cases with relapse. Bathing, sulphate of quinine, and attention to hygiene, were followed by successful results.

Although these cases were important, they did not, in the opinion of M. Delasiauve, deserve a special nomenclature as a new form of mental disease. The phenomena of these cases do not belong to mania, nor specially to early age. They are met with in those forms of partial insanity attended with convulsions, such as catalepsy and epilepsy. The ecstatic state corresponds to a slight degree of cerebral erethism, whereby the intellect, acting through volition, is subordinated to the automatic organic system. Hence, if this view be correct, ecstasy may take place whenever from moral or physical causes the normal activity of the nervous centres is increased, and favours the production of spasm. The preference of these attacks shown towards early age may be explained by the greater impressionability of that time of life. In some instances this special predisposition is referable to onanism, or intimidation, which either depress or concentrate the nervous sensibility. Several of the patients were addicted to the solitary vice, nearly all had been the subject of cruelty or unjust rigour, or had been frightened by exaggerated representations of their offences, and by fear of the wrath of God.

M. Moreau had met with instances of this form of affection, and regarded them as cases of epilepsy, attended with a degree of stupor, offering some resemblance to ecstasy.

M. Belhomme inquired if M. Delasiauve considered that an analogy existed between ecstasy and catalepsy?

M. Delasiauve in reply, stated that he recognised in ecstasy a state of muscular immobility without contraction, accompanying a particular cerebral disorder, while in catalepsy there was abolition of feeling with tetanic rigidity. The difference is one rather of degree than of kind. Ecstasy seems to be a slighter degree of this cataleptic state.

M. Alfred Maury, mentioned an epidemic melancholy which had prevailed among the inhabitants of a district in Siberia, some years ago, under the influence of a Buddhist prediction. In this disorder the sufferers uttered a sad monotonous chant, concluding with a paroxysm of excitement, which was followed by insanity or restoration. The moral and physical condition of this people resembled that of childhood.

M. Buchez did not consider that either of the speakers had elucidated the phenomena related by M. Delasiauve. He would ask whether ecstasy occurring in the insane and epileptic is of the same nature as ecstasy occurring in the previously healthy and in those persons who can induce the ecstatic condition by profound meditation? He further asked, whether ecstasy and catalepsy are physiologically the same? whether they might exist separately? whether they have the same organic seal?

M. Baillarger had seen cases of melancholy stupor pass into ecstasy. He objected to the use of the word "physiological" to express conditions referred to in this discussion, and which he considered as strictly pathological. For instance, if ecstasy be a suspension of the intellectual powers, how can it be said to be a physiological state?

M. Alfred Maury compared the state of ecstasy to the passing delirium of fever, which, frequently recurring, may pass into insanity. M. Buchez considered that there was a great analogy, but not an identity, between the ecstasy occurring in health and that occurring in disease. M. Buchez further illustrated his opinions by reference to the state of internal abstraction or contemplation under which musical composers, without the presence of a musical instrument, veritably hear the pieces they compose; and a painter sees in imagination the persons he transfers to his canvas.

M. Ferrus asked if a person in a state of ecstasy was, medico-legally speaking, responsible for his acts; M. Ferrus promised to lay before the Society the particulars of some cases bearing upon this point.

On the Organic Cause of Mental Alienation, accompanied by General Paralysis. By M. BAYLE, who lays down the following as the chief points of his Paper :

1. There is a particular species of mental affection, of a symptomatic character, perfectly distinct from the essential forms of alienation, and forming a malady by itself, an individual malady, having its own causes, with symptoms and anatomical characters too distinct to permit of their being confounded with any other affection.

2. Its causes have one common effect in producing slow or sudden congestion of the vessels of the pia mater and brain.

3. The symptoms may be reduced to two, which commence and progress concurrently-viz., paralysis general and incomplete, and nonfebrile delirium with great feebleness of the faculties. The paralysis makes constant progress in the course of disease, and terminates in almost entire privation of voluntary movements. The delirium has the peculiar feature of being characterized by ambition, and passing successively through the forms of monomania, mania, and dementia. Frequently, mania is wanting.

4. The anatomical characters are those of chronic inflammation of the membranes of the convexity of the cerebral hemispheres, often extending to the subjacent surface of the substance of the brain itself.

The proofs of these positions are deduced from the post-mortem examination of the brains of insane paralytics compared with the brains of sane individuals, and from the analogy of this disease with other inflammations of serous membranes.

Among the lesions discovered in the examination of one hundred bodies, and which were characteristic of chronic inflammation of the membranes of the brain, some were met with in all cases, while others were absent in a certain number. The changes constantly met with were opacity, thickening, increased toughness of the arachnoid to such. an extent that sometimes it was possible to suspend a slice of brain by its means without tearing it; extreme congestion of the pia mater; thickening of the arachnoid of the ventricles, which also was covered with granulations; considerable effusion of serum into the cavities of the ventricles and into the network of vessels of the pia mater.

The morbid appearances less frequently met with were adhesions of the membrane, and the softening of the surface of the convolutions; false membranes, or extravasated blood. The substance of the brain was softer in a few cases; in some it was firmer; in the majority it retained its natural consistence.

These post-mortem appearances are not met with in other diseases than chronic meningitis; the slight opacities, &c., occurring towards the close of life in other forms of cerebral disease, do not offer even an analogy. They have always been found by M. Bayle after death from general paralysis, and never in the case of patients who have died from other maladies; hence it is inferred that chronic meningitis is the organic cause of insanity with general paralysis.

of

Structure of the Cortical Layer of the Convolutions of the Brain. M. BAILLARGER refers to his previous discovery of six alternate layers grey and white matter in the cortical layer of the brain, and states that MM. Foville and Gratiolet, in confirming his results, have added the existence of another layer of white matter. This last layer follows internally all the folds of the cortical layer, as the pia mater follows them externally. The cortical layer of the convolutions separates itself distinctly from the white substance, especially at the depths of the anfractuosities; it remains, in effect, as if doubled by a very thin layer of this substance. This is a fact which, observes M. Baillarger, he had himself more than once observed, but to which he had not attached the importance it merits. M. Baillarger does not, in the present communication, examine the structure of this white layer, nor the nature of its connexion with the grey substance and the radiating fibres. The present notice records a fact in pathological anatomy, the separation of a group of convolutions from the white substance, and lined by this seventh lamina, such as he has often met with in the sheep.

A female, thirty-seven years of age, was admitted into the Salpêtrière, suffering from symptoms of general paralysis; at the end of eighteen months she died. The left hemisphere of the brain was found softened throughout its whole extent. The attempt to raise the thickened membrane brought with it the entire cortical layer and a portion of the white substance of the brain. At the anterior and superior part it was possible thus to raise and separate an entire group of convolutions. On examining these convolutions in their then reversed position, their summits were smooth and of a bluish-white colour. On cutting into the summit it was observed that the white layer which covered the cortical substance was grey and very thin, of a uniform consistence, and tolerably adherent. This white lamina is the layer described by MM. Foville and Gratiolet as the seventh layer of the cortical substance of the brain.-"Annales Médico-Psychologiques." Janvier.

"The American Journal of Insanity," July 1855, contains a history of the several attacks of insanity under which his Majesty King

George the Third suffered. These particulars, which have not hitherto been published in any collected form in this country, have been collected from "parliamentary reports, public papers, political squibs, diaries of persons about the court, tittle-tattle sent to other nations," &c., and have now been embodied in the form of a narrative by Dr. Ray, of Butler Hospital, Providence, United States. We take leave, however, to question whether the result is worthy of all the labour it must have cost. We were in England too well aware of the melancholy fact of the King's insanity at the time, if not familiar with all the details. We have had too much reason to regret the consequences thereof to wish to revive so painful a subject. We are very well convinced that much indirect good has also been providentially educed from that national affliction, by the countenance it gave to improvement in the general principle of the treatment of the insane. Nevertheless, so much being taken for granted, we fail to perceive the benefit that can accrue to psychological medicine from a revival of scenes so painful, and from a history which, after all the laborious research of Dr. Ray, is still imperfect.

Our transatlantic brethren may probably trace in the results of the mental disorder of George the Third, their own elevation to a national status. We may be disposed to concur in the inference, but content to submit with the best grace we may to the dispensations of Providence, we would not raise the veil that screens the domestic griefs of royaltyin the belief that a sovereign has as inalienable a right to have his home held sacred as has the meanest citizen of a republic. And notwithstanding we may incur the imputation of a squeamish tenderness, we hold that such a narrative as the history of the insanity of the King goes very near to trench upon the inviolability of professional confidence. In the ordinary publication of cases by medical men, names are usually suppressed-and where for the ends of justice both names and particulars must be made known, still no more than is required for the furtherance of judicial objects is usually laid bare to public gaze. Why, then, should not the same measure be meted out to the most exalted member of society?

Part Fourth.

JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE LAW RELATING TO
CHANCERY LUNATICS.

LUNATICS, for the purposes of legislation, have been divided into three

classes :

1. Persons found lunatic by inquisition, often called Chancery

lunatics.

2. Persons not so found lunatic, but who are placed under the re

straint of a lunatic asylum; i.e., in private asylums, or as single patients, under certificates.

3. Pauper lunatics.

The various statutes relating to the first class were consolidated and amended by "The Lunacy Regulation Act, 1853" (16 and 17 Vict. cap. 70); "An Act for the Regulation of Proceedings under Commissions of Lunacy, and the Consolidation and Amendment of the Acts respecting Lunatics so found by Inquisition, and their Estates." The statutes relating to the second class were consolidated and amended by the 8 and 9 Vict. c. 100, "An Act for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics," and which has since been amended by the "Lunatics' Care and Treatment Amendment Act, 1853" (16 and 17 Vict. c. 96), "An Act to Amend an Act passed in the ninth year of her Majesty, for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics."

The statutes regulating the third class were consolidated and amended by "The Lunatic Asylums Act, 1853" (16 and 17 Vict. c. 97), "An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Laws for the Provision and Regulation of Lunatic Asylums for Counties and Boroughs, and for the Maintenance and Care of Pauper Lunatics in England.'

We have frequently in this journal considered the state of the law as to the second class, and in vol. vi. p. 590, we enumerated the various alterations and amendments made by the 16th and 17th Vict. c. 96, with reference to private asylums and single patients. We propose now to consider the state of the law relating to Chancery lunatics.

Previous to the year 1842, the practice in lunacy was conducted according to the then dilatory and expensive fashion of Chancery proceedings, in the offices of the Masters in Chancery; but in that year a measure was introduced by Lord Lyndhurst, and was passed,* which had the effect of greatly diminishing the delay and expense of proceedings in lunacy. The following were the principal alterations effected by that statute and the general orders framed under its authority. Two Masters in Lunacy were specially appointed to execute commissions of lunacy, and to conduct the business of the lunacy department of the court, which before devolved upon the Masters in Chancery. By this arrangement the time occupied in the execution of commissions, as well as the expense, was considerably reduced; the expenses of proceedings after the inquisition were also much reduced by the diminution of the number of petitions, orders, and reports, the Masters having jurisdiction to inquire and report in many cases without any order of reference; and the general orders in many cases provided for measures which previously would have required a special order in each case. These alterations having worked well, both simplifying the practice and diminishing expense, Lord Lyndhurst, in 1852, introduced into the House of Lords a bill for effecting further improvements, intituled "An Act to diminish the Expense of Proceedings under Commissions de lunatico inquirendo."

The expense of lunacy proceedings may be divided into two classes: 1. The expenses incurred in obtaining the decision of a competent

* 5 and 6 Vict. c. 84.