sevenths of the whole of his patients, and scarcely seems to doubt its existence in many of the remaining seventh; but the difficulty of ascertaining the hereditary source is often great, from the perverse concealments of the friends. And, indeed, so general is the internal conviction, if not the professed belief of the reality and extensiveness of hereditary influence, that nothing is more frequent than the remark, when eccentricities are observed in individuals, "there is madness in the family-the father or mother was insane." Constitutional peculiarities, which physicians, after their learned manner, call idiosyncracies, are, in numerous respects, of the commonest occurrence, and need only to be alluded to, in a few particulars, to convince us they are more extensive than seems to be generally supposed, though every body's actual experience must furnish him numerous instances. Shell-fish are offensive to some stomachs-some fruits in like manner-the odour of particular flowers-and these peculiarities are known to descend through successive generations. It is quite a common thing to hear a person say--I cannot bear such or such a thing, nor could my father before me. One man, again, inherits gout, another consumption, another scrofula, another apoplexy, and propagates it. Some physicians have encouraged the notion that hereditary disorders, and insanity among them, appear only in every other, that is, in every third individual in lineal descent, but apparently without authority. Here and there, in an individual, the disease may not develop-but no such rule, remarks Dr. Burrowes, is observable.

No fact, indeed, is more incontrovertible

than the hereditariness of insanity, and no where is the effect more decisive than among tribes or families, where, in the well-understood language of the cattle breeder, they breed in and in. In our own country, hereditary insanity is more common in the higher ranks than in the lower-taking, we mean, numbers for numbers; and they confessedly more frequently marry with those of their own rank, and often among their own families. Examples are said to be most numerous in old Scotch families; and insanity is known to be more common in Scotland than in the rest of the country. Some centuries ago, the Scots were aware of the tendency, and provided against it-when a Scot was afflicted with a disease capable of being propagated, the sons were emasculated, and the daughters banished, and any female affected by such disease, and pregnant, was burnt alive. Of all people, perhaps, the Jews have most pertinaciously intermarried with each other, and hence insanity is believed to be more frequent among them. One of the youngest patients Dr. Burrowes ever had under his care, was a member of a respect able Jewish family; both father and mother were insane, and six brothers and sisters, like himself, became deranged as they arrived at the age of puberty. The Quakers, also, intermarry very much, and among them insanity is more than usually prevalent. Mr. Tuke, of the York Retreat, computes one in two hundred, and apparently, in a great degree, from this cause.

Medical men distinguish insanity into types, or forms, or species-mania, melancholy, hypochondriasis, &c., but these several forms apparently propagate indiscriminately -that is, the maniac may beget a melancholic, and the contrary. Several forms of insanity, with various degrees of intellectual capacity, are sometimes developed in a large family. Of one, Dr. Burrowes observes"One son has transcendent talents, the second is inferior, the third has been for years in a state of fatuity, and the fourth is an idiot. That great wit and madness are nearly allied is not a poetical fiction-but the one is rarely, the other generally, an inheritance."

Sometimes it shows itself merely in eccentricities. Individuals are often distinguished by singularity of ideas or pursuits-or by equipage or dress unlike any body else. Generally there must be some obliquity in the percep tion and judgment of such persons-"They certainly," says Dr. B., “ do not perceive the difference between themselves and the generality (he is not speaking of mere fops), and many of these eccentricities, it is observable, if unnoticed or unchecked, grow more decided with time, and ripen at last into perfect insanity."

Nor does the hereditary tendency, or pre

Boethius de Vet. Scot. Moribus.

disposition, always break out into actual madness, nor are the offspring always inevitably doomed to experience the calamity to the full extent. It will sometimes also lie dormant till old age, and then appear; and generally some pretty strong excitement seems required to develop it. But there are apparently the seeds and the soil, and there must always be danger of these seeds taking root, and maturing their fruits. It is, however, more decidedly in cases where there exists insanity, or the tendency, in both parents, that the effect is more inevitable. Where only one parent is so disposed, the whole of a family are rarely affected. Some of the offspring, in other matters plainly, and, no doubt, in this respect, partake more of one parent than the other. The child that resembles the insane parent in features or complexion, will probably resemble him in constitution and disposition. Dr. Burrowes speaks of questions being put to him, professionally, by parties contemplating marriage, when it was known insanity had existed in the progenitor of one or the other-whether, for instance, a person born of parents descended from an insane family, but not themselves insane, was capable of propagating it -to which, supported by his own experience, he answered, yes. And, again, whether a child, born before insanity had been developed in either parent, was as liable to become insane as one born after it had been developed

to which he replied, of course, yes, if the insanity were hereditary, but no, if it were adventitious, that is, originating with the individual. Dr. Burrowes hesitates about the child born after the development of adventitious madness. Yet why he should, we see not. All hereditary insanity had a beginning, and was then adventitious. And in the same page of his most valuable work, of which we have made so liberal use, Dr. Burrowes must have thought so, when he himself remarked the predisposition must have originated in some one-it could not have run to the creation.

Now we must turn for a moment to other causes of the physical kind, for which we must depend almost wholly upon the evidence of physicians, because such matters do not come in a manner sufficiently direct and obvious before the cognizance of unprofessional persons. Many of these, and indeed the chief of them, pass under the name of sympathies, by which is meant, in plain terms, where one organ is injured, and another, somehow or other, is simultaneously or consecutively affected. A blow on the head will disturb the functions of the liver, and even disorganize it; and vice versa, the injury of this organ will sometimes occasion mental disturbance-so will secretions of morbid bile-obstructions of the biliary ducts by gall stones-spasms, &c. In the Cork Asylum, Dr. Halloran found 160 out of

than the hereditariness of insanity, and no where is the effect more decisive than among tribes or families, where, in the well-understood language of the cattle breeder, they breed in and in. In our own country, hereditary insanity is more common in the higher ranks than in the lower-taking, we mean, numbers for numbers; and they confessedly more frequently marry with those of their own rank, and often among their own families. Examples are said to be most numerous in old Scotch families; and insanity is known to be more common in Scotland than in the rest of the country. Some centuries ago, the Scots were aware of the tendency, and provided against it-when a Scot was afflicted with a disease capable of being propagated, the sons were emasculated, and the daughters banished, and any female affected by such disease, and pregnant, was burnt alive. Of all people, perhaps, the Jews have most pertinaciously intermarried with each other, and hence insanity is believed to be more frequent among them. One of the youngest patients Dr. Burrowes ever had under his care, was a member of a respectable Jewish family; both father and mother were insane, and six brothers and sisters, like himself, became deranged as they arrived at the age of puberty. The Quakers, also, intermarry very much, and among them insanity is more than usually prevalent. Mr. Tuke, of the York Retreat, computes one in two hundred, and apparently, in a great degree, from this cause.

Medical men distinguish insanity into types, or forms, or species-mania, melancholy, hypochondriasis, &c., but these several forms apparently propagate indiscriminately -that is, the maniac may beget a melancholic, and the contrary. Several forms of insanity, with various degrees of intellectual capacity, are sometimes developed in a large family. Of one, Dr. Burrowes observes"One son has transcendent talents, the second is inferior, the third has been for years in a state of fatuity, and the fourth is an idiot. That great wit and madness are nearly allied is not a poetical fiction-but the one is rarely, the other generally, an inheritance."

Sometimes it shows itself merely in eccentricities. Individuals are often distinguished by singularity of ideas or pursuits-or by equipage or dress unlike any body else. Generally there must be some obliquity in the percep tion and judgment of such persons-"They certainly," says Dr. B., " do not perceive the difference between themselves and the generality (he is not speaking of mere fops), and many of these eccentricities, it is observable, if unnoticed or unchecked, grow more decided with time, and ripen at last into perfect insanity."

Nor does the hereditary tendency, or pre

Boethius de Vet. Scot, Moribus.

disposition, always break out into actual madness, nor are the offspring always inevitably doomed to experience the calamity to the full extent. It will sometimes also lie dormant till old age, and then appear; and generally some pretty strong excitement seems required to develop it. But there are apparently the seeds and the soil, and there must always be danger of these seeds taking root, and maturing their fruits. It is, however, more decidedly in cases where there exists insanity, or the tendency, in both parents, that the effect is more inevitable. Where only one parent is so disposed, the whole of a family are rarely affected. Some of the offspring, in other matters plainly, and, no doubt, in this respect, partake more of one parent than the other. The child that resembles the insane parent in features or complexion, will probably resemble him in constitution and disposition. Dr. Burrowes speaks of questions being put to him, professionally, by parties contemplating marriage, when it was known insanity had existed in the progenitor of one or the other-whether, for instance, a person born of parents descended from an insane family, but not themselves insane, was capable of propagating it —to which, supported by his own experience, he answered, yes. And, again, whether a child, born before insanity had been developed in either parent, was as liable to become insane as one born after it had been developed -to which he replied, of course, yes, if the insanity were hereditary, but no, if it were adventitious, that is, originating with the individual. Dr. Burrowes hesitates about the child born after the development of adventitious madness. Yet why he should, we see not. All hereditary insanity had a beginning, and was then adventitious. And in the same page of his most valuable work, of which we have made so liberal use, Dr. Burrowes must have thought so, when he himself remarked the predisposition must have originated in some one-it could not have run to the creation.

Now we must turn for a moment to other causes of the physical kind, for which we must depend almost wholly upon the evidence of physicians, because such matters do not come in a manner sufficiently direct and obvious before the cognizance of unprofessional persons. Many of these, and indeed the chief of them, pass under the name of sympathies, by which is meant, in plain terms, where one organ is. injured, and another, somehow or other, is simultaneously or consecutively affected. A blow on the head will disturb the functions of the liver, and even disorganize it; and vice versû, the injury of this organ will sometimes occasion mental disturbance-so will secretions of morbid bile-obstructions of the biliary ducts by gall stones-spasms, &c. In the Cork Asylum, Dr. Halloran found 160 out of

1370 insane from drunkenness; the liver is confessedly affected by ardent spirits, and thus apparently by sympathy-for want of a better name-the brain. In the hospitals of Paris, also, 185 out of 2507 were insane from drunkenness, and of these 59 womennotwithstanding_the_supposed comparative sobriety of the French people.

The morbid state of the viscera occupied in concocting the chyle is, again, sympathetically, a cause of mental derangement. Irritations in the stomach, through the same mysterious agency, is a more frequent cause than is usually imagined. Long continued nausea and violent sea-sickness have produced mania within Dr. Burrowes's own knowledge in three instances. Irritations of the intestines, also—worms—bad diet-apparently, are frequent causes of sympathetic irritation of the brain. Reciprocal sympathies between the brain and the uterine system are frequent and better known. Puerperal mania is quite common. Of fiftyseven cases, not more than half were connected with hereditary predisposition. Scrofula is a frightful cause of insanity, and of the most inveterate character-for scrofula is almost the despair of medicine.

Different temperaments appear to some physicians to predispose to particular species of insanity-the sanguine, to mania-the nervous, to both mania and what is termed monomania-the dry or melancholic, characterised by timidity and inquietude, to melancholy-the moist and choleric, to mania and melancholy, and sometimes to fatuity-the apoplectic, with a large head, to fatuity; but this seems putting the matter too generally, though, doubtless, constitutional peculiarities announce the nature of approaching diseases.

Of the infinence, again, of the planets and the moon-notwithstanding the name of lunatics, and the vulgar impressions-no proof whatever exists. Yet physicians of eminence Mead even-have said "The ravings of mad people kept lunar periods, accompanied by epileptic fits." The moon, apparently, is equally innocent of the thousand things ascribed to her. When the paroxysms of mad people do occur at the full of the moon, Dr. B. inclines to explain the matter thus:" Maniacs are, in general, light sleepers; therefore, like the dog which bays the moon, and many other animals, remarked as being always uneasy when it is at the full, they are disturbed by the flitting shadows of clouds, which are reflected on the earth and surrounding objects. Thus the lunatic converts shadows into images of terror; and, equally with all whom reason lights not,' is filled with alarm, and becomes distressed and noisy."

But there are still other physical causes which demand our notice, and among these the most conspicuous are disorders of circu

lation totally distinct from disorders of circulation originating from without-when the blood is either excessive or defective.

External heat-coups-de-soleil-violent exercise-spirits-stimulating aliments, and medicines-mechanical injuries—all excite the circulation. Any of these stimuli are capable of producing the diseases usually called nervous-most of which probably originate in a disordered state of the circulation, and lead, first or last, to perfect insanity. On the other hand, if the circulation be defective, the functions of the brain cannot properly be performed. Such is the condition of those who are in a state of fatuity.

Here then is a view-imperfect confessedly of the main causes of insanity-consisting, first, of moral causes, that is, chiefly of excessive emotions, which operate, sooner or later, upon the circulation, and are thus eventually physical ones; next of what are originally physical-hereditary predisposition, which seems to amount to constitutional susceptibility-sympathies, that is, local and organic disorders, which consecutively affect the brain-and, finally, disorders of the nerves and the circulation.

The medical man, who contents himself with observing-above all who renounces the mental theory, and gives up the expectation of curing madness, by reasoning, is apparently in the right course. The proximate cause-so far as we can see and act upon it

is always physical-always deranging organs and anatomy-morbid anatomy and physiology-is thus of more importance than philosophy. No mental remedies are to be hoped for. We know not how the intellect is generated-its ideas furnished, or multiplied, or modified, independent of corporeal agency. The disturbance of the brain proceeds from the same source. The exciting disease must be attacked in its seat and station-what will cure there, will probably cure the insanity, which appears to depend upon it. Be the cause moral or physical, the body-the organs-the constitution, in whole or in part, is the diseased point, and the subject of medical treatment.

Upon those who are yet sane, and upon those who are the subject of hereditary taint, the necessity for caution should be early and perseveringly inculcated; and the more the cause is understood and felt, surely, the more irresistibly will such caution operate. Avoid exciting occasions. The offspring of the insane has double motives for shunning them; and if he must marry, let him match with a sane person, though, as Rousseau said, "he be a king, and she be the hangman's daughter." Useful lessons may be taken from the cattle-breeder-judicious crossing will wear out the taint.

But though nothing is to be done, mentally, with the actually insane, moral discipline is as indispensable as medical