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resenting accidental contact with curses and blows. She hasbeen insane six years, and is now about forty years of age.There are several other examples in the asylum, as that ofE. D-, in female ward No. 10, who calls herself QueenVictoria ; and all the examples are in incurable cases. In mostof these you will find a defective forehead, and a high vertex.In patients of a rank above that of our Hanwell patients, aremany, especially of the female sex, who present these cha-racters of the head. You will generally learn that they werewayward from childhood; that a love of distinction has beencarefully cultivated ; and that their moderate intellectualpowers offer very small resistance to delusions. The ill-directed ambition of parents usually aggravates the faults ofcharacter of such young women into actual insanity.Although hereditary insanity is often recovered from, there

is always an unhappy tendency to relapse. In private practice,where evidence of this character of the affection is moreaccessible than in the annals of the poor, hereditary predis-position is found to be of very frequent occurrence, and to beoften derived from the families of both parents. In everycase in which this hereditary character prevails, our opinionof the prospect of cure should be guardedly given. The prac-titioner, however, and still more the superintendent of anasylum, may sometimes be placed in a difficult position by theknown hereditary character of the malady of a patient appa-rently convalescent, or quite recovered from an attack. Re-lapse may be almost certain, and the time of it uncertain, andthe form of it unsafe, and yet the mind may be so much re-covered in the interval, that interference with the patient’sliberty does not appear justifiable. This can scarcely bebetter illustrated than by the case of G. D. C-, in our maleward No. 11, who is about to leave the asylum, (1842.) Heis thirty years of age, and has been, during three years past,frequently insane, and three months only in the asylum. He Ihas gradually become quite well, and is naturally anxious i,to go home. We find, however, that his periods of sanityare seldom long-continued,-that his father and grandfatherwere both insane,-that he had a brother whose state borderedon insanity, and a sister who destroyed herself. He and hisbrother were both always liable to violent headachs, and thesame predisposition has shown itself in his child. When hisinsanity first appeared, he was, for a time, abstracted andsilent; but soon made attempts to burn his house, and also todestroy himself, alleging that he never could be cured. Hisown account is, that he became ill from fretting, during along illness of his wife, fearing that he should lose her. Weshall be obliged soon to discharge this patient, as he is nowquite sane, and it is impossible to say that he may not continueso for some time. In private practice you would be still lessable to detain such a patient in an asylum.The question of the propriety of marriage with persons of

insane families is sometimes very important, and referred tomedical opinion. In every family, however disposed to in-sanity, I have always found so many members of the family ofperfectly sound mind, that where there has been no attack ofinsanity in the particular case, and no peculiarity of characterhas ever shown itself, I should always hope that the individualmight escape; and I meet with so many cases, in women espe-cially, where a nervous family character, even amounting tounsoundness of mind, has evidently been increased by celibacy,and the absence of domestic affections and occupations, that Ishould always lean to the indulgent side in such cases, andfeel averse to dissuasions from marriage with a partner of ahealthier mind. Doubtless, also, by a succession of healthyalliances, such a disposition might be expected to disappear.The expectation of the cure of insanity is generally admitted

to diminish in proportion to the duration of the malady andthe increasing age of the patient. Those who are advancedin age seldom or never recover from insanity. Patients dosometimes recover after having been insane fifteen or twentyyears. W. W-, aged forty-five, went out of this asylumin 1839, quite well. He had been insane twenty years: hewent out quite sane, but into a world of strangers; all hisfriends had died, or grown old, or disappeared from the neigh-bourhood in which he was grown up. He had to contendwith loneliness, and poverty, and bodily ailments; but hismind did not give way. J. C- was discharged in 1842,after being ten years here, and some years in other asylums;but the protracted difficulties with which he had to strugglebrought him back to us two years afterward. He now seemswell and comfortable, and if he had been more fortunate whenat liberty, he would probably have continued sane.In general, however, the greater number of cures occur in

the first and second year, after which the probability of curegreatly diminishes. Still, many patients recover after being

ill three, four, or five years, both after mania and melancholia.Whilst I confess that experience has taught me to doubt thecurability of the majority of cases of insanity, it has alsoshown me examples of unexpected recovery after years ofmental disorder, which prevent despair.

The mortality, also, is greatest in the first two years of themalady, so that whilst a cure may be most hoped for if thepatient survives the beginning of the attack, we must remem-ber that the life of the patient is itself uncertain. For thegeneral proportion of cures and deaths,—the effect of differentkinds of treatment,-the age at which insanity most com-monly appears,-the liability and comparative curability ofthe different sexes, and many other particulars of more or lessinterest, I must refer you to the statistical returns appendedto the Reports of different lunatic asylums,—to the excellentessay prefixed to the translation of Jacobi, by Mr. Tuke,-toDr. Thurnam’s recent and comprehensive work on the " Sta.tistics of Insanity,"-to the " Report of the Commissioners inLunacy in 1844," and to the article, " Lunatic Asylums," in the" Supplement to the Penny Cyclopaedia." The object of anyremarks of mine on the subject, in these lectures, is to enableyou to form tolerably correct opinions of the probable progressof individual cases.My observations on relapses must be made with the same

limited intention. Indeed, I scarcely know any tables of re-lapses that can be considered as correct. That relapses arevery numerous, I am very well convinced, and I fear theyamount to one half of the number supposed to be cured. Theyare said-but I scarcely know upon what grounds-to be rarestamong the rich. Assuredly the distress to be faced by thepoor man on his recovery is overwhelming, and such as inmany cases to exclude every ray of hope. All the worldhas gone on without him, and he seems shut out from everyavenue to independence, or even to procuring a subsistence.His home is often ruined, or exists no more; his family is dis-persed, or his children are in the workhouse; his friends areestranged from him; and if it can ever be said of any human

being without impiety, it may be said of him, that his life isa superfluity, and death the only blessing he has to expect.We much require an institution, subsidiary to the asylums

for the poor, to which those cured or decidedly convalescentand curable might be removed, and where they could be sup-plied with work, receiving board and lodging, and some smallpayment in money for a time, until they could find work anda home for themselves. In Paris, such an institution exists,and even the children of the insane can be received into itduring the malady of their parents, and properly taken careof. By this excellent charity many a convalescent from in-sanity must be saved from relapse, or from a broken heart.But it is a subject which has not yet received adequate atten-tion in our country; any more than the great distress entailedon those above the class of paupers, but wholly dependent oncontinued exertions, when insanity affects them, or those de-pendent upon them. I trust it may be the happiness of someof those whose attention has been directed, by these lectures,to the condition of our poor people at Hanwell, to succeed inobtaining some attention, on the part of benevolent persons,to these subjects, and in providing relief for some of thosebitterest forms of distress which are now scarcely regarded.

FOREIGN DEPARTMENT.

THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE PARIS ACADEMY OFMEDICINE ON THE PLAGUE.

THE following are the conclusions of the report which hasjust been presented by the plague committee to the Academiede Medecine:—

"1. The plague has been seen to arise spontaneously, notonly in Egypt, in Syria, and in Turkey, but likewise in a greatmany other countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe."2. In every country in which the plague has been observed

to arise spontaneously, its development may, with reason, beattributed to determinate causes acting on a great portion ofthe population. These causes are, particularly, dwelling onalluvial soils, or on marshy lands near the Mediterranean sea,or near certain rivers, such as the Nile, the Euphrates, andthe Danube, low, badly-aired houses, a warm and moist air,the action of animal and vegetable matter in putrefaction,unwholesome and insufficient food, and great physical andmoral suffering.

e "3. All these causes being united every year in LowerEgypt, the plague is endemic in that country, where, almost

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every year, it is seen under the sporadic form, and every tenyears under the epidemic form.

" 4. The absence in ancient Egypt of every pestilentialepidemic during the long space of time that an enlightenedand vigilant administration and a good sanatory police hadcontended victoriously against the causes productive of theplague, justifies a hope that the employment of the same meanswould again be productive of the same results.

" 5. The state of Syria, of Turkey, of the regency of Tripoli,of that of Tunis, and of the empire of Morocco, being nearlythe same at the period when the epidemy of the plague hasshown itself spontaneously, nothing authorizes a belief thatsimilar epidemics should not again appear there.

"

"6. The spontaneous plague appears not to be apprehendedfor Algeria, because, on the one hand, the Arabs and the Ka-byles living, the one under a tent, and the others in placessituated either on the summit or on the side of a rock, cannotengender disease; and, on the other hand, because the drain-ing of several tracts of marshy land, and the truly remarkableimprovement introduced in the organization of the police inthe small number of towns existing, appear to afford a suffi-cient guarantee against the spontaneous development of theplague.

" 7. The progress of civilization, and a general and constantapplication of the laws respecting good health, can alonesupply us with the means of preventing the development ofspontaneous plague.

" 8. When the plague has raged with violence in Africa, inAsia, and in Europe, it has always shown itself with the prin-cipal characters of epidemic maladies.

" 9. The sporadic plague differs from the epidemic plague,not only on account of the small number of persons attackedby the malady, but particularly because it does not presentthe character belonging to epidemic maladies.

" 10. The plague is propagated in the same manner as mostother epidemic maladies-that is to say, by the air, and inde-pendently of the influence which persons attacked with theplague may exercise.

"11. The inoculation of the blood drawn from the veins ofa person affected with the plague, or from the matter of apestilential bubo, has furnished but equivocal results. Theinoculation of the serous matter drawn from the gangrenedulcer of a person suffering under the plague, has never giventhe plague; it is not therefore true that the plague can betransmitted by inoculation.

" 12. An attentive and strict examination of the facts con-tained in scientific works establishes, on the one hand, thatin the focus of the epidemic the immediate contact with thou-sands of pestiferous subjects has remained without dangerto those who have suffered it, with free air or in well-venti-lated places, and, on the other hand, that no strict observa-tion demonstrates that the plague can be communicated bycontact alone with the diseased.

"13. Numerous facts prove that the clothes which havebeen worn by infected persons, when made use of by otherpersons, have not communicated the disease, although theyhad not undergone any kind of purification.

" 14. That the conveyance of the plague by means of mer-chandise, in countries where the plague is endemic, or epi-demic, has been in no way proved.

"15. That the plague may be conveyed into epidemic placesby the vapours which the infected exhale.

" 16. That it is an incontestable fact that the plague maybe conveyed out of epidemic localities, be it on board vesselsat sea, or in the lazarettos of Europe.

" 17. Nothing proves that the pest is transmissible out ofepidemic places by the immediate contact of the infected.

"18. It is not proved that the plague is transmissible out ofepidemic places by clothes which have been used by infectedpersons.

"19. It is in nowise proved that merchandise can conveythe plague out of epidemic places.

"20. The distinction made in our lazarettos between sus-ceptible and non-susceptible objects, does not rest upon anyfact, or upon any experience deserving of confidence.

" 21. The study of the means by the aid of which it issought to destroy the pestilential principle supposed to becontained in clothes or merchandise, is, and ever will be,wholly -without its object, so long as the presence of the prin-ciple is not proved. ’

" 22. The plague may be transmitted out of epidemic locali-ties by means of miasmatic infection-that is to say, by theair being charged with pestilential vapours. sniissible, accord-"23. That the plague is more or less transmissible, accord-ing to the intensity of the epidemic, according as it may be in

its first, second, or third -stage, and, lastly, according to theorganic dispositions of the individuals submitted to the actionof the pestilential vapours.

"24. That infected persons, by rendering the air of thelocalities in which they reside unwholesome, may create afocus of pestilential infection capable of transmitting thedisease.

"25. That such places may retain the infection after theinfected persons have been removed.

"26. That the infection, once established on board a vesselby the presence of one or more infected persons, may be con-veyed to great distances.

"227. That the moving centres of infection cannot becomethe cause of secondary centres, and, consequently, of an ex-tensive propagation of the malady, except when they en-counter, in the countries into which they are transported, thenecessary conditions for the development of the plague.

" 28. That the usual period of the incubation of the plagueis from three to five days; that the length of the incubationappears never to have exceeded eight days."

ON THE NON-DUALITY OF MIND.

By THOMAS CATTELL, M.D., M.R.C.S., &c., Braunston,Northamptonshire.

IT is now necessary that I should analytically pursue thegeneral remarks made in the previous paper against themind’s duality. Although we are not immediately consciousof the existence of mind, we are conscious of sensation,thought, and volition-operations which imply the existenceof something that feels, thinks, and wills. It is the confound-ing this distinction that has, no doubt, led Dr. Wigan into theerror previously alluded to.

Descartes was the first who clearly saw that our idea ofmind is not direct, but relative-relative to the various ope-rations of which we are conscious. " What am I ?" he asks,in his second meditation : " a thinking being-that is, a beingdoubting, knowing, affirming, denying, consenting, refusing,susceptible of pleasure and of pain. Of all these things Imight have had complete experience, without any previousacquaintance with the qualities and laws of matter ; andtherefore it is impossible that the study of matter can availme aught in the study of myself." This, accordingly, Des-cartes laid down as a first principle, that " nothing compre-hensible by the imagination can be at all subservient to .theknowledge of mind ;" and that the sensible images involvedin our common forms of speaking concerning its operations,are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, astending to confound, in our apprehensions, two classes of phe-nomena, which it is of the last importance to distinguishaccurately from each other.The force of the asseveration, " that consciousness is not the

essence nor the test of mind," will be perceived, when it isregarded as possessing only a relative existence to the mind :for while the ideas of consciousness and perception are ad-mitted to exist, the understanding is necessarily carried, in aretrospective manner, to some substance in which they unite,and at the same time carried forward to some object of whichwe are conscious, and which we must perceive.And it is substantially evident, as regards any given sub-

stance, either retrospectively or subsequently considered, thatwe mugt first have a perception of it before we can be con-

! scious of its existence. The consciousness must follow theperception : it is applicable only to things present; to applyit to the past is to confound it with memory.When there is a reference to former states of mind, we

discover only a remembrance like all other remembrances,and a feeling of common relation of the past and presentaffection of the mind to one permanent subject. Conscious-ness, even in the latter sense, is only a belief of a continuedidentity, and is a word expressive only of that belief.The belief of our identity is instinctive and irresistible.

Identity is a relative term : it implies a double observation ofsome sort. The identity of our mind is its continuance asthe subject of various feelings; the belief of it, therefore, canarise only on the consideration of the successive phenomena,and is involved in the consideration of them as successive.We remember the past, feel the present, and believe that therememberer of the past existed in that past which he remem-bers. Our faith in our identity, as being only another sort offaith which we put in memory, can only be opposed by thosewho deny all memory. That a state of remembrance, apresent feeling, should be representative to us of some formerfeeling, so as to impress us with the feeling of the former