fully capable of any rational act requiring thought, judgment, and reflection."

297. How a Commission may be Superseded.-Before concluding this part of our subject, it may be well to state that commissions may be superseded, but only upon evidence as strongly indicative of sanity as the evidence on which the commission issued was indicative of insanity.'

See 16 and 17 Vict. Lackey, 2 B. Monr.

Re Dyce Sombre, a lunatic, Law Times, 1844, vol. iii. p. 485. c. 70, § 152, and 25 and 36 Vict. c. 86, § 10. See also Lackey v. 278; Matter of Russel, 1 Barbour, C. 38; Matter of Mason, 1 Barb. R. 436; Matter of Barbour, 2 Barb. C. R. 97; John Beaumont's Case, 1 Wharton, 52. As to traverse of an inquisition, see 16 and 17 Vict. c. 70, §§ 148, 149, 150, 151, and 25 and 26 Vict. c. 86, § 7.

CHAPTER VI.

MANIA.

298. Health and Disease.-78] Diseases have histories, and he who would rightly understand a disease must kuow 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 commence. ment 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.

99. Mental Disease.-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 see dogs, and that they are worrying a child—if we

become assured of the fact that he really has this delusionwe 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 have considered the subject that all mental unsoundness, whether it be delirium, como, 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 non-existence 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 [80] 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 lamp-flame 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.

100. Mental Defect and Bodily Disease.-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

diseases as fevers, Thus it is that the

that it may arise in the course of such phthisis, acute rheumatism, and the like. 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 endeavor 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.

101. Pathology and Mental Disease. For a long time the methods which were applied to the discovery of the pathology of [81] ordinary diseases were not applied to the pathology of insanity, and it is only very recently that any real system of pathological examination has been instituted in our large institutions for the insane, which have all along been talked about as magnificent fields for observation, while the only method by which observation could be made of the least service to humanity was rarely or never had recourse to. Of course much, very much remains to be done. Robert Browning, borrowing from Goethe, unconsciously perhaps, speaks of the

"Petty done, the undone vast,"

and to nothing could this phrase apply with more force than the so-called science of the Pathology of Insanity. But the recognition of its importance is certainly an effort directed in the right way. If, then, it is understood that the brain has a certain structure and qualities, if it is understood that in this respect it is exactly similar to a nerve or a muscle, and that it is its properties and functions which must be the object of the study of the morbid anatomist, some advance has been made. But, as Professor Bennet has said, "Psychologists content themselves with repeating well-known clinical observations, with the ordinary morbid anatomy or density of the brain, and with the metaphysical speculations which have been pushed as far as, if not further than, human