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man tempted his physician to be too kind; and when by various reprieves he had reached a week, making those dead reprieves a stair by which to rise to higher things, he generously lengthened the time to a fortnight. M. O's joy was great. A fortnight! Eternity! But it was too long. When ten days had sped he again began to fear he could not realise it, so that he had to be reduced again to two days. From this beginning, however, he was conducted up to a fortnight, three weeks, a month, three months, with perfect success. One evening, however, the physician was sent for. M. O— was in agony; there he was wringing his hands again, and piteously moaning. The time of the reprieve had run out, and the superintendent had neglected to renew it. Soon, however, he began to smile at the reprieves, but still asserted that he could not be comfortable without them. Subsequently their term of duration was much increased, and they ultimately became unnecessary. The man now works in the laundry beside the cauldron. He stokes its devouring maw!" "B― was fed by means of the stomach pump three times a day for as many weeks; for he was brave enough in his fury to meet that snail-death, hunger. What a grand enthusiasm for death he had! Once he inflicted a blow upon his head by means of a plumber's hammer. It was so severe as to take him near to death's door, and for some weeks he was confined to bed. During his illness and tedious recovery, another patient was admitted into the asylum. This man's name was F-, and he was one of those who longed to get anywhere out of the world. This man was associated with B― under the care of a special attendant. It occurred to his physician to put F- under the care of B-. B— was made responsible for F-'s safety! Strange! It seems almost a joke to keep two people out of the grave by the struggle which each makes to get in first. A weird safety to be jostled away from death's door! Strange as it may seem, however, this expedient had the desired effect. B took F by the arm and walked him off, and since that time has devoted himself exclusively to the care of this much less dangerous patient. F has more than once endeavoured to shuffle off this mortal coil, and his attempts have always been frustrated by B-, who has never, since he has become the guardian of another's life, seemed to entertain any hostile intentions with regard to his own. In this case, interest in the life and welfare of another has reared anew an interest in his own. His own life has

been saved, in all probability, by his endeavours to save that of another. Is not reward the contre coup of a good action? There is a great, deep, pathetic humour about this guardianship. B―, the most dangerous, most pertinacious, suicidal patient in the Institution watching F! There is a detestable meanness in a thief catching a thief; but there is pathos in one suicide frustrating the attempts of another! If F- only lifted his hands to his throat B― put them down. If he approached the fireplace B-- intercepted him. If he cast his eye on a dinner-knife, B—, ever watchful, winked, and laid hold of him. When he refuses his food, B-, if necessary, insists upon his taking it, or assists in its forcible administration by means of a stomach pump.

"They sleep in adjoining beds in the dormitory set apart for patients who are believed to labour under suicidal tendencies; and often in the course of the night B— rises, and on his bare feet on the cold floor will go noiselessly to see that F- is all right. In all his watchings he is kind, yet firm. It is a great thing to assist a neighbour to do right, and in that way make the home temptations to do wrong less urgent. Such acts are 'twice blessed.'"*

There is certainly much interest in these cases, as they not only indicate the forms that monomania may assume, but also point out the true uses of moral treatment. Although in most cases of simple monomania the intellectual powers seem unaffected, except in so far as the single delusion or illusion is concerned, and the individual seems to reason as accurately as he would do in a state of normal health, still in many cases the disorder is not so limited, and the morbid ideas are not confined to a single subject. It is scarcely possible that such a mental parasite as a delusion could coexist with complete mental health. Upon most subjects a man can scarcely reason fully or well without making use of almost all his knowledge. When, therefore, a large portion of that garnered experience is rendered useless by the existence of a false and persistent mental impression, the deductions of reason are likely to be the less trustworthy. The reasoning of a half man is never so good as the reasoning of a whole man. Of course the influence of a delusion, or of a false impression of sense, upon the life of the individual, varies in proportion to the influence of the thoughts of the same individual upon the same subject. Thus, if a man believed that he

* There are other interesting cases given in this article.

constantly heard the whisper of a silk dress, and was otherwise perfectly sane, one could understand that such a belief could have little or no influence upon the actual life of the individual. But if a man believed that his own wife had entered into a conspiracy against him-if his disposition was so far changed by disease as to make him hate and suspect those persons whom he had formerly loved and trusted-it would be impossible to calculate the influence of such a diseased condition upon the life of the person thus affected. This is a fact, which the use of such words as monomania or partial mania are very apt to conceal from those who are only partially acquainted with medical psychology, and it is a fact that it is very important each medical man should duly appreciate.

CHAPTER VII.

ON MORAL MANIA.

THAT the one black sheep which is within the fold of a respectable household should be whitewashed, may, to piebald brothers and sisters, seem a desirable thing. That a family moving in good society, and living in a good street, should, in the event of one of its members committing a crime, have recourse to the family physician rather than to the police, and should look upon the act as a symptom of disease and not as a crime in the true sense of the word, seems a very natural proceeding. For a long time insanity was looked upon as the work of God's hand, while, even at the present day, the devil is regarded as the mechanist of crime. If, then, a family has an opportunity of mistaking the hand of the devil for that of God, it will probably embrace it. Many a one when asked, like Sam Weller, if he can see the individual who was guilty of contempt of court, and knows that that individual is a relation, and had laid himself open to punishment, will look at the ceiling, and say "No!" Heaven knows that the grandest things upon earth are those dear home-eyes which will not see our faults those dear lips that are "no thoroughfare" for reproaches, and those dear heads which are armouries full of defences of our errors, which would fain find a leaning to virtue in all our vices, and the mental darkness caused by the shadow of God's hand in that night of the moral life in which the devil rides. But although friends may be breakwaters about the home-harbour, it is the duty of a government to punish crime, and in order to do so it is necessary to distinguish crime from insanity.

Is there, then, such a disease as moral mania?—a disease the symptom of which is crime-and if there is such a disease, how is it to be distinguished from immorality? Pinel was the first who

asserted that there were "many maniacs who betrayed no lesion whatever of the understanding, but were under the dominion of instinctive and abstract fury, as if the affective faculties alone had sustained injury;" and very many writers since his time have distinguished between intellectual and moral insanity. Some have argued that this disease is exclusively confined to the moral sense, that it may coexist with a perfectly healthy condition of every other faculty, and that the only symptom which manifests the presence of disease is depravity in a somewhat exceptional degree! That twenty convictions would prove a man mad, the law has as yet denied. That if the disease is manifested by no other symptoms than the commission of criminal acts, the individual shall be liable to the consequences of those acts, the law has upon more than one occasion asserted; and although many loud voices have been raised against the law on account of that denial and that assertion, the principle laid down seems to us to be sound. Nay, further, although we admit that crime is in many cases a sign of the presence of disease, and although we think that in most cases in which it is so, the history of the individual, and the presence of insanity or nervous disease in the parents will establish the fact of moral insanity in the individual under examination; we are of opinion that only on very rare occasions should moral insanity stand between the individual and the consequences of his criminal acts, for it seems to us certain that punishment is in most cases one of the means of cure, and that moral maniacs may be restrained from criminal acts by an adequate system of discipline!

The philosophy of the subject seems somewhat defective. We find frequent assertions that this disease consists in a morbid perversion of natural feelings, or habits, or moral dispositions, and that it is unaccompanied by any lesion of the intellect; that it is a disease of the moral sense, and various other assertions of similar import. Writers have not taken the trouble to ascertain, in the first instance, whether there be a moral sense or not; they have not endeavoured to discover whether it is possible that reason, when directed in one particular direction, can be affected with disease, while in other directions it can be exercised under all the conditions. of health. It is an easy thing to take for granted, and then to assume as proved.

Ethics is the science of the laws of our actions looked at with