physician is engaged! How important the duties that devolve upon him! him! How solemnly responsible is his position! Is it possible to exaggerate or over-estimate his character, influence, importance, usefulness, and dignity! What profound and accurate knowledge of the mind in its normal state is required before the physician is fitted successfully to investigate, unravel, and treat remedially its deviations from a healthy standard! How intimate must be his acquaintance with the phenomena of thought, and with the nature and operations of the passions! How exact should be his notions of the instinctive and perceptive faculties before he is fully qualified to appreciate subtle, morbid, psychical conditions!

The physician should entertain right notions of his duty and position; he should encourage elevated, lofty thoughts and grand conceptions of his honourable vocation; he should impress repeatedly, earnestly, and emphatically upon his own as well as upon the minds of all engaged in the same holy work the significant fact, that they are occupied in the study and treatment of a class of diseases affecting the very source, spring, and fountain of that principle which in its healthy operations alone can bring them into remote proximity to DEITY-that the physician has to deal with the spiritual part of man's complex nature, with that which elevates him in the scale of created excellences, and places him high on the pedestal among the great, good, and wise of this world. But his solemn functions expand in interest, gravity, grandeur, and importance, as he reflects that it is HUMAN MIND prostrated, perverted, and often crushed by disease with which the practical physician has to deal; that he has placed under our care a class of the afflicted human family, reduced by the inscrutable de

crees of Providence to the most humiliating and helpless position to which a rational being can fall; that it is his duty to witness the sad wreck of great and noble minds, and to sigh over the decay of exalted genius.

Like the historian and antiquarian wandering with a sad heart over ground made classical and memorable in the story of great men, and in the annals of heroic deeds, surveying with painful interest the crumbling ruins of ancient temples, viewing with subdued emotion the almost extinguished remains of proud imperial cities, consecrated by the genius of men renowned in the world's history as statesmen, scholars, artists, philosophers, and poets, so it is the duty of the mental physician to wander through the sad ruins of still greater temples than any that were in ancient days raised to the honour of an unseen DEITY. It is his distressing province to witness great and good intellects, proud elevated understandings, levelled to the earth, crumbling like dust in the balance, under the dire influence of disease.

Survey that old man crouched in the corner of the room, with his face buried in his hands. He is indifferent to all that is passing around him; he heeds not the voice of man or woman; he delights not in the carolling of birds or in the sweet music of the rippling brooks. The gentle wind of heaven, playing its sweetest melody as it rushes through the greenwood, awakens to his mind no consciousness of nature's charms. Speak to him in terms of endearment and affection; bring before him the glowing and impassioned images of the past. He elevates himself, gazes listlessly and mechanically at you, makes no sign,' and, dropping his poor head, buries it in his bosom, and sinks into his former state of moody melancholy abstraction. This man's oratory charmed the senate; the magic of his eloquence held thousands in a

state of breathless admiration; his influence was commanding, his sagacity and judgment eminently acute and profound. View him as he is fallen from his high and honourable estate! Listen to the sweet and gentle voice of yonder woman, upon whose head scarcely eighteen summer suns have shed their genial warmth and influence. How merrily she dances over the greensward! How touchingly she warbles, like Ophelia, in her delirium, snatches of song! What a pitiful spectacle of a sweet mind lying in beautiful fragments before us! Look! she has decked herself with a spring garland. Now she holds herself perfectly erect, and walks with queenly majesty. Approach and accost her; she exclaims, "Yes, he will come; he promised to be here; where are the guests? where's the ring? where's my wedding dressmy orange blossoms ?" Suddenly her mind is overshadowed, and her face assumes an expression of deep, choking and bitter anguish-she alternately sobs and laughs-is gay and sad, cheerful and melancholy

"Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,

She turns to favour and to prettiness."

Speak again to her, and another change takes place in the spirit of her dream. Like her sad prototype, the sweetest creation of Shakspeare's immortal genius, she plaintively sings—

"He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;
At his head a green grass turf,
At his heels a stone."

Her history is soon told. Deep and absorbing passion, elevated hopes, bright, sunny, and fanciful dreams of the future-DEATH with all its fictitious trappings, sad and solemn mockery of woe-seared affections, a broken heart, and a disordered brain!

The two illustrations I have cited are faithful and truthful outlines of a type of case that must have come under the notice of those engaged in the treatment of the insane. How keenly cases like these tear the heartstrings asunder and call into active operation all the kindly sympathies of our nature.

The physician cannot too frequently allow his mind to dwell upon the peculiar state of those reduced by insanity to a condition of utter and childish helplessness. In other classes of disease, in which the psychical functions of the brain remain intact, the invalid, even while suffering the most acute and agonizing pain, bodily distress, and physical prostration, is in a state to appreciate his actual relations with those around him-he feels sensitively the exhibition of tender sympathy-he properly estimates the care and attention bestowed upon his case, and recognises the skill of his faithful medical adviser. Alas! how different are the feelings and thoughts of many of the insane! In this class of affections the kindness, sympathy, skill, unremitting assiduity, and attention of the physician are often not outwardly or manifestly appreciated. He has, in many cases, to pursue his holy work without the exhibition of the slightest apparent consciousness, on the part of the patient, of his efforts to assuage his anguish and mitigate his condition of mental disease and bodily suffering. Nevertheless, it is his sacred duty, even where, as is occasionally the case, his actions are greatly misconstrued and perverted by those to whose relief he is administering, to unflaggingly persevere in his efforts to carry out a curative process of treatment. The poor, unhappy invalid may believe that his physician is acting the part of a bitter foe. This ought not to excite any feeling but that of the most profound love and sympathy. If the patient's

language be offensive and repulsive-if he be guilty of any acts of violence towards those in attendance upon him, the physician should never for a moment lose sight of the fact, that the unhappy affliction has, to a degree, destroyed the patient's free will, and that he, for a time, has ceased to be a responsible being. It would be cruel, whilst such a condition of mind exists, to treat him otherwise than as a person deprived by disease of the power of complete self-government and moral control. Let me earnestly and affectionately urge upon all engaged in the treatment of the insane, the importance of never losing sight of the fact, that even in the worst types of mental disease there are some salient and bright spots upon which the physician may act, and against which may be directed his most potent curative agents. How true it is that,

"There is some sou of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out."

The more formidable, apparently hopeless and incurable types of mental derangement admit, if not of cure, at least of considerable alleviation and mitigation. It is always in our power to materially add to the physical and social comforts of even the worst class of insane patients. We undoubtedly possess the means of materially modifying (if we cannot entirely re-establish the mental equilibrium) the more unfavourable and distressing forms of insanity, rendering the violent and turbulent tractable and amenable to discipline, the dangerous. harmless, the noisy quiet, the dirty cleanly in their habits, and the melancholy to an extent, cheerful and happy. It is possible, by a careful study of the bodily and mental idiosyncrasies of each individual case, and by an unremitting attention to dietetic and hygienic regimen, as well as by a persevering, unflagging, and assiduous admi