cases.

If they are of sane mind, we must lay before them an explanation of such We must explain the nature of false perceptions, in order to show that a disordered state of the nerves, or of the brain, or stomach, or organs of reproduction, will account for the delusions-more particularly of the organ of sight-which harass them; that sparks, flashes of light, halos, or, on the other hand, flies, motes, tadpoles, temporary blindness, are produced by disorder of the optic nerve or brain; that noises of a discordant kind, or articulate sounds, solely depend upon accelerated circulation through the brain, or affections of the auditory nerves; that the senses of taste or smell are rendered painfully acute or perverted by disordered conditions of those parts of the brain from which proceed the gustatory or olfactory nerves. We must inform them that many of these unusual perceptions have been removed at once by cupping or a mercurial purgative: we can assure the reader that we have succeeded in relieving those who had supposed themselves demoniacally possessed-given over to Satan-from a mountain of perplexity by showing them the true cause of their sufferings."-2nd Essay, p. 76.

The third essay is "On disorder of the mind confined to a single faculty." The diversity of power in the memory is familiar to all; but we do not know any where such striking instances collected illustrative of the state of mind, in which while facts are all recollected, the order of their occurrence is forgotten, and this sometimes to such a degree as to make it necessary to deprive the person so affected, of the management of property.

When

the whole mind is impaired, there is, says our author, no consciousness of the deficiency, but when the Judgment survives the Memory, it detects the failure of the other faculty, and when, after a temporary cure, insanity recurs, the same hallucinations return. From this our author would infer that but one faculty, and not the whole intellect is impaired. In proof of this proposition, Dr. Cheyne says that the instances in which Imagination is the single faculty affected, are almost infinitely diversified.

To illustrate his meaning, Dr. Cheyne examines two faculties or powers of the mind which have been but little attended to-so little considered as distinct faculties, that former inquirers have stated the cases under

the head of disorder of the Memory. Dr. Cheyne, finding the Memory in other respects unimpaired, cannot think it the faculty concerned and so we have in some of the cases referred to an interruption of the Power of Expressing thought; and others to the influence of a diseased Love of Arrangement.

The probability, that Dr. Cheyne's classification of the first head of cases is more correct than that of former psychologists, is increased by the fact that persons who have lost the power of pronouncing certain letters, find a difficulty also in spelling correctly when they write. Instances are given of a patient after recovering from fever, substituting, in pronunciation, one letter for another. The strokes of letters, too, are misplaced in writing, and one word employed for another, bearing some resemblance in sense or sound. He tells us that the power of pronouncing or writing the names of individuals or places is often lost; some persons have lost the power of pronouncing their own name. “It is quite common to hear men, especially as they advance in life, declare they are unable to recollect the names of their acquaintances, and add, 'I suppose I shall forget my own name at last.' But," adds Dr. Cheyne, “if we inquire into the nature of the failure, we shall find that it is not of Memory but of Utterance, as every thing in connexion with the individual whose name cannot be recollected-his appearance, character, circumstances are stored up in the mind." We find it hard to follow our author here, as assuredly the evidence seems to be of Memory failing in such an instance as this last. We forget a name-if that name be told us, we can at once utter it; is it not then the power of memory, and not that of utterance which is interrupted? Does Dr. Cheyne mean to say that we cannot remember all else about a person, and forget his name; and if he admit this to be possible, is not it, and it alone, the fact stated?

The next case stated is more to

Dr. Cheyne's purpose. A patient of Crichton's meaning to call for bread, would ask for his boots; when they were brought, he would get angry and call more vehemently for his boots or shoes, meaning bread. When the pro

time uttered a loud and discordant laugh. He was capable of receiving information but incapable of transmitting it.

Among other narratives given by Cheyne one is "of a gentleman who lost the power of expression both by speech and writing, while his other faculties were uninjured, in consequence of a fall from his horse, by which the lower and central part of the frontal bone was much injured. In cases such as have been described, the power of conveying meaning or emotion by signs, gestures, or by a change of the features, may be unimpaired." It is not said in Dr. Cheyne's work that the part of the head injured was that in which phrenologists place the organ of language or verbal memory.

The love of order and arrangement, so troublesome to most persons at times, and of which, from the days of Dr. Orkborne, students and dwellers among books have a traditional right to complain, supplies our author with some amusing illustrations. He tells of persons who have stopped on a road to count a drove of cattle, or to reckon the pales in a fence, and were unable to resist the impulse to commence the reckoning, even when hurried for time, still less were they able to stop if they once began. D'Israeli tells of an unhappy man who, with the toy called the cup and ball, occupied a life in endeavouring to fix the ball on the spike, we forget how many hundred or thousand of times successively and we fear died without fulfilling his vocation. Cheyne mentions a lady of rank who each night before retiring to rest never failed to visit her drawing-room, and put every piece of furniture in its proper place. "Ah," said a friend of hers to Dr. Cheyne, "she was, from her passion for order, the greatest plague that ever lived." Dr. Pritchard, in "The Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine," mentions a case, quoted by our author, in which this tendency ended in actual insanity. "This person," says Dr. Pritchard, "was continually putting chairs in their places, and if articles of ladies' work or books were left upon a table, he would take an opportunity, unobserved, of putting them in order, generally spreading the work smooth and putting the articles in rows. He would steal into rooms belonging to

others, for the purpose of arranging the various articles.'

"If we examine an extensive asylum for the insane, we shall probably discover one or two cells kept with scrupulous attention in a state of neatness and order; every thing will be found in its proper place, every thing clean and bright; every little ornament which may have been laid hold of by the pitiable tenant, ostentatiously displayed. The walls are decorated with prints, and if such are not attainable, little glaring frescos, representing ladies with plumes of feathers and long trains; peacocks with expanded tails; kings dressed in scarlet robes, with crowns on their heads-the work of the lunaticare often made to supply their place; great attention being paid to the arrangement of these works of rude art, so as to evince a love of order; every print or drawing having its companion or its pendant. Such patients are generally irascible and violent; and nothing with more certainty produces a paroxysm of maniacal rage than intrusion into their apartments with unscraped shoes, unless it be an attempt to displace any of their ornaments, or to remove a print from the wall."-3rd Essay, p. 120.

The next essay is occupied with a consideration of the disordered state of the affections. The object is to show how actual insanity may arise from one of those "endowments" becoming much excited or depressedbeing in a passionate or apathetic state.

Instances are given of derangement produced by the encouragement and discouragement of romantic love; by the desire of having children disappointed; and again by the absence of parental affection. hatred usurping the place of love, and the father irresistibly urged to the murder of dutiful and affectionate children," at a time when the remaining faculties were undisturbed." Then follow cases of natural affection extinguished in the minds of lunatics, of which fact, while the author suggests other possible causes, he regards the true explanation to be, that one or more of the intellectual faculties is unduly excited, and thus "all interest confined, as it were, to one narrow channel of thought."

The desire of possessing what we consider valuable property is described as that which chiefly gives their con

It is

sistency to great undertakings. apt to degenerate "into covetousness, which is idolatry."

This desire is illustrated by the case of the spendthrift and of the miserweak in the spendthrift, till he sacrifices all the purposes of honourable life for a succession of momentary gratifications, and strong in the miser, who deprives himself of all the enjoyments, which it is the only true object of riches to purchase. The collection of a splendid library by a man of learning, or of valuable statues or pictures by a man of refined taste, is referred to the same principle, which, in its abuse leads the foolish virtuoso to crowd his rooms with Indian idols, stuffed birds, loathsome reptiles, cracked china, canoes of savages, old pottery, croziers, and rings. A collector is mentioned who, among other valuables, possessed a vial of George the Fourth's blood, obtained from the royal cupper. That such folly should end in insanity does not seem surprising, but the process Dr. Cheyne describes to be this-cupidity becomes first the ruling, and then the only passion. It subdues all other desires which might have proved correctives to it; and when it has completely triumphed, the mind is left in a state of incurable derange

ment.

The next chapter, "On insanity in supposed connection with religion," introduces us to what Dr. Cheyne regards the most important part of his work."Derangement," he says, "may originate in superstition or fanaticism," but he finds a difficulty in conceiving "that true religion, which removes doubts and distractions, explains our duties and reconciles us to them, and teaches that all things work together for good to them that love God, and thus not only guides but supports us as we toil through the weary maze of life; which, in every pursuit demands moderation and method, and calms every rising storm of the passions, should be productive of insanity."

It would not be becoming of us to do much more in reviewing Dr. Cheyne's book than give an account of its contents; yet we cannot forbear asking, is not the admission that insanity may originate in superstition or fanaticism, an admission fatal to the argument, that what is called mental derangement is always to be looked for

And

in bodily disease as its cause? while we quite agree with Cheyne, that fanaticism and superstition are not unlikely to end in insanity-and while we even go farther than Cheyne, in what he says as to true religion, believing it not alone a preservative from insanity but often a cure for mental distraction in its worst form, we yet cannot but acknowledge to ourselves, that a question remains which each man will answer differently to his own mind, and the reply to which will encourage the wildest fanatic in his worst follies, when he asks himself what is true religion? The wildest madman, whose disease originates in fanaticism, has already asked himself the question, and answered it with a sincerity, of which his disease is in some degree evidence.

66

Dr. Cheyne says, "that true religion has never since the Gospel was first preached, produced a single case of insanity." Melancholy is," he says, "the usual type of religious madness;" and it is impossible to regard melancholy as "produced by the most cheering proposition which was ever placed before the mind of man- Believe and thou shall be saved.'"

In this way Dr. Cheyne, to his own satisfaction, gets rid of the statement of the French physicians, that before the Revolution a great proportion of the insane in France were monks, and of the facts, that many of our maniacs use the language of religion. That many cases, where insanity arises from other causes, are referred to religion, arises, he thinks, from the hatred felt for religion, and a willingness to attribute to it all the evil men safely can. He then gives half a dozen narratives; one of a lady of fifty, a member of a religious family, who suddenly affected airs of high rank, insisted on the necessity of attending court drawing-rooms-at last began to fancy that when she drove out, persons of station were waiting to deliver messages to her expressive of surprise that she did not visit them; then showed such decided symptoms of entire madness as rendered it necessary to separate her from society,-losing all sense of religion. This, Cheyne says, was not religious insanity, as we suppose it was called, otherwise why tell the story? -but "vanity sweeping away every trace of religious feeling." Then

comes a narrative of a religious clergyman, swearing like a trooper at a woodranger who provoked him. It does not appear that the clergyman became insane, but he had a brother who did, and Cheyne states this as "a monomaniacal explosion, in which aristocratic pride, much fostered during the youth of this member of a noble family, was roused by cerebral excitement, and for a time resumed its original ascendancy." The religious, during insanity, lose all sense of religion, which returns when the paroxysm is over. Cheyne, to illustrate this, tells of a brave and generous military man, who was occasionally in sane, and during the disease was oppressed with fear, and became selfish. He then mentions an imprudent speculation of a widow lady, involving considerable expenditure, and likely to end in bankruptcy. As pecuniary dif ficulties increased, her religious opinions became more enthusiastic. "We witnessed," says Cheyne," her first overt act of insanity, in a composition, on which some of her friends probably looked with admiration, namely a scheme of the Gospel, which she caused to be printed in the form of two inverted pyramids, which met at their pointed ends." She soon after proclaimed the millennium, and retired to a lunatic asylum. Cheyne refers this case to imprudence in an enthusiastically religious woman.

"We envy

not," he says, "the moral constitution of the individual who would aver that this, the effect of enthusiasm, was a case of insanity from religion." Cheyne complains, not unreasonably, of the returns from establishments for the insane, classing with "insanity from religion," the disease of persons, who becoming insane under circumstances not likely to suggest religious insanity, as their disease, during the course of their lunacy fix, among their other wanderings of mind, on some religious dogma, which they first pervert, and then incessantly rave about.

A case (Perceval's) to which we have before adverted, is then discussed, and our author proceeds to examine the cases of religious madness, given in Burrowes's work on insanity.

The first is that of a lady of the Established Church, who listens to the doctrines of Swedenborgh; is about to receive the sacrament, and

finds there is no wine in the chalice presented to her. She interprets this as poor Cowper interpreted his dream of the gates of Westminster Abbey being closed against him, and madness follows. The other examples are not unlike in character to this. What is most important is, that no one of them is the case of a person who could be fairly described as religious in any sense in which religion can be regarded as a principle regulating conduct; and we protest, we think, that the orgies of a bacchanal, or the frantic rites of a worshipper of Jaganaut might as fairly be given in evidence of true religion disordering the mind disordering the mind as any one of the cases cited. In Haslam's book on insanity, he thinks the cases of religious insanity are confined to those who cease to follow, as true, the form of religion in which they have been brought up. This, as a general proposition, involving as a consequence the risk of endangering the right of exercising a judgment on religious subjects, is shown by Cheyne to be untrue; but we have little doubt that a more sane exercise of the understanding is exhibited by those who seek to see what is good in the religious societies in which they find themselves placed, than by the restless spirits who seem to learn nothing from the teaching of any instructors; and we have no doubt whatever, that the statistics of religious insanity in many asylums were calculated to suggest Haslam's observation. The reception of any doctrines believed without disputation is little likely to endanger the mind. In most cases, too, it should be remembered, that without fulfilling the practical duties of life, there is not only no true religion, but a state worse than infidelity, and that a habit of disputativeness can scarcely exist without interrupting almost everything that is good. One of the evils of the circumstances in which society is now placed is, the vast multitude of sects, and the almost necessary consequence of doubtful disputations on points which would not be felt of the same interest, if they did not form the boundary walls between different denominations of Christians. We believe the best hope of a cure for this evil is the increased study of the Scriptures themselves, with the distinct recollection, that except as influencing conduct, religion.