ness of feeling, unreasonable obstinacy, and outbursts of violence upon real or imaginary occasions.

"2nd. That this weakness or defect was probably congenital, and became more prominently developed as growth proceeded, and that it would be exaggerated by excitement, exhaustion, loss of sleep, intemperance, or great physical suffering.

"3rd. That he is otherwise of fully average intelligence, apprehending everything that is said to him with clearness and precision, and replying with sense and aptitude.

"4th. That he expresses himself with accuracy and facility, and deports himself with patience and placidity when under examination. "5th. That his powers of calculation and of memory are unusually acute, and that his acquirements are respectable for his position in life.

"6th. That he is perfectly capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and, indeed, does this with nice discrimination.

"7th. That he is perfectly capable of foreseeing the consequences of any act which he may commit, and of regulating his conduct, under ordinary circumstances, with rational forethought.

"8th. That he believes in the great truths of religion, but is confused as to the doctrine of rewards and punishments.

"9th. That he labours under no delusions or hallucinations recognisable as such.

"10th. That he exhibits no signs of labouring, ordinarily, under overpowering passions or morbid propensities.

"11th. That his general appearance and manners are such as are usually associated with partial mental defect or eccentricity." "J. CRICHTON BROWNE."*

(Signed)

Yet Cuthbert Carr was held to be irresponsible. Certainly not upon any well-understood legal definitions of insanity. Indeed, almost at the same time that Cuthbert Carr was held incapable of pleading at Durham, Henry Gabbites was tried for murder at Leeds, and Mr. Justice Lush said, with reference to a test for the irresponsibility of insane persons, "In all cases every man was presumed to be sane until the contrary was proved, and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act the party accused was labouring under such

*Newcastle Chronicle,' 26 Dec., 1866.

defect of reason or disease of mind as not to know the nature or quality of the act he was committing, or that, if he did know that, he did not know right from wrong."

It was certainly not upon the principles laid down by Mr. Justice Lush that Cuthbert Carr escaped the punishment of his atrocious act. And we would be inclined to point to it as a case in which, through a want of appreciation of the true principles which ought to govern the admission of the plea of insanity or imbecility, justice has not been done. It seems to us impossible to distinguish in any way between the mental condition of Cuthbert Carr and the man who in the same year was found guilty of a similar offence at Alton, and who was sentenced to death and executed.

In many respects the crimes committed by these two men resembled each other. The Alton murderer, who was a clerk in a solicitor's office, upon seeing some children playing by a roadside one fine afternoon, persuaded one of them, a girl of eight or nine years of age, to go with him into an adjoining hop garden, and got rid of the other children by distributing some halfpence amongst them. Shortly after that time he was met returning to his office, where he made an entry in his diary to the following effect :—" Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot."

The child had meanwhile been missed, and her parents became alarmed and a search was instituted. It was ascertained that she had been last seen on her way to the hop field, and in that field the dismembered fragments of her body were found scattered here and there. Some parts of the body could not be found at all. The vagina was missing. These are the main facts of this horrible crime, and it is almost impossible, it seems to us, to distinguish in any way between these two criminal acts, except in so far as there seems to have been a miscarriage of justice in the former, while, as the law at present stands, justice seems to have been done in the latter. With the question as to whether the Alton murderer should have been put to death we have, in this place, nothing to do. that he was not legally irresponsible for the crime he committed is to be inferred from all the principles which have been stated above.† *Reg. v. Gabbites, Times,' 18th December, 1866.

But

The case of Pierre Joseph Delphine, which will be found in Georget's 'Discussion Medico-légal sur la Folie,' pp. 130-144, may be consulted in this connection.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE PATHOLOGY AND SYMPTOMS OF MANIA.

DISEASES have histories, and he who would rightly understand a disease must know something of its cause and course. Many men have made a careful study of disease without first arriving at any thorough conclusions as to the conditions of health. But as disease is a departure from health, it can only be thoroughly understood by those who know in what health consists. Any excellent pathology must be preceded by a careful physiology. Perhaps the significance of this fact will be the better appreciated in connection with the consideration of the commencement of disease. Seeing a thing in the making is the way to understand it when made. The process which goes on thus before our eyes is an actual synthesis. So it is that the observation of the progress of a disease is the easiest way of becoming acquainted with its real nature. How much a thorough knowledge of the beginning of disease might tend to facilitate its cure it would be difficult to speculate. The little deviations from the normal state are the types of greater alienations. Disease has a potential and a kinetic energy. In its progress it parts with its potential energy and gains kinetic. It is this kinetic phase of disease which is that which is really to be dealt with by the physician, and the excellence of becoming acquainted with disease in its potential form is therefore evident. To know the beginnings of things is to know something of the ends and middles too. Now, in considering a case of insanity we become acquainted with certain peculiarities of conduct, of thought, of feeling. If a man believes that he constantly sees dogs, and that they are worrying a child—if we become assured of the fact that he really has this delusion-we become acquainted with a mental symptom of insanity. He is in a condition in which he is unable to distinguish between subjective

thought and objective thought; in relation to these imaginings his subjectivity has become objective. So if a man's conduct is entirely different from that of the rest of mankind, if the motives which influence the actions of ordinary human beings have not the same effect upon him, we infer a certain intellectual obliquity, owing to a similar loss of appreciation of the relativity of the mind and its other matter. As yet, however, all our inferences have only gone a little way; and the question naturally arises, what is the cause of this loss of power to distinguish between subjective and objective? Now, the answer invariably given to such questions is, that all these mental symptoms are due to some pathological condition of the nerve centres. True, although much attention has, in recent times, been paid to pathological anatomy, there are many cases of mental unsoundness in which no organic lesion can be discovered subsequent to the death of the patient. But little doubt exists in the mind of any who has considered the subject that all mental unsoundness, whether it be delirium, coma, idiocy, mania, or dementia, is due to some morbid condition of the organism. The fact that even after well-marked insanity no pathological change sufficient to account for the mental symptoms which existed during life is discoverable, only proves that the means of research and observation are defective; and the fact that in proportion to the better acquaintance of pathologists with the anatomy and the sensible qualities of brain, in proportion to the care with which post-mortem examinations have been performed, has been the rarity of those cases in which the organism presents no morbid changes, points to the above explanation as the truth of this much disputed matter. That this has been a subject upon which opinions have differed very widely is a matter of history, and many people even at the present day would object to hearing the brain called the organ of mind. There is some reason for this prejudice, for some enthusiastic physiologists, when it has been granted that mind is dependent upon brain for its manifestations, at once assert the nonexistence of mind, and say that thought is a function of brain. That the brain secretes thought is a somewhat fashionable tenet. And it is the horror of this doctrine that induces many people to hesitate before they admit the dependence of mind upon brain for its external manifestations. Physiologists assert that, whatever mind is, it is brought into connection with matter by means of brain. But the truth of the matter is this-that nothing but thought actually exists. But

thought becomes objective through its other body. Brain, therefore, is necessary for the externalization of thought. Thought exists without brain, but it is only made manifest in conduct by means of brain, just as light may exist without shadow, but it could not be cognizable to mortal eye without darkness. Now, suppose a lampflame to shine through a patterned globe. The light throws the shapes which are upon the globe upon the walls of the room. Every flaw in the glass makes a contortion in the rays. And so it is with mind and brain. Every pathological condition of brain produces a contortion in the rays of thought, produces peculiarities in that external thought which we call conduct. In this way there can be no act done, no thought thought, no feeling felt, which is not dependent for its externalization upon brain, and any abnormal manifestation of thought is due to some morbid condition of the medium of its externalization. This seems to be a theory which is compatible with the actual discoveries of science and with the higher truths of philosophy. These morbid changes may themselves be due to thought. We find that much insanity is owing to mental shocks, to anxiety, and the like. This pathological condition might, to return to our simile, be compared to the cracking of the globe which is about the light, by reason of something connected with the light itself, as, for instance, the heat. But for all our purposes in this place it will be sufficient for us to consider a pathological condition of some of the nerve centres as the proximate cause of all insanity.

It is well to remember that insanity may exist while all the bodily functions are healthy, but that it is very frequently associated with epilepsy, apoplexy, and other cerebral disorders; or that it may arise in the course of such diseases as fevers, phthisis, acute rheumatism, and the like. Thus it is that the morbid action which arises, it may be in the digestive system, is reflected to the brain by that peculiar nervous sympathy which it ought to be the object of medical science to endeavour to understand. This fact does not, however, militate against the theory which has been advanced above, and it explains the position of the philosophic medicists who have argued that the brain is not the seat of insanity. Some have supposed that insanity consisted of a morbid condition of the vital principle, and others have gone so far as to assert that insanity was due to a morbid condition of the soul itself. For a long time the methods which were applied to the discovery of the pathology of