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becomes the perpetrator of unheard-of enormities; at another he is being crucified in different parts of the earth at the same instant. His keepers at one moment are no less important personages than the Maker of all things, or the Saviour of mankind; at another he knows them for what they are, and complains of their cruelty towards him. His moral sense, too, is blighted, and all his natural affections perverted. His mother and family are the objects of his hatred and aversion, even at the time that they are giving proof of their affectionate care for him. " Such is a well-marked example of general mania, presenting a wild confusion of mind and feeling, with one of the highest sentiments to which education and habit had given power, taking the lead of all the rest, giving its own coloring to every thought, and its own direction to every action. It is in this mixed and confused form that mania often presents itself: the intellect and the moral feelings suffering together, and the entire mind being the seat of strange and inex. plicable confusion.'-p. 236. When speaking of the plea of insanity in criminal cases, the author shows the injustice of the manner in which the subject is treated by the lawyers:" In civil cases, if a man can be shown ' to be non compos mentis, the law avoids his act, though it cannot be traced to, or connected with, the morbid imagination which constitutes his disease, and which maybe extremely partial in its influence upon his conduct.' This rule is very simple, and, if it err at all, it is on the side of safety. But in criminal cases, according to the highest and best legal authorities, it is not enough to prove a man non compos; but it must be shown that at the time he committed the act he did not know right from wrong. This is the received doctrine; but, as will be presently shown, the knowledge of right and wrong is not the only test which has been laid down. Now it is submitted that if the law in civil cases be right, the law in criminal cases must be wrong. If it be just to deprive a man of the management of his property on account of a delusion which has no immediate connexion with the affairs of business, ought not the same delusion which renders him incapable of civil acts, to render him also incapable of crimes ? Does his delusion eclipse only half his mind ? Has it not been abundantly shown that the madman's acts are as much the offspring of his delusion as his thought ? Do not the same faculties concur in civil as in criminal acts ? Is there not in both some wish, or emotion, or passion to originate the act, reason to plan it, and will to execute it ? What ground is there for supposing that the hand which holds a pen is not moved by the same delusion with that which grasps a dagger? The civil acts of a madman are not void on account of the direct effect of his delusion upon them, but because there is no security that the influence of the delusion may not at any moment extend beyond the usual sphere of action. It is just so with his criminal acts. There can be no certainty that the delusion which ordinarily affects only the intellect, or shows itself in harmless peculiarities of conduct, will not lead to acts of atrocious violence."-p. 257. After giving a slight historical sketch of the progress of opinion, from the time when it was laid down by Bracton, that madmen differ little from brutes, and by Lord Hale, that partial insanity is no excuse in the commission of any capital crime, to the time of Erskine, who showed that delusion is the true character of insanity, and that in order to render a madman irresponsible, it must be shown that his crime is the offspring of his delusion;-he grapples with the present generally received test, namely, that of right and wrong, which sprang up and superseded the test of delusion. He shows clearly enough not only that this test is impossible, because no man

Principles of Medicine; comprising General Pathology and Therapeutics, and a brief General View of Etiology, Nosology, Semeiology, Diagnosis, and Prognosis