It must be observed that the latter return, in which we find twenty-eight persons maddened by disappointed ambition and offended pride, is of a private establishment, whose inmates of course belonged to the better classes of the community.

By the return from Pennsylvania, out of fifty lunatics, thirty-four cases arose from moral causes. Of physical causes hereditary madness is the most prevalent, as appears clearly from the following table extracted from the registers of the Salpétrière.

Hereditary insanity 105
Convulsion during gestation 11
Epilepsy 11
Female derangements 55
Diseases of child-birth 52
Critical periods 27
Old age 60
Insolation 12
Injuries of the head 14
Fever 13
Syphilis 8
Effects of mercury 14
Worms 24
Apoplexy 60

When speaking of hereditary madness, Dr. Abercrombie is of opinion that where a tendency to insanity exists, there may be in many cases, circumstances in mental habits or mental discipline calculated to favour or to counteract the tendency, when the mind wanders away from the proper duties of life or luxuriates amid scenes of imagination, thus permitting mental emotions, of whatever kind, to be excited in a manner disproportional to the true relation of the object which gave rise to them; allowing the mind to ramble among imaginary events, or to be led away by slight and casual relations, instead of steadily exercising the judgment in the investigation of truth.

These observations are no doubt most luminous, yet as I have elsewhere remarked, hereditary predisposition to insanity may be brought into action, by the constant scenes that pass in the presence of those individuals who may daily have to witness the aberrations of an unhappy relative. The mind dwells on the sad subject, and it becomes a source of constant apprehension, when the mere dread of an hereditary evil is perhaps sufficient to drive to madness. So powerful is the sway even of imaginary terror, that we need not wonder that natural fear should be productive of results still more injurious to our intellects. There seems to exist a certain fascination in what we should dread and avoid; instead of resisting evil, by a strange fatality we seem to be self-impelled to court it. We indulge in thoughts, in hopes and fears, too often chimerical, instead of endeavouring to dismiss them from our mind, by other pursuits and busy occupation; and we brood upon future and ideal miseries until we actually, from supineness and timidity, sink under their overwhelming influence.

Esquirol relates some curious coincidences of hereditary insanity. A Swiss merchant lost both his sons in a state of mania at the age of 19. A lady lost her senses after childbirth at the age of 25. Her daughter became insane in her 25th year. In one family, the grandfather, the father, and the son, destroyed themselves at the age of 50. Near Newton, seven insane sisters had been observed in one family. An unfortunate female in the Salpétrière, under the influence of liquor, threw herself three times in the river and her sister in a state of intoxication drowned herself. A gentleman whose intellects became deranged in consequence of the misfortunes of the revolution remained for ten years secluded in his chamber. His daughter became insane about the same period, and with equal obstinacy could not be prevailed upon to leave her room.

There is no doubt, but that were these early predispositions attended to and watched, an active course of education adopted, and change of locality resorted to, much future misery might be avoided, and possibly the invasion of the malady arrested.

If the observations of the phrenologist are entitled to consideration, the mind may become mainly instrumental in attaining this desideratum, as the detection of certain propensities may place us upon our guard in the education of youth. This would be a point of still greater importance, were these organs innate, dooming us to the blind law of fatality; but the phrenologists maintain, that the development of these organic inequalities on the surface of the cranium are produced and developed by a corresponding enlargement of the brain, which is greater or lesser in the ratio of the preponderance of the organ as the indulgence in the propensities which they indicate.

Pinel relates a curious case of hereditary mania in a man who, up to the age of fifty, fulfilled with intelligence and activity the duties of an important office which he held. At this period he indulged in various excesses, and sunk in the debasement of the lowest society. These excesses he represented to his wondering friends and acquaintances as the source of divine pleasure and celestial enjoyment. He declared that he would erect a temple to the god of love, and officiate himself as high priest at his altars; he compared the very lowest of women to angelic creatures; and finally was confined, a furious and desperate maniac.

Education carried on upon mistaken principles has also been known to prepare the way to insanity, and La Bruyere has justly observed, that there are parents, the study of whose life appears to have been, their giving their children just reason not to regret their loss. Pinel has given us the interesting history of two orphan brothers, who had been brought up in a most anomalous manner—with extreme kindness and effeminacy by a nurse, and with much harshness and injustice by a tutor. The result of this erroneous management was a deficient development in their intellectual faculties, and a debilitated frame, which gradually led to a state of imbecility. When examined by Pinel at the age of twenty and twenty-two, their conversation was puerile in the extreme, and they both displayed a taste for infantile sports and pastimes, befitting children of three or four years old. They sought to express themselves with great volubility, but their language, consisting chiefly of broken syllables, was scarcely intelligible. Notwithstanding their apathic appearance, by a sort of automatic habit, every evening brought on an absurd scene of sentimentality. They would join each other in earnest conversation in a corner of the room; and, with bitter tears and deep sighs, bewail the loss of their parents, who had thus left them in a helpless orphan condition, in their tender years, expressing the sincerest affection for their nurse, but speaking of their tutor with bitter imprecations. A great partiality shown to one sister has driven another one to a state of dementia, that arose from her continually dwelling on the wrongs she experienced, which, of course, were exaggerated by jealousy.