The nerve-current which transmits sensations to the brain, and the orders of the will to the extremities of the body, requires a certain time to travel in. Impressions coming from without are not perceived at the instant they are produced, they travel along the nerves at the rate of 20 to 30 métres (25 to 40 yards) in a second, which is the same speed as that of the carrier pigeon, of a hurricane, or of a locomotive engine at its quickest, but very much less than that of a cannon ball. For instance, we can only be conscious of an injury to one of our feet about one twentieth of a second after it has actually occurred, and the commands of the will proceed equally lowly from the centre to the peripheries of the nervous system. In he human body the time thus occupied is unimportant, but let us take the case of a whale, where the telegraphic network of the nervous system is far more extensive. A boat attacks the whale, and a harpoon is driven into its tail. The impression thus produced has totravel over some forty yards before reaching the head-quarters of the will; a second is thus lost. How long a time is then required for reflection? That must depend upon circumstances; but at any rate it is certain that the will has need of some definite amount of time for its decision. The order to capsize the boat is despatched to the tail, but another second must elapse before the telegram reaches its destination, and in the time thus employed the whaling boat has pulled off and escaped the danger.

I am very loth again to take up the time of the readers of this Journal on the subject of the “treatment of a certain class of destructive patients,” but Dr. Sheppard, in the last number,* has in many places so misunderstood my meaning, and consequently so misrepresented my facts, that I cannot allow his paper to pass without endeavouring briefly to rectify some of the more glaring discrepancies.

Aphasia is the term which has recently been given to the loss of the faculty of articulate language, the organs of phonation and of articulation, as well as the intelligence being unimpaired. The pathology of this affection is at the present time the subject of much discussion in the scientific world; the French Academy devoted several of their séances during the year 1865 to its special elucidation, and the Medical Journals of France and of our own country have lately contained a good deal of original matter bearing upon this obscure feature in cerebral pathology.

The trial of Louis Bordier, a Frenchman, for the wilful murder of the woman with whom he had cohabited for thirteen years, has afforded another painful illustration of the extremely unsatisfactory method of procedure followed in our courts of justice when the insanity of the prisoner is suspected or alleged.

The Alton murderer certainly did no credit to his art. His crime was conceived without ingenuity, and executed in the coarsest manner; the only remarkable features in it being its simplicity and atrocity. On a fine afternoon a clerk in a solicitor's office takes a walk outside the town; he sees some children playing in a field by the roadside; one of these, a lively little girl, between eight and nine years of age, he persuades to go with him into an adjoining hop-garden, and the others he gets rid of by giving them a few halfpennies to go home. In a little while he is met walking home alone, and he returns to his office, where he makes an entry in his diary. But what has become of the little girl? Noone has seen her since she was taken from her playfellows into the hop-field. Her parents become alarmed; they arouse their neighbours, and an anxious search is made for the missing child. It is ascertained that she was last seen on her way to the hop-field, and when the searchers hurriedly proceed there, they find the dismembered fragments of her body scattered here and there. A foot is in one place, a hand in another, the heart and the eyes are picked up after a long search; and some parts of the body cannot be found at all. The poor child had clearly been murdered, and her body cut into pieces; but what she underwent before she was butchered may be suspected but cannot be discovered, because the “vagina was missing.” Suspicion fell directly upon the prisoner, and he was arrested. In his desk was found a diary, and in the diary the following entry just made: “Killed a little girl: it was fine and hot.” Such are the main facts, briefly told, of the murder; it is not surprising that they excited horror and disgust in the public mind, and that the prisoner was denounced as a brutal and unnatural scoundrel, for whom, if he were found guilty, hanging was too good.

The follies and atrocities perpetrated in some parts of Southern Italy, during the epidemic of cholera, by the panic-stricken populace, are a grim satire on the enlightenment of the age. Acting under the ignorant belief that the cholera was propagated amongst them by the authorities or other persons, who either poisoned the wells or infected the air with some deadly poison, they violently attacked and murdered those who became the unfortunate victims of their frantic suspicions. At Ardore, a town in Calabria, on the appearance of the cholera, the people assembled in arms before the druggist's shop, loudly declaring their intention to burn it to the ground. An officerwith a few soldiers in vain attempted to prevent the execution of this design. The mob rushed madly forward, trampled the unfortunate officer to death beneath their feet, set fire to the shop, and ruthlessly butchered the druggist and his family. Twenty other persons also fell victims to the ferocity of the enraged multitude. Similar tumults occurred in other places. At Potentino the mob surrounded the house of a certain Antonio Sabellino, with whom resided his brother Francesco, and a friend, Giacomo di Mattia, accusing them of being poisoners. The rioters broke into the house and searched for the alleged poison. At last they found on a shelf a jar full of paste, which Sabellino kept for poisoning rats. A dog having been made to swallow some of the paste died in a few minutes. This was thought conclusive, and the mob rushed upon the ‘two brothers and their friend and brutally murdered them. In the parish of Oogliano it was firrnly believed that the poisoners went from door to door and blewthe infection through the keyhole. Accordingly a great number of the lower class of people abandoned their houses and camped out in the open air, so that they should not be poisoned; while those who remained at home were constantly firing muskets out of their windows with the idea of paralysing the action of the poison. The authorities and the troops only succeeded after immense efforts in convincing the people of their folly.