been intoxicated, are as strong an evidence of their moral, if not general insanity, as can be presented. Their cunning and ingenuity in explaining their symptoms, taking care to make no allusion to the true cause, have no counterpart except in the cunning and deceit often found in the truly insane. Dr. Tyler very truly remarks upon the deadening influence of this disease upon the moral sensibilities of large num bers of its victims, that "they trim to whatever breeze is blowing, and change their position with the utmost facility to accommodate all persons and circumstances, whenever this is necessary to carry out a selfish plan or purpose, with no regard for truth."

This statement is eminently truthful in respect to all attempts to conceal their disease. I have noticed that the secrecy observed by these patients in the paroxysms of the disease keeps pace with their intel lectual powers: as that fails these become more and more indifferent to observation, and finally perfectly shameless.

An intimate acquaintance of mine left home, and hid himself away in some obscure street, whenever he felt the paroxysm approaching, and was not generally found before his attack passed off, when he would return to his house. He at length died in the garret of a miserable grog-shop, his name upon some articles of his clothing giving the only clew the inmates of the place had to his residence and family. There was evidence in his case that death ensued from opium taken for suicidal purposes, at about the termination of the paroxysm. A common practice among these persons is, to shut themselves up during the attack, and give orders as to the statement of the character of their ailment to be given to those who may call to see them.

So far as my observation enables me to form an opinion, I think this habit of concealed drinking may be regarded as a diagnostic sign of methomania. I have not been able to find any other reason for it. In course of time, this concealed drinking becomes more public, but as a rule it is still solitary indulgence. It is not to be confounded with convivial drunkenness, and it is greatly doubted by some, whether the occasional intoxication at the festive board ever leads to methomania, in persons who do not inherit, or accidentally possess, a decided predisposition to the disease. There can be no doubt that we constantly meet with persons who consume more alcohol annually than many methomaniacs, but who are never intoxicated, and who can stop the use of it at any moment without much, if any, inconvenience. While some become intoxicated at every dinner-party, they eat their dinners just as well without wine. This, it is easily seen, is an entirely different condition from methomania. The habits which I regard as indicating methomania are: 1. Periodic secret drinking to intoxication, attended by studied secrecy regarding it, and persistent denial of the act. 2. Periodic solitary drinking to drunkenness, though not in secret, attended by the same determined denial of the act. 3. Gulping down alcoholic liquors, on all possible occasions, to drunkenness, without regard to taste or quality.

It would be an error to suppose that all cases of methomania refuse to confess their affliction. Most of them sooner or later have confidants to whom they unbosom their afflictions, but as to general confession the rule here stated is true. During the paroxysms, the patient abandons the most urgent business, and, to get the means of gratifying his craving desire, disposes

of clothing and jewelry, and even pledges estates and beggars his family. I have often noticed that the very fact of having extraordinary or unusually important or difficult business to transact, seemed to overwhelm the will and courage of these persons, and to bring on prematurely an attack. So common is this, that the unreliability of the methomaniac for any urgent and important work is proverbial, they always being nearly sure to disappoint when most needed. This is no doubt to be accounted for by the fact that the mental as well as physical vigor is more or less greatly impaired by the disease, so that the patient is really unequal to the application required of him, and feels himself so.

Dr. Carpenter alludes to this subject by saying that, "besides the positive diseases, a premature exhaustion of nervous power, manifest in the decline of mental vigor, and of nervo-muscular energy, are ranked by common consent among the consequences of habitual excess in the use of alcoholic liquors." The finding of a man drunk and absent from business that he knows to be important, I therefore should at once regard as evidence of the existence of methomania in his case.

I have purposely deferred to the close of these remarks the consideration of the danger of person which the family or associates of the methomaniac are exposed to during different periods of his paroxysms. Impelled by some insane hallucination, or by the frenzy of tormenting desire, during the maniacal excitement of intoxication, or the terrors of delirium which succeed it, the inebriate who would dismember his own body would just as soon destroy the life of his dearest friend or relative. Of all the diseases of

humanity, none is so dreadful as the insanity of the methomaniac.

Says Dr. Turner, in his graphic description of this disease: "Extreme poverty, hideous deformity, mutilation of limbs, deafness, blindness, all these, sad as they are, leave alive the human affections, and admit the consolation of sympathy and love;" but this malady "so entirely changes his heart that no affec tion can grow upon it, and the unhappy victim sinks and dies, or is so excited as to crush the life out of the mother who bore him, as coolly as he would trample upon a serpent." Then the doctor relates that most awful case which occurred in Madison County, in this State, a few years ago, to illustrate his statement. A young man, during the delirium of a paroxysm of methomania, murdered both his father and mother, and cut out their hearts, which he roasted and ate. He was brought into court for trial, but Judge Gray declined to try the case, on the ground that his court had no jurisdiction in the case of a crime for the commission of which there could be no motive in the human heart. It was indeed an unequivocal admission, by high judicial authority, that methomaniacs may be irresponsible for their acts. These morbid perversions of feelings and desires, so frequently seen in the insane from any cause, are peculiarly liable to appear in the methomaniac, and liable to impel the victim to acts of an appall ing character.

With these facts before us, and the presence of the symptoms of methomania, which we have just described, in any given case considering the total loss of self-control during the paroxysm, the disregard of all business and domestic obligations, and the prospective ruin of family, it becomes, beyond a doubt, a proper

question for serious attention, whether it is not only merciful to the patient and his family, as well as a matter of safety to them and to the public, that he should be prevented from committing crimes and from squandering property by placing him under restraint, rather than allowing him to incur the risks of trial for crime, and his family that of reduction to penury, by permitting him the liberty which his disease irresisti bly impels him to abuse. The application of the principles and facts which I have endeavored to establish, to acts of profligacy, to acts of bad faith and forfeiture, such as of accident or life-insurance, to acts of social and family outrage, and to acts of crime, I leave to members of the legal profession, in full confidence that they will do the subject the justice it deserves.

ART. V.-Pascal. By T. EDWARDS CLARK, M. D., of New York.

To judge correctly of the mind and genius of one who has left a name behind him, and made an impres sion on the times, it is not enough that we should acquaint ourselves with his acts and published thoughts; we must also fully understand the age and circumstances in which he lived.

The individual is never entirely independent of the influences which act on society generally; and however intelligent and learned he may be, however cautious and skeptical, the deeply rooted errors even of those around him, in the midst of whom he has been nurtured, cannot all fail to affect his thoughts and actions. To believe is too often easier than to investigate; and ideas that have been instilled in childhood, and en