also become perverted by disease, and sometimes to the most astounding degree. Bulimia, or excessive appetite for food, and methomania or dipsomania, or inordinate desire for intoxicating drinks, are now fully recognized as diseases. The late Dr. Francis, in giving a brief sketch of the character of one of the prominent citizens of old New York, said that charity compelled him to believe that bis enormous appetite was the result of disease. Excessive appetite is one of the characteristic symptoms of epilepsy, and it is oftentimes as uncontrollable as are the paroxysms themselves. Epileptics will rise from the floor, after a severe attack, during which they have frothed at the mouth, and exhibited the most violent contortions, go to the table and eat with a rapidity and ferocity that can only be explained by the supposition that the nerves which connect the central nervous system with the digestive apparatus are in a morbid condition.

Ungovernable attacks of passion, violent temper, and unnatural cruelty, are the results of insanity far more frequently than will probably be admitted by those who have not given this subject close and special attention. This class of patients are all about us, and are oftentimes all the more disagreeable and dangerous from the fact that in their calm moments they may be perfectly sane, upright, and kindly. Their disease has its exacerbations, its paroxysms of attack, and during the intervals their bearing may be entirely courteous, and their whole disposition sweet and tender. Some of the greatest and noblest men of history have been the victims of these paroxysmal attacks of insanity, and for that reason have been oftentimes terribly misjudged. They have been accused of inconsistency, of hypocrisy, and their strange conduct has caused many to lose all their faith in truth, purity, or virtue.

It may be remarked, by the way, that this paroxysmal character is not peculiar to insanity. Diseases of the lungs, stomach, and other organs, are liable to exacerbations, or paroxysms of attack, just

as much as diseases of the brain, and, during the intervals, the patient may appear to be entirely well.

Howard the philanthropist, who crossed seas and mountains to relieve the distressed, was a brute and a tyrant in his own family. Dr. Winslow says of him: "His cruel treatment caused the death of his wife. He was in the habit, for many years, of doing penance before her picture. He had an only son whom for the slightest offence he punished with terrible severity, making him stand for hours in a grotto in the garden. The son became a lunatic as the result of this brutal treatment." I am strongly inclined to the opinion that even the extraordinary benevolence of Howard was one of the symptoms of the disease in his brain, for insanity may have good as well as evil manifestations, and such exceptional self-sacri. fice as his, so blind, so persistent, so lifeenduring, is just as liable to proceed from a morbid state as the directly opposite qualities of ungovernable rage, intense hate, or cruelty. There is a point beyond which not only forbearance, but also the manifestations of benevolence, charity, self-sacrifice, devotion, spirituality-of all the higher and nobler qualities of humanity—may cease to be virtues.

Very much of the cruelty that we meet with in every-day life is the work of the partially insane. I know some really good men who sometimes, under peculiar circumstances, act more like lunatics than like reasonable beings. I knew a farmer, a conscientious and worthy man, who was at times attacked with paroxysms of rage so violent and irresistible, that he would beat his oxen most unmercifully, and without provocation. An acquaintance of mine told me that his father, who was one of the kindest of men in his family, very often whipped his children almost to death, and that, too, despite the tearful appeals of his wife, to whom he was most devotedly attached.

Much of the tyranny and despotism of the world have been the result of cerebral disease, and, if justice had been

done, not a few of the rulers of history would have been confined in asylums for the insane. Caligula, the beastly Roman Emperor, was certainly a lunatic. His accession to the throne was greeted with joy by the Roman people, and he afterwards became so popular, by the generous and conciliatory acts of his reign, that when he was attacked with sickness, sacrifices were offered in the temples for his recovery. His brain undoubtedly became diseased during his sickness, for from that time he became a changed man. The remaining four years of his reign were disgraced by some of the most unnatural and capricious tyranny recorded in history. He put to death a large number of his senators. Every ten days he delivered human victims to be devoured by wild beasts, and jocosely termed this horrid act"clearing his account." He caused divine honors to be paid to himself, in a temple erected expressly for that purpose, and under the superintendence of priests of his own appointment. He invited his favorite horse Incitatus to dine at the royal table, where he was fed on gilded oats and drank wine from jewelled goblets, and but for his premature death this animal would have been raised to the consulship.

In a

more enlightened and liberal age Caligula would have been deposed and sent to an insane-retreat. The Romans endured his cruelty for four years, and then put him to death by a well-planned and successful conspiracy. The career of Nero was somewhat like that of Caligula. In youth he was notably clever, kindly, and amiable, and for the first five years of his reign he ruled with clemency and justice. He was at this time so harassed by the attempts of his mother to wrest the sceptre from his hands, that his brain probably became disordered, and he was metamorphosed into a tyrant. He poisoned his own brother at a feast to which he had invited him. His mother, Agrippina, he murdered in her own bed. He relentlessly persecuted the Christians, on the plea that they had set fire to Rome. He caused to be executed Lucan the poet

and Seneca the philosopher, and kicked his own wife to death. Nor was his insanity manifested by acts of cruelty alone. He had a silly rage for music, and in his morbid ambition to be thought the greatest singer of the world, he appeared on the stage in the character of an operatic performer.

Domitian, Heliogabalus, and possibly also some of the tyrants of Rome, must have been of unsound mind. Domitian, like Caligula and Nero, began to reign with generosity, and under the pressures and worryings of government he developed into a monster. Heliogabalus made his horse consul, appointed a senate of women, forced the Romans to worship a black stone, and prepared golden swords and daggers, and cords of silk and gold, in order to put an end to his own life whenever he saw fit. All these were the freaks of a madman. Alexander the Great behaved like a lunatic in the latter days of his reign, and the supposition is plausible, that if he had survived a few years longer he might have become a most implacable and capricious tyrant. From being very abstemious he gave himself up to debauchery. His lust for power became a disease, and he strove for gigantic impossibilities. Robespierre and some of the other leaders in the French Revolution were probably made more or less insane by the exciting events in which they took part. It is certain that Robespierre was natively kind-hearted and considerate, for he began life by endeavoring to procure the abolition of capital punishment.

Louis XI. of France was insane both in his despotic cruelty and in his caprices. He shut up his nobles in cages or hung them on the trees of the forest. He lived in constant fear of death, kept in seclusion in his castle, was on intimate terms with his hangman, amused himself by watching battles between rats and cats, drank the blood of young children, and tried various and abominable compounds in order to lengthen his life.

Jeffreys, the notorious English judge, was a raving maniac; and that he was

allowed to preside at the circuits is a severer comment on the scientific ignorance than on the political cruelty of the age.

We are compelled to believe also that Queen Christina of Sweden, who murdered her paramour, was in a morbid mental condition when she committed the deed; and on the same theory I account for the hideous and unfeminine cruelty of Catherine de Medici.

Of the insanity of Frederic William of Prussia I have already spoken; but his unnatural and whimsical treatment of his son and family was only one of its symptoms. He was inconsistently avaricious, scrutinizing every household expense with absurd attention, and lavishing fortunes on his army of giants. He would run through the streets caning the loungers and workmen who fell in his way until they roared for mercy.

Theodore, the late king of Abyssinia, was probably a madman. All accounts agree in representing him as being at first a just, considerate, as well as enterprising, ruler; but under the excitement and anxiety of domestic afflictions and the rebellions that took place in his realm, he became changed to a monster like the Roman emperors Nero, Caligula, and Domitian. The latter acts of his reign gave every evidence of a disordered brain.

Fortunately, our own country has thus far been mostly free from the rule of partial lunatics. Whether the inconsistencies of President Johnson's administration are due to cerebral disease or to native obstinacy, prejudice, and ignorance, cannot, at present, be well determined.

Extreme avarice may often be regarded as a symptom of disease of the brain. All very great misers are more or less insane. The desire of money is so absorbing and so constant, and the affliction of poverty is so perpetually dreaded, and the financial trials, successes, and surprises of life are so frequent and so exciting, that the love of acquisition, which is in itself a virtue, becomes so far perverted as to be an actual symptom of disease.

There are people who are perfectly sane on every subject except those in which money is concerned. Such persons deny themselves and those nearest to them of the plainest necessities of life, toil early and late, beyond their strength, in extreme old age, even when they and their heirs are beyond the possibility of want; or constantly worry about the future, living in continual fear of the poor-house; or incessantly count and re-count their possessions, under the apprehension that they are slipping from their grasp; or commit the greatest extravagancies in useless directions while denying themselves of daily comforts. A common symptom of this form of insanity is to imagine oneself to be poor even in the midst of wealth. Most of the eccentric wills that now often attract the public attention are the creation of brains that have become diseased by long dwelling on matters of finance; and it is just to assume that our institutions of charity are considerably indebted to the insanity of the rich for some of their most important legacies. I knew a man, of education and rare ability, who, for a long number of years, hoarded a fortune that he possessed in order that he might leave it to a number of benevolent societies. That the amount at his disposal might be as large as possible, he scrimped his wife, his children, and his servants, even in the minutest acts of expenditure; imposed on the hospitality of friends and the forbearance of his kinsmen; and in short, by his lifelong acts of meanness, made his name a bye-word and a reproach wherever he was known. Yet during most of these years he was actively engaged in responsible duties, and was justly regarded as a man of unusual ability and attainments; and not until his later and declining years did his friends ever suspect that he was a monomaniac. My own view is, that, from the first, his avarice was with him a symptom of cerebral disease, and the acts of imbecility and weakness that he committed, and the abandonment into which he fell, finally convinced those who knew him best that in matters of

Great and unexpected success as well as failure may give rise to financial insanity. Sudden wealth as well as sudden poverty may so excite the brain as to induce monomania or complete madness.

A striking case of this form of insanity is thus related by Dr. Winslow:

A young gentleman having £10,000, undisposed of and unemployed, placed it for business purposes in the hands of his confidential broker. This sum he invested in a stock that had an unexpected, sudden, and enormous rise in value. In a fortunate moment he sold out, and the £10,000 realized £60,000. An account of the successful monetary speculation was transmitted to the fortunate owner of this large sum. The startling intelligence produced a severe shock to the nervous system, and the mind lost its equilibrium. The poor fellow continued in a state of mental alienation for the remainder of his life. His constant occupation until the day of his death was playing with his fingers, and continually repeating without intermission, and with great animation and rapidity, the words, "Sixty thousand! sixty thousand! sixty thousand!" Insanity may manifest itself by great extravagance as well as by meanness. A medical acquaintance relates that, during the height of the petroleum excitement, he was consulted by a gentleman, who, by fortunate speculation, had suddenly become a millionnaire. The first time he came he handed the doctor a fifty-dollar bill, saying as he did so, "Your fee, doctor, I prefer to pay as I go." Nothing was thought of this, for it was precisely what any grate ful and free-hearted patient might do; but on the next visit, which was but two or three days afterward, he again handed the doctor a fifty-dollar bill, with the same remark as before. His disease was of a chronic nature, and demanded a protracted course of treatment. He visited the doctor at his office several times a-week for a number of months, and each time invaria

doctor was afterwards informed that he became so reckless in his expenditures that it was necessary for his wife or some friend to travel with him, in order to keep him from throwing his money away. He would throw a ten-dollar bill to the porter who carried his trunk upstairs, or to the boy who blacked his boots. A year's travel in Europe ultimately restored him to a measure of health, and, at last accounts, he was fully capable of managing his affairs.

Conscientiousness itself may become morbid, and when associated, as it so often is, with religious melancholy, is a very obstinate form of insanity. Much of the petty tyranny of school-teachers, guardians, and others in authority, is the result of disease of this faculty, and it is quite unfortunate for society that this fact is not better understood. I have known of two instructors for the young, whose administration of the government of the schools over which they presided was characterized by most unreasonable and inconsistent severity, and by that absurd regard for the tithe of mint and anise and cummin, which is so peculiarly distressing to children, and to all who are in any position of dependence. They enacted and enforced useless regulations, restricted their pupils in the exercise of the commonest privileges, and, under the mistaken plea of duty, made life a burden and a sorrow to themselves and to all who were in any way subject to them. Both of these teachers held important positions, one as teacher in a large academy, the other as principal of a ladies' seminary. Both were regarded, by those who did not know them too intimately, as faithful though somewhat injudicious teachers, and both were hated and despised by their pupils. Both have since given such unmistakable proofs of mental alienation, as to compel them to abandon their calling, and one, at least, has gone to an asylum.

These cases presented no remarkable features, but were simply typical of their class.

Religious mania is a very frequent and harassing manifestation of cerebral disease, and one which requires the largest tact and patience in its management. Not a little of the extraordinary self-sacrifice and voluntary renunciation of the common enjoyments and aspirations of existence, so often exemplified under both the true and false religions, is due to disease of the brain, which is brought on by over-exercise, and overexcitement of the religious nature. This form of insanity is so familiar that it is hardly necessary for me to cite instances that illustrate it. It is met with in India, amid the darkness of paganism, among the Mohammedans, as well as in all Christian countries both Catholic and Protestant. It appears among all nations who have any distinct idea of a God and a future state, but is especially liable to visit those who are possessed of a deep and earnest and absorbing religious nature that is wrought upon by trials and the influence of a partial or one-sided mental training.

Among the symptoms of religious monomania are the constant fear of the wrath of an offended God, and a disposition to perform extraordinary acts of self-mortification, extravagant dread of approaching death, and a painful consciousness of sin and unworthiness that can find no consolation in the Divine promise of mercy, persistent and wasting melancholy, and constant temptations to commit suicide. Some have a directly opposite experience, and are subject to agreeable and inspiring hallucinations. They imagine themselves in heaven, in direct communion with God. They declare that they are divinely commissioned to proclaim His will to men, and go forth to found sects and reform the universe. They experience the most extravagant and ecstatic joy, break forth into rapturous songs or ejaculations in the midst of public assemblies, and by gestures, dances, physical contortions, recklessly violate the customs of society and public decorum. Sometimes religious lunatics are possessed with the idea that they should not only mortify their own flesh, but, so

far as possible, should persecute to the bitter end all who differ from them in matters of faith. There is no doubt that the cruelty of the religious wars and persecutions of the world has oftentimes been greatly intensified by the insanity of those who were engaged in them. Dr. Winslow thus narrates a typical instance of this manifestation of insanity:

"A person who had been very active in leading and encouraging the bloody deeds of St. Bartholomew's day at Paris, when confessing on his deathbed his sins to a worthy ecclesiastic, was asked, 'Have you nothing to say about St. Bartholomew's day?' He replied, On that occasion God Almighty was obliged to me!'"

Some of the most successful founders of religious sects were more or less insane. Francis d'Assissi, Loyola, and Mahomet, and some of the founders of our modern religious orders and denominations, exhibited very suspicious symptoms of cerebral disease. Religious excitements, such as attend the starting of new sects and the advance of proselytism, and even our most useful revivals, give rise, especially among the lower classes, to temporary or permanent attacks of insanity. The rise and spread of Spiritualism and Mormonism have been attended with a very painful increase of religious insanity among all those classes who were influenced by these creeds, or who were drawn into the discussions which they called forth. There are about us, in every walk of life, persons who, in matters of religion, are unable to think a rational thought or speak a rational word, and yet, on all other subjects, uniformly show themselves to be perfectly sane and true. It would be hard to conceive of a severer form of earthly misery than is experienced by some of the religiously insane. A gentleman who was at one time under my observation used to depict the horrors of his spiritual condition in language that was at once graphic and appalling. He was harassed, as the religiously insane often are, with fearful doubts and skepticism in regard to the