I. History of the Case. G. T., No. 279, age 30, was admitted into the Sussex Lunatic Asylum under an order from the Secretary of State, on the 14th November, 1859.

He was transferred (as belonging to the parish of Brighton) from the Kent County Asylum. I received the following letter respecting him, from Dr. Huxley, the Medical Superintendent of that asylum. It very clearly and accurately relates the previous history of the case.

Among the symptoms of apoplexy, says one of the most distinguished of our recent writers on medicine, that are more especially of evil omen, are those which can be traced to the involvement of the automatic functions of the cerebro-spinal axis; nineteen out of twenty patients will die, in whom the phenomena appear which indicate derangement of this portion of the nervous system. I fear that in cases of the special disease we are now considering, the loss of power over the “sphincters” is almost of equally fatal import, but still it very naturally differs from the same symptom in ordinary apoplexy, inasmuch, as it may exist for many months, before the fatal issue of the complaint. Apparent want of power over the sphincters may arise in general paralysis from various other causes besides absolute lesion of the cerebro-spinal axis, such as the presence of delusions, or the supervention of sudden spasm in the patient, and still more frequently from a want of attention on the part of the attendants, and these last are of course essentially distinct in their nature, and require a special treatment; but even in cases in which the loss of power has been sudden, even those in which paraplegia has appeared, and the patient, comatose and insensible, seems on the point of death, if they have before been suffering from general paralysis, they may, and often do rally; in fact, the prognosis is less gloomy when there has been long-continued disease of the brain of this kind, than in patients in whom the symptoms have supervened upon perfect health.

In a former paper contributed to this Journal, containing retrospect of “Ulster Revivalism,” the writer took occasion to remark that the physical features of that extraordinary movement were to be considered not merely as an accompaniment or accident, but in reality as an essential and integral portion of it. This assertion will bear to be submitted to the most stringent test of fact, so far as its truth is concerned; and if borne out affords a most important and suggestive view of the entire subject; so much so indeed that its legitimate inferences will be found to throw an instructive reflex light on all past movements of the sort under consideration, as well as to afford some useful and practical considerations as regards the future. The intention of the present paper is to take a brief historical glance at the physical development of certain religious movements of this class, accompanied by an endeavour to trace these into that one which has just transpired, mainly for the purposes above indicated.

Potentiality refers to an idea sufficiently well known both in physiology and psychology. Thus, in physiology, a serous empty sac is a potential cavity; and, as respects potentiality, in reference to mental phenomena we may conveniently conceive it as parallel to the potentiality of the phenomena of life existing in the germ at the moment of its first detachment from the parent, previous to the commencement of uterine life.