The time allotted for the delivery of a lecture did not allow me to state, when we last met, the appearances found on dissection in the thorax and abdomen in cases of insanity.

I will now do so very briefly, and will afterwards speak of that which I had proposed more particularly to form the subject of my present lecture, viz. the treatment of insanity.

What a painfully distressing feeling must that be which one who has faith in the doctrines of phrenology, and experience in the art of it, is compelled continually to undergo! In his converse with men, the most disagreeable suspicions with regard to their feelings, their motives, their abilities, and their whole characters must ever be obtruding their dark shadows over the serenity of his mind. As a judge on the bench, a counsel at the bar, or the foreman of a jury, it will be to him an irresistible conviction that no reliance can be placed on the evidence of that witness in the box, forasmuch as, on the top of his head, in the place where should gently rise a veneration-swelling, there appears a most palpable pit, in which clearly all faith in the sanctity of oath may be hopelessly buried. What a cold sweat of agony, too, must ooze out over the phrenologist's body, when, prostrate on the bed of heavy sickness, he sees written on the fore-head of the being into whose hands the event of his recovery seems placed, that there is no power there of tracing out the causes of his ill, no faculty there for comparing and judging the value of symptoms and remedies! And then to be so often obliged to feign an intimate intercourse or to transact confidential business with one whose cranial conformation proclaims that no intimacy, no confidence, no security can abide. Verily, if phrenological knowledge be true, it is a blessed want to be without it. Conceive, if possible, the angry consternation of a future mother-in-law, if, before definitely proposing for her daughter's hand, a polite but resolute claim was put forward to a careful phrenological examination of her daughter's head. And yet that would be the bounden duty of a faithful phrenologist. Nor would accurate craniological knowledge be any great blessing to the individual, as regarded his personal welfare. For, inasmuch as the majority of men are foolish, and a great proportion of them very foolish, it is evident that a great many heads must be of indifferent conformation. What, then, would be the result of a general knowledge of this? Why, the vacillator would be surely confirmed in his vacillation, for he would fancy he saw his want of firmness to be in the purpose of the universe; the sensualist would wallow deeper in the mire of sensuality, for he would challenge the fate of a necessity in his acts; the thief would steal with greater abandonment and more industrious infamy, for he would consciously bow before the inexorable tyranny of organization; and the atheist might, with a scoff, silence for a moment his antagonist, by summoning in the effect the testimony of a cause in which he dreamed that he disbelieved. It appears to be the right fulfilment of an individual's destiny upon earth not to trouble himself greatly about deciding what he can do, but to do what he can. No advantage ever comes to any one from an excessive attention to the elements of his own character, or the phenomena of his own mind. Great self-consciousness is more or less of a disease; and that which is appointed to each one is to do with all his might that which lies before him to do—to work with earnest, sincere, moral, and intelligent labour in harmony with nature's laws. It is of such labour that it has been said, laborare est orare; and to one so working there need be no fear of failure, for the laws of the universe are his support; beneath him are “the everlasting arms.”

It is remarkable, considering the advance which has been made in the study of the diseases of the mind during this century, that so little is still known concerning idiocy and idiots. With an increasing population, there is no decrease in the numbers of these helpless beings; their origin is connected with the, apparently, inevitable results of our social system; their very existence is, in most instances, a natural protest against vexatious and unreasonable interference with those great laws which govern the well-being of communities; and, both in a scientific sense as well as in a philanthropical, they have great claims for consideration.

The study of the intermissions which occur in the course of general paralysis is not the least interesting chapter in the history of this disease. Is it not a matter of surprise, that an affection which occasions such grave disturbances of the cerebral organ should undergo ameliorations so pronounced as might well be taken for a real cure, did not the experience of each day teach us that it is but arrested for a longer or shorter time, and that sooner or later the paralysis resumes its fatal course. Have not even alienists asserted that they have cured demented paralytics ? The existence of intermission in the course of general paralysis does not at the present time need to be demonstrated. It is enough to glance at the treatises of MM. Calmeil and Bayle, to find the most remarkable examples of it.

The physical symptoms attending the general paralysis of the insane have been shown to present in their progress three well-defined stages. Some of the earliest physical signs—any one of which associated with a particular form of insanity will almost infallibly indicate the first stage of this special disorder—are the intermittent pulse, the irregular or contracted pupil, the quivering lip or embarrassed articulation. The second stage is marked by loss of power in the upper extremities, by a gait more or less unsteady, by diminished sensation in the cutaneous nerves, or by the loss of some of the special senses. In the third period the disease approaches its climax, in an entire want of motory power, and by an impairment of all the nervous functions so universal, that although organic life may, under careful treatment, be prolonged for a considerable time, the patient may be said to exist rather than to live. Epileptiform attacks may precede or accompany any one of these stages. They sometimes very distinctly mark out their boundaries, or the disorder may run its course without any recognised convulsive seizures.