homicide exhibits himself as uncontrolled by the strongest principle in the reasoning man's nature-self-preservation. For an object which is really worth nothing to him—and which derives all its importance from an imagination essentially deranged-he, knowingly and deliberately, sacrifices that boon to which the sane man instinctively clings the most tenaciously. Yet our law, according to the fourteen judges, affirms that this stronger proof of ungovernable madness, if absent, shall take the lunatic asylum—if present, shall hasten him to the scaffold!" The writer adverts also to that form of insanity of which so many cases are on record, homicidal monomania; in which the unhappy patients, "without mental delusion and free of hallucination, with intellectual powers and bodily health apparently unimpaired, exhibit a morbid perversion of the moral feelings and propensities, and an invincible instinct, which hurries them into moral wrong, despite the warnings of prudence, the teachings of conscience, the wrestlings of the understanding, or the strugglings of the will. To send such men as these to the scaffold is not to serve, but to insult, justice."

of

In the Number for 22d July, p. 266, the editor discusses, in a very liberal and rational spirit, the question, What is the duty of medical men to Mesmerism? While bound to disbelieve marvellous assertions of which no sufficient evidence has been shewn them; on the other hand, says he, they are not, and, as philosophers, and searchers after the true, cannot be justified in treating Mesmerism with unenquiring credulity. "The time is past, and for ever, when the believer in any dogma, much less one which is thought to be founded on actual experiments, will renounce it on the derisive laugh, or the unexamining denial any man. Your ipse dixit authorities were never held in less awe, or more suspicion, than in the present day. If the enthusiastic assertor of improved propositions receive a sigh from our pity, the unreasoning and bigoted opposer of the probable or the proved, extorts a smile from our contempt. Incredulity is not necessarily wisdom. Like every other state of mind, its worth depends on its justness in relation to the circumstances on which it is exercised. It is as likely to be in error as its extreme: with some it is more likely. As medical men, our scepticism towards the new and the marvellous is greater, perhaps, than that of any other class. Our education has made so many wonders to the multitude plain things to us, that the inexplicable, whether new or old, becomes suspicious. There is no process in nature, however extraordinary, which is not satisfactorily accounted for to us by our professors. Nothing exists for which we have not a definite law and a definite action-and if we cannot explain terms by things, we can always explain, or try to explain,

things by terms-a marvellously agreeable mode of hiding from ourselves and others our ignorance. We are, too, a body forced into an acquaintance with not the brightest side of humanity, and are taught distrust by experience. All of us have heard, most had personal experience, of ingenious frauds. To be the dupe of imposture is an imputation on our professional skill; and the precocious sharpness and invulnerability to deception which we took credit for during the last months of our first session, are not allowed to forsake us when we can exercise them, with such increase to our credit, in a commencing or established practice. With this strong predisposition to incredulity, it is not wonderful that many of us make our readily formed judgments the arbiters of what is probable or possible, without any great care as to the asserted facts or nice abstract reasonings as to the soundness of our premises. It is new, it is extraordinary, it is unknown, or dissimilar to our experience: ergo, it is false. Now what makes this procedure the more captivating is, that nine times out of ten-ay, ninety-nine times in the hundred-it will be correct. We know that nine-tenths of the patents which cost so much money to secure, are left unworked; and of the schemers who surround and tease us with improvements, how few, very few, shew they are not wasteful enthusiasts. But there is an exception; the one-hundredth may be more than a dream. How many pitied and scorned the man who resolved to float through the clouds in that frail handiwork of his-the balloon! How many laughed at him who launched the first steam-boat on the American waters! How many smiled at the idea of nature, through the agency of light, flinging off the most astounding likenesses in seconds! How few disbelieved Humphry Davy when he, who thought the discovery of the philosophers' stone not impossible, proved that gas, instead of peacefully lighting London, must destroy it by combustion! or Lardner, when he shewed the impossibility of doing that which afterwards so availed him-crossing the Atlantic in a steamer! or that careful inventor who secured a patent to prevent the friction which would otherwise make railroad travelling impossible! Beyond the plainly incongruous, and what is evidently selfcontradictory, we know not what is impossible.

To

our medical brethren we say, then, on Mesmerism, as on every novelty in science, let us doubt till we know—let us nurse suspense of judgment till inquiry remove it. The philosopher, faithful to science, like the true believer in religion, 'tries all things, and holds fast by that which is true.' It is only by acting thus that medical men can be worthy of their profession, or maintain its respect in the eyes of discerning or unprejudiced society, or that any generation of us can pass into the tomb without being eternally stained like those who,

preceding us, witnessed and opposed the innovations of a Harvey, a Jenner, a Hunter, and so many other 'marvelmongers.'" Again, the reviewer of Mr Lang's book on Mesmerism, in the Number for 23d September, says, "As a body, the profession is justified in the position they maintain with respect to this doctrine, provided their disbelief shut not out inquiry. Credulity here is infinitely more dangerous to truth than philosophic scepticism. Knowing this, we cannot blame the profession for whatever caution they may manifest on the subject; but, we say, let those who have tastes and talents for the investigation persevere, and when the proper time arrives, the profession will shew that it has neither been insensible to all that is passing around it, nor forgetful of the interests of the public."

The Paris correspondent of the Medical Times, writing on 3d August, says, " M. Rivail has read a memoir to the Phrenological Society, in which he concludes, that Phrenology ought to be divided into three branches,-1st, organologia cerebralis-a branch which treats of the different parts of the brain affected to each faculty; 2nd, facultologia, which treats of the different faculties, and their union with each other; 3d, cranioscopia, which treats of the influence the brain exercises on the form of the skull, and of the external signs by which the development of these organs may be appreciated."-P. 315. In a previous Number (29th July), p. 283, the same correspondent gives some particulars respecting the number of insane persons in France and Belgium, and the proportion of cases attributed to moral and physical causes. The only other article in the Medical Times that we think it necessary to refer to, is a letter from Dr Thomas Smethurst of Ramsgate, published on 16th December, under the title of "Mesmerism Unmasked." Dr S. there exposes what appears to have been an attempt to convince the spectators, by a juggling trick, that a boy, whose face was covered with a mask, could receive, through, or in spite of, its opaque substance, impressions enabling him to read, play at dominoes, and so forth. Whether the operator, Mr W. H. Weekes, a surgeon of Sandwich, will acquiesce in the accuracy of Dr Smethurst's narrative, remains to be seen.

4. The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. This work seldom contains any thing deserving attention peculiarly in a phrenological point of view. In the Number for January 1843, there is “An Account of Several Cases of Spectral Illusions, with Observations on the Phenomena, and on the states of bodily Indisposition in which they occur; by Robert Paterson, M.D., physician to the Leith Dispensary.

The author's materials are not very well put together; but his cases are interesting and instructive. He concurs with Hibbert and Brewster in the opinion, that "the mind's eye" is actually the body's eye, and that the retina is the common tablet on which both the images of external objects and those coined by the brain are painted; quoting Shakspeare's phrase as profoundly philosophical, and literally true. We contested this theory in a former article (vol. viii. p. 545), and need not repeat what was there urged against it. Suffice it to remark, that did the picture exist on the retina, the apparition would partake of every motion of the eye-which seldom, if ever, happens. There is no apparent necessity for first creating a spectre in the brain, next sending it out through the optic nerve to the retina, and lastly, returning it to the brain in order to be perceived. Surely the brain which imagines a spectre may be allowed the power of immediately perceiving what itself has created! The blind occasionally see apparitions, as is proved by Dr Macnish in his Philosophy of Sleep, by the case of a patient of his own; and if any blind ghost-seer, or even dreamer, could be found, in whom no retina existed, the doctrine we oppose must be at once abandoned by its supporters. We have made inquiries in the Edinburgh Asylum for the Blind, but have not discovered among the inmates any case of entire absence of the eyeballs. Some of those whom we questioned, stated, that they occasionally dreamed of seeing external objects. But it appeared that such dreams visit only those who have enjoyed vision at a period of life within their recollection. Persons blind from infancy said they dreamed only of having such sensations as they have while awake. We could not discover that any blind person in the Asylum had seen apparitions. If any of our readers can throw light on the subject, we beg to be favoured with a communication.

VI. Our Library Table.

1. The Zoist, No. III., for October 1843.-Upwards of fifty pages of this Number are occupied by an account of the proceedings of the meeting of the Phrenological Association at London, in July last. The Report of the Committee, Dr Elliotson's Introductory Address, and apparently one or two of the other papers read, are published entire; while, of the remainder, abstracts only are inserted. For a sketch of these proceedings, we refer to our section of "Intelligence." Article II. is a letter from Mr Arthur Trevelyan, expressing his regret that he had, without sufficient consideration, appended his signature to the Declaration of certain members of the

Association, published in our 74th Number (vol. xvi., p. 94). Article III. contains the proceedings of the London Phrenological Society, embracing (1.) a paper by Mr H. G. Atkinson, on the head and character of the late Lord Eldon; (2.) report of an Address by Mr Hudson Lowe "On the subject of the connexion of the views entertained by phrenologists with regard to what have been termed the reflective organs, and those of writers on psychology, or the philosophy of mind, with regard to the processes of suggestion and association;" (3.) Notice respecting a cast of a head submitted to the assembled members for an opinion, with the result; and (4.) an Address by Dr Elliotson on the influence of the feelings upon the intellect. In the first paper (which is illustrated by two lithographed views one of a cast of Lord Eldon's head, and the other of the head of the philanthropic Basil Montague, as a contrast), Mr Atkinson estimates his Lordship's moral qualities, except Veneration, very moderately. Mr Lowe's report of his Address is accompanied by some uncourteously expressed editorial comments. Respecting the cast submitted to one of the meetings, the Zoist publishes the development pronounced by several of the members, and the inferences drawn therefrom. Dr Elliotson's Address concludes as follows:-" Pains enough are taken by teachers to inculcate opinions; but no pains to teach the solemn duty of examining into the grounds of all opinions,—of holding no opinion without good reason. A great business not yet accomplished is to teach the million to think: to ask themselves the reason of all they feel assured of: to regard it as low morality to hold opinions from mere imitation and habit, and not to have courage to confess ignorance rather than hold opinions without strict examination." The Society adjourned till the first Wednesday of November. The meetings will in future be held at the Marylebone Institution, Edwards Street, Portman Square and ladies will be admitted every night. The rest of this number is filled with cases reported by Dr Elliotson, of palsy, and deafness and dumbness, cured by Mesmerism.

As yet, the readers of the Zoist have looked in vain for the promised revelation of those all-important and regenerating principles and deductions which "the faint-heartedness and cold calculating withering apathy of our leaders"—" men who have winked at error, for the most selfish of all objects, a contemptible and fleeting popularity,”-had, until the advent of the Zoist, prevented them from "boldly avowing" as "the deductions to which an unfettered intellect would lead." It is to be hoped that the Zoist will proceed, without farther delay, to redeem its pledge.

2. The Phrenological Almanac, No. III., for 1844, though