ence, which does not in the least reveal the presence of a germ that the slightest cause may suffice to germinate.

"There is a physiological axiom-no sensation, no perception of sensation, without attention. Where then, from any cause whatever, internal impressions absorb the attention, internal impressions are necessarily unheeded, and are as if they were not. The individual is entirely delivered over to his internal reflections, to his meditations; he has broken with the outer world, so far, at least, as regards his thoughts. He is in a veritable dream, always within the limits of the same thoughts.

“b. The state of dreaming may be exhibited in its highest degree of development, even where the most important elements of sleep are wanting, for instance, in somnambulists.

"c. By the word sleep we understand that particular state which we can only comprehend by, so to say, decomposing and separating the physical from the psychical elements thereof."

Sleep, the author observes, is but a state of suspension, or temporary annihilation, of the thinking faculty, and between this and the state of stupor, whether produced by congestion of the brain or by the poisonous action of opium, hachisch, alcohol, or the inspiration of ether, &c., despite the differences of cause, there is absolute identity of physiological conditions. The objections urged against the identity of dreaming and delirium, M. Moreau attributes to the confusion of two essentially distinct points, the form and the basis (fond), the latter remaining uniform, however the former may vary. Apparently, the characters which most differ are, on the one hand, the duration of physiological sleep and its attendant dreams, the great number and variety of objects which constitute the latter; and on the other hand, the intermittence of phenomena of delirium proper, with the restricted limits within which, in ordinary cases, they are confined.

"But these differences are after all (M. Moreau remarks) but differences of form, which, considerable as they may be, do not destroy the identity of the nature of the phenomena themselves.

"So true is this, that one sees these very differences disappear in many acute cases of delirium, in all those caused by alcohol, opiates, &c., and in stupidity, in which the recent researches of M. Baillarger have shown that the play of the imagination is no less capricious, or less extensive, than in ordinary sleep. In many instances, indeed, it would be correct to say that physiological dreams are even more limited and restricted in their conceptions than those to which the name of delirium or insanity is exclusively applied.

"It would be sufficient to infer a greater tenacity and persistence, and the individual would be then positively and absolutely mad.

"This supposition, moreover, is borne out by more facts than generally supposed; thus there are many insane persons who trace their delirious ideas, or convictions, or hallucinations, to a dream. With many, insanity is in reality but the continuation of the dream.

"In confirmed insanity the dreams have effected such profound impressions upon the organism, that they cannot be effaced by the waking condition."

The impressions of dreams are sometimes so vivid that it is difficult to divest oneself of the idea of their reality.

"This is certainly a moment of insanity (observes M. Moreau, who adds) :In order that the insanity shall continue, we have only to imagine that the fibres of the brain have suffered too violent a shock to have recovered themselves. The same thing may occur more slowly."

M. Moreau supports his own views by quotations from Condillac, Sauvages, Virey, Spinoza, Van Helmont, and other writers.

"Insanity (the author proceeds to observe) implies a real transformation of personality. There are cases in which this transformation is so evident that the line of demarcation between the wakeful and the dreaming states could not be more clear and precise. There are among the insane, for instance, persons whose whole life previously to the delirium offers not a trace of its exist

ence.

Every act of the thinking faculty, performed without our free and voluntary assent, appertains to the state of dreaming.

"The mind cannot quit its ordinary wakeful condition without passing into that of dreaming; in any other state its actions must be destroyed or suspended, as in profound sleep or coma.

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'Sleep may be compared to the repose of a pendulum, which is still susceptible of new oscillations under the slightest impulse, so long as the machinery by which it is set in motion retains its integrity. Death may be closely represented by this same pendulum, when the destruction of its wheels has put it for ever beyond the possibility of moving. Time exists only in relation to the succession of our thoughts.

"It follows from what has been said, that the impression made upon the thinking faculty by loss of consciousness is the same, whatever may be its duration. Every person can recal that of which he is sensible at the moment of waking; whatever may be the length of time that has lapsed during sleep, the state of the mind is the same; there is a feeling of a new existence, the primary elements of which are supplied by the memory. It is perfectly true that in this state there is no difference between a moment and an age, so that if an individual were to wake at the end of many thousand years, his first impressions would not differ from what he would have experienced had he slept only a few hours.

What occurs when an individual who has been transformed by delirium, and coming to himself with his inner consciousness annihilated, recovers his reason after ten, fifteen, or thirty years of mental disease? Exactly what would have occurred had he woke from several hours' sleep. He is surprised that he does not find everything in the same state as at the moment that he was struck by insanity. His eyes seek the old objects, his affections look for the same persons; every person and object around him, and among which he has passed so many years, he sees now for the first time, or has but a confused recollection of having seen them. He cannot recognise in the grown-up persons around him his own children; he is not sure of his own identity, whence these wrinkles, these grey hairs, these indications of advanced age?"

M. Moreau concludes his paper in the following resumé :—

"It is not easy to allow that a body can be propelled simultaneously in two opposite directions.

Morally, likewise, whether it affirm or deny, the mind is in either the affirmation or negation entirely one and the same, successively or alternatelybut never simultaneously.

"Now, that which the delirious individual denies, he would in the normal state have affirmed. Moreover, since delirium, as we have described it, does not affect the essence of the intellectual powers, or if one may so speak, the internal economy of those faculties, but with an uniform relation to certain objects on which their action is directed, these faculties remain intact, even amidst their false and extravagant perceptions; so that we may say, without transgressing psychological truth, that the insane are such as they are according to the point of view from which they are regarded. It follows that not to

admit the absolute transformation of the ego in the state of delirium, is to declare that the soul may deny without ceasing to affirm, or in other words, may simultaneously undergo two modifications - two modes of existence which destroy one another."

As naturally connected with the preceding notice of M. Moreau's paper in the "Annales Psychologiques," we append an abstract of the Report of the Commission of the Imperial Academy of Medicine, by M. Bousquet, May 1855, upon a memoir of M. Moreau, on the pathological anatomy of delirium; and a brief notice of the discussion thereon. The Report takes exception to the views of M. Moreau, who, it observes, regards insanity, like other diseases, as an organic disease. The reporter charges M. Moreau with having confusedly used the words delirium and insanity, not regarding the distinction between the two: the one being a temporary condition, they remark, the other more durable, often lasting for life, and transmitted hereditarily; the one generally combined with fever and constitutional disturbance, the other compatible with perfect bodily health. M. Moreau, remarks M. Bousquet, considers that insanity has been viewed too much as independent of organization, and the dominant idea of his memoir is to restore it to its proper place. The reporter, as opposed to M. Moreau, holds that that source of the mental disorder is to be sought sometimes in the brain, sometimes elsewhere. The exclusive theory of either one or the other opinion they look upon as erroneous. The most opposite condition of the nervous centres may influence and implicate the brain; in these cases, insanity may be an eventual contingent effect. Reasoning from physiological analogy, it is urged that as impressions are conveyed from the periphery to the nervous centres, and vice versâ, so a similar relation of causation may occur in insanity. Besides which, those who attribute mental disease in all cases to structural change in the brain, contravene their own fundamental doctrine, which is not to admit anything of which they have not the evidence of their senses. The reporter further urges the difference between the temporary condition of the brain during sleep, and the permanent state of insanity transmissible hereditarily. The views of M. Moreau they consider to be the misapprehension of resemblance for identity.

M. Baillarger criticised and opposed the Report, which, he observed, contained only negative propositions; the general conclusion of which was to the effect, that as we are not able to unravel the mysteries of the subject, we should therefore expose all our doubts and conceal our hopes. The study of mental diseases, observed M. Baillarger, would not present the attractions it does, or be followed with so much ardour, if it were as fruitless as indicated in the Report. M. Baillarger defended M. Moreau, on the ground that his object was not to affirm the exclusively material nature of insanity, but to endeavour to counteract extreme spiritualistic notions, which to a too great extent influence practice. M. Baillarger further urged in defence of M. Moreau's opinions, that the author had enforced only a strong analogy between insanity and sleep.

M. Londe drew a distinction between delirium and insanity; in the former, he recognised only a disorder of the intellect; in the latter,

other functions also are deranged. M. Londe objected to the strictly physiological view of the opinion that insanity cannot exist without organic disease. M. Londe further criticised the objection of M. Bousquet, that if insanity be analogous with dreaming, then do we lose our reason nightly, and recover it in the morning. This view, said M. Londe, is too spiritual, for that natural sleep does not overtake us without our having some idea of its approach; but if before sleeping the brain be excited by drinking, or by emotions, or by work, it is attended with dreams more or less fatiguing. With reference to the failure of pathologists to detect any certain alteration of the brain in insanity, M. Londe observed that similar failure had occurred in other diseases. M. Londe, in concluding, stated his opinion to be that, in recent and curable cases of insanity, the causes, chagrin, &c., have acted upon only a portion of the brain; while in more serious forms of the affection-e. g., following violent disturbance, febrile delirium, &c.—the lesion has been general, or has become so, whence not only the intellect, but also other cerebral functions, are injured. M. Ferrus opposed the Report, which he characterized as having for its object to exhume and diffuse exclusive doctrines.

M. Piorry combated the arguments of M. Bousquet from the difference in the permanency of insanity as compared with that of delirium. This, observed M. Piorry, cannot be regarded as a ground of distinction, since cases of delirium with fever are met with lasting ten, fifteen, twenty days, or even longer; while there are cases of delirium without fever which should be regarded as insanity, passing off within a week: the absence of fever, according to M. Bousquet, distinguishes insanity from delirium. Insanity, again, does not always develop itself slowly, but often breaks out as suddenly as delirium.

In answer to the objection urged by M. Bousquet against the analogy drawn by M. Moreau between insanity and dreaming, M. Piorry observed, that it is by such physiological studies that psychological science is to be advanced.

With reference to the statements of M. Bousquet that morbid anatomy has thrown but little light upon the nature and cause of insanity, M. Piorry urged that it does not follow, that because in so delicate and complex an organ as the brain many instances occur in which nothing of value has been found, therefore that those numerous instances should be lost sight of in which sufficient has been found to account for the perversion of the thinking faculties.

The Report of the discussion upon this, M. Bousquet's paper, occupies eighty-two pages. We cannot afford space for its reproduction. It may suffice to say that it was severely criticised, and its principal positions refuted by various speakers.

Pathological Condition of the Brain in Epileptics.

AT the Société Medico-psychologique, January 19, 1855, M. Delasiauve observed how frequently no appreciable alteration of structure can be detected after death in epileptics; while on the other hand, the most varied post-mortem appearances are sometimes met with, in

which the etiological relationship is not traceable. He had recently met with a case in which a large osseous plate, from three to four centimetres in extent (=1.181 to 1.574 English inches), was placed in the form of an are between the two hemispheres of the brain, and appeared as if a portion of the falx were ossified. Was this growth, asked M. Delasiauve, the cause of the convulsions? It would not seem from its position, that it could have much interfered with the functions of the brain. The symptoms, moreover, seem to have coincided with an apoplectic seizure dating about four years previously, and which had left a large cell in the substance of the middle lobe of the left hemisphere, as evidence of its occurrence. There had been three or four paroxysms at monthly intervals; during the last few months the dementia and general paralysis had made great progress.

Another patient had presented a more striking ossific deposit. This was a fragment of bone, of a cubic form, about the size of a filbert, and studded all over with needle-shaped spicule. This fragment was lodged in the fissure of Sylvius, adhering. slightly to the pia mater. It is probable that these spiculæ irritated the otherwise healthy brain gave rise to the attacks. The patient had frequently suffered from vomiting, both at the time of the fits, and in the intervals. It was not clear whether these attacks of vomiting were referrible to the cerebral irritation, or to onanism, to which the patient had abandoned himself.

and

M. Loiseau related the case of an epileptic in whom it was found that an osseous growth had caused absorption of a portion of the hemisphere.

M. Ferrus related the case of a lady of high intellectual development, who had suffered from intense pain in the anterior region of the brain, and on one occasion an epileptic seizure occurred. It was found that an osseous tuft had been formed on the orbitar plate, which had torn the membranes and injured the brain.

A Peculiar Form of Insanity in Children.

M. DELASIAUVE brought this subject under the notice of the Société Médico-psychologique, February 26th. This affection M. Delasiauve described as having for its fundamental character a disturbance of the intellectual faculties, manifested more or less confusion of ideas, but was always complicated with ecstatic phenomena, the paroxysms of which varied in duration, and in some cases returned at short intervals. The patients remained several hours of the day as if wrapt in a sort of mystical contemplation. Often the attention was fixedly directed to one spot from which not even the most vivid impressions could arouse them. In other cases the attention was alternately directed to different points. The limbs and body were placed in the most grotesque attitudes and positions; sometimes the head was bent in forced directions, sometimes the arms and legs remained elevated and extended. In some of these cases there was seen slow and measured jactitation, after the fashion of Punchinello. Of the eight or nine cases seen by M. Delasiauve almost all were cured within a limited period, in some