I thank you most heartily and sincerely for the very high honour you have conferred upon me in electing me as your President for the ensuing year. I confess that I feel myself very undeserving of this distinction, and very unequal, I fear, to discharge the duties attached to the office in a manner becoming its dignity and importance. The head and front of my ill desert has been my irregular attendance, or rather my regular absence from the meetings of the Association; and it was, therefore, with feelings of surprise, as well as gratification, that I heard of my election at your last annual meeting, where, as usual, I was absent. That I should have been elected in those circumstances, I cannot but regard simply as a compliment to Scotland, and to its metropolitan asylum, of which I have the fortune to be the chief. I thank you, therefore, most cordially, not only for myself, but for old Scotland and its modern Athens, as some of your poets have called her, or rather, I should say, for the town which we ourselves call by the more endearing name of Auld Reekie.

These establishments have scarcely received their due share of attention and discussion in the pages of the ‘Journal of Mental Science.’ To account for this, the principal reason is, no doubt, that medical practitioners feel themselves less at liberty to write about private houses and private cases than about those large public institutions which have become necessary in almost every county. This is not to be wondered at, for charitable and pauper institutions, where the poor themselves pay nothing except through the regular assessments, have always been considered peculiarly the places where more extended observations could be made than amongst private patients. However, as there is much that is different in the management, and in the social, though not in the moral and medical treatment of the two classes of patients, the observations which I shall make will probably not be considered out of place.

On considering the uncertain state of popular and scientific opinion with regard to homicidal insanity, it will appear that the confusion is due mainly to the influence of the method of studying mental phenomena, to the false foundation upon which psychology rests. The method is subjective, whereas it should rightly be objective. Each philosopher looks into his own consciousness, makes generalisations from what he thinks he finds there, and then, with these false visions of unseen realities, constructs the fabric of his system. As, however, the animal, the infant, the idiot, the uncultivated man of every clime and time, are none of them capable of introspective consciousness, it is obvious that a very large part of psychical nature is ignored by the subjective method. It is furthermore evident that a system which thus concerns itself with the most complex, with mind only at a certain degree of development, and neglects, instead of beginning with, the most simple, has no right whatsoever to the claim which it sometimes makes of being inductive. Accordingly it is found that the advances which in recent times psychology has made, have been actual appropriations from the physiologist. Beneke's psychology is in great part physiology clothed in psychological language; and Sir W. Hamilton borrowed from Beneke.

‘American Journal of Insanity.’—The July number of this Journal has the unusual quality in American literary productions of being made up of original articles by Americans. This is a proper subject of congratulation, for it must be more gratifying to both editors and subscribers that its original articles should be home-grown, and not mere reprints from British periodicals. To ourselves also it is much more satisfactory, on opening this ‘Journal of Insanity,’ to find it occupied with the results of American thought and observation, than with borrowed articles from contemporaneous literature. The very large number of public and private asylums in North America afford a most ample field for study and research, and the numerous learned and skilful physicians who superintend those asylums have no apology for neglecting its cultivation and failing to contribute the fruits of their labour for the benefit of their colleagues practising in the same department, through the medium of the Journal which is supposed to represent the state of psychological medicine in their native land. It is far from our purpose to imply that it is an evil to reproduce in the journals of any one country articles or memoirs appearing in those of other lands; indeed, this section of our own publication proves how far such an idea is from our minds; but it is a very different matter, and attains the magnitude of an evil, when it becomes a custom to occupy the bulk of a periodical with reprints of papers taken bodily from other journals, and not merely in abstract, to the exclusion of original communications. It is an evil long since noticed in many American publications, and has tended, and will tend so long as carried on, to blight original thought and arrest research.

“In 1847 (says Dr. Peacock), I published a series of weights of the human brain, collected at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, together with tables prepared from these observations, together with the much larger number of weights previously recorded by the late Professor John Reid. The observations which follow have been obtained since that time, and though comparatively few in number, yet, as they are not likely to be materially increased and may furnish a useful comparison with the former, I have thought them worthy of being placed on record. The observations on the specific gravity of the brain are entirely new. They were obtained by a different mode from that followed by Dr. Sankey, in his observations of the specific gravity of the healthy brain, and by Dr. Bucknill in his investigation of the density of the brain of insane persons. The former of these observers ascertained the specific gravity of the different portions of the brain, by placing pieces in solution of common salt of different densities; the latter adopted a similar plan, except that he employed solutions of Epsom salts. My own observations were made by first weighing the brain and its several portions in air, and then in distilled water, and calculating the specific gravity by the common formula, viz., as the weight lost by the brain in water is to the weight in air, so is the specific gravity of distilled water (1000) to the weight required.”

“The subject (says Dr. Stiff) of sanguineous cyst of the ear in the insane is of importance in a medico-legal point of view. Some writers allege that these hæmatic cysts are the result of injuries, either self-inflicted or from the employment of violence on the part of attendants and nurses. The statement of Gudden, in support of the latter view, has been most extensively circulated. He maintains that these swellings are entirely owing to mal-treatment, and points out that ears closely resembling those of the insane are not unfrequently met with amongst sculptures depicting pugilistic athletæ. Singularly enough, in his efforts to bring this home to the attendants, he avers that he has never met with an instance in which the injury could be traced to the patient himself, or to other patients. How this can be reconciled with the fact that patients frequently fall on the ear in fits, and are struck on it by their own associates, I am at a loss to imagine. Again, in the lately published work of Dr. Kramer, ‘On the Aural Surgery of the Present Day,’ the observations of that author are calculated to encourage the theory of the physical origin of the disease. He says—‘The causes of these bloody tumours on the cartilage of the ear are unknown, though we must admit that they are especially likely to be produced by violence (blows on the ear), which, perhaps, explains their more frequent occurrence on the left ear.’ (New Sydenham Society's edition, page 41.) In the ‘British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review’ for January, 1858, I published a short memoir on this peculiar disease, illustrated by engravings after photographs of the altered ears; and I therein advocated the contrary opinion, based upon observation and inquiry, that the lesion is not occasioned by physical injury, but that it is the result of a spontaneous hæmorrhage arising out of a pre-existing diseased condition of the vessels of the pinna of thee a r.

The case here related by Dr. Ritchie was admitted as a private patient into Bethnal House Asylum, London, on the 8th of September, 1843, suffering from chronic mania, in good general health; mind generally disordered, but quiet. She was, however, subject to paroxysms of excitement, the cause of which she alleged to be two other persons, who used some means, of which she was not cognisant, to excite her. She had various other delusions, such as that her actions and feelings were controlled by others; “that her husband” (he had been dead for some years) “is alive, and she occasionally converses with him;” “she hears a voice abusing her,” &c. From this date it appears that she had delusions of a similar nature, but of increasing intensity. Her bodily health was good, and unaffected by severe illness.

“Medical science,” says Dr. Donkin, “is indebted to Professor Simpson for having first directed attention to the coexistence of albuminuria and puerperal mania, in a contribution to the Obstetric Society of Edinburgh, in 1856. In this paper Dr. Simpson contented himself with demonstrating merely the frequent coexistence of the two morbid conditions, without attempting to explain the exact pathological relation between the renal and mental affections, leaving that to be accomplished by future clinical investigation. Dr. Simpson's communication is, I believe, up to the present time, the only contribution we possess on the subject, either in our own or any other language.”

In an elaborate paper upon this subject in the last two numbers of the ‘British and Foreign Review’ (April and July, 1863), Mr. Sedgwick has recorded numerous facts, which he has been at the pains to collect from various English and French sources; so numerous, indeed, are his observations, that his paper will supply a valuable storehouse of references to those who may wish specially to study the subject. The more general reader, overwhelmed by the multitude of unconnected details which seem to point to no conclusion, may, perhaps, find the ancient adage involuntarily rise to his lips—Non numerandæ sed perpendendæ observationes. It is an adage, however, which is more often the refuge of idleness unwilling to labour at the tedious collection of facts, than it is the legitimate expression of a just censure.

“Several patients applied spontaneously for admission, of whom four had formerly been inmates. They sought the protection afforded by the asylum, from a sense of their returning malady and inability to take care of themselves.