The case of Dr. Broussonnet was remarkable. An accident he had met with in the Pyrenees brought on an apoplectic attack. When he recovered, he could neither write nor pronounce correctly any substantives or personal names either in French or Latin, while adjectives and epithets crowded in his mind. Thus, when speaking of a person, he would describe his appearance, his qualities, and, without pronouncing the word “coat,” would name its colour. In his botanical pursuits he could point out the form and colour of plants, but had not the power of naming them. A Parisian merchant, after severe losses, experienced such a failure in recollection, that he was constantly guilty of the most absurd anachronisms;—would talk of the battles of Louis the Fourteenth with Alexander the Great, and describe Charles the Twelfth ascending triumphantly Mount Valerian; and one night, after witnessing the performance of Talma, could not be persuaded that he had not applauded Lekain.

Sudden fright has also obliterated this faculty. Artemidorus lost his memory from the terror inspired by treading on a crocodile. Bleeding has produced the same effects; while, on the other hand, blood-letting has restored an absent man to perfect recollection. Various venenose substances have also been said to produce amnesia. History records several instances of the kind. The soldiers of Anthony, on their return from the Parthian war, were attacked with loss of memory after eating some poisonous plants on their march. Bamba, king of the Goths, was suddenly deprived of all recollection after taking a draught presented to him by Eringius. Plater and Baldinger attributed a similar accident to the use of hemlock and arsenic. Narcotics, no doubt, may produce similar effects, but they will be of a transient nature; I do not know that this injurious power has been detected in any other productions, as the cases related by writers are not supported by sufficient authority to be entitled to unqualified belief.

The cause of these affections will most probably ever be unknown. Equally futile have proved all the endeavours to ascertain in what part of the brain memory is seated, since we have found some physiologists lodging this wonderful faculty in the posterior, and others in the anterior portion of the cranium. I apprehend that we might torture the brute creation, from the elephant down to the lowest reptile, for centuries, without being able to ascertain this point; and even could we attain this information, cui bono? Would it protect this privileged quarter of the cerebral organ from the action of external agency, or restore it to its healthy functions when diseased? The mode in which our mental faculties are developed is an impenetrable mystery; and, instead of vainly endeavouring to raise the mystic veil to gratify our curiosity, or rather our vanity, let us endeavour to apply these functions to the use for which they were intended by the allwise Creator, and exert them for the purpose of increasing the prosperity, or at any rate in endeavouring to diminish the sum of sufferings of his creatures, whether they be our fellow-men or the divers races that are submitted to our capricious power.

AFFECTIONS OF THE SIGHT.

The different terms applied to the various morbid affections of vision have been frequently misconceived, and consequently have occasioned much confusion in their application. Those vitiated conditions which are usually noticed may be classed as follows:

I. Night sight.
II. Day sight.
III. Long sight.
IV. Short sight.
V. Skew sight.
VI. False sight.

Night sight, specifically called Lucifuga, was also termed Nyctalopia, from νυξ, night, and ωψ, eye; it was also known as the Noctem amans. This affection was thus named in consequence of the person labouring under it being only able to see at night, or in a deep shade; hence the first name: while nyctalopia has been used by most modern writers in the opposite sense of night-sight ache, agreeably, according to Mason Good’s observations, to the technical or implied meaning of opia, in which case it always applies to a diseased vision; whence nyctalopia has been made to import day sight, instead of night sight.

This disease appears to be dependent upon a peculiar irritability of the retina, produced by two different causes,—a sudden exposure to a stronger light than the eye has been accustomed to bear, or a deficiency of the black pigment which lines the choroid tunic. If the iris be weak and torpid, it is enlarged; if strong and contracted, diminished. Thus, those who from peculiar circumstances reside in dark caverns and subterraneous abodes, or who have long been confined in obscure dungeons, labour under the first of these causes; instances of which were observed in two of the captives liberated from the Bastille in 1789.