LITERARY NOTICES. 



507 



han double the practical value of the li- 

 brary." 



Of the spirit in which the work has been 

 executed we may say that the writer's main 

 object has been to make it trustworthy and 

 valuable for the use of students. He is evi- 

 dently a most painstaking and conscientious 

 worker, and is constantly careful to give the 

 authorities for his statements. Although not 

 without his own views upon the various 

 questions which arise, he is not dogmatical, 

 and puts his reader in full possession of the 

 grounds upon which his judgments are 

 formed. It may be added that, though the 

 present volume contains a great amount of 

 information which might be supposed to be 

 dry and unattractive, its pages are never- 

 theless extremely readable ; and, to those 

 who have any interest in ethnological in- 

 quiries, they will have a strong fascination. 



Report op the Commissioner of Agricult- 

 ure for the Year 1872. 



The recent reports of the Department 

 of Agriculture show, we think, considerable 

 advance on their predecessors. The Statis- 

 tical Division is the work of six thousand 

 collaborators. The entomological report, 

 by Townsend Glover, who is himself scien- 

 tist, artist, and engraver, is a really able 

 exhibit of the Diptera or flies, from the great 

 bot-flies, to the diminutive wheat -midge, 

 which caused a loss in the cereals to the 

 State of New York in 1854 of $15,000,000! 

 Eyland Brown, the chemist, gives analyses 

 of vegetables, soils, and fertilizers, etc. The 

 report of George Vasey, the botanist, con- 

 tains well-worked papers on arboriculture, 

 especially on the cinchona, a tree which 

 yields the Peruvian bark, and from which 

 is obtained quinine. Thomas Taylor de- 

 tails exhaustive work as a microscopist on 

 the fungi which produce the pear-blight, 

 and the yellows in the peach-tree. The 

 epizooty, fish-culture, and forest cultivation 

 on the Plains, receive attention. There is 

 also a good report on industrial education, 

 etc., etc. The whole report gives evidence 

 of painstaking work in the field of agricult- 

 ure, and the results given are practical to 

 a degree. The article by Prof. James Law 

 on " Influenza in Horses " deserves circu- 

 lation as a separate document. 



Insanity and Disease. An Address be- 

 fore the Oneida County Medical Society, 

 October 13, 1874. By L. A. Tourtel- 

 lot, M. D., Utica, New York. 



The question of the relation of mind 

 and body, while it has a profound interest 

 for the speculative thinker, takes on a more 

 practical aspect to the physician. Yet it 

 is true that this practical urgency of the 

 problem to the medical man is the chief 

 cause of the more rigorous scientific inves- 

 tigation which the subject has received in 

 the present century, and which has revolu- 

 tionized the older views that were enter- 

 tained concerning it. But the question may 

 be properly raised whether this revolution 

 has not proceeded too far, and led to inde- 

 fensible extremes of doctrine as a reaction 

 from the absurdities of the older belief. 

 We understand this to be substantially Dr. 

 Tourtellot's ground in this able address. 

 He says : " During the middle ages and down 

 nearly to the present century the secondary 

 and inferior nature of matter as compared 

 with mind was a doctrine almost undisputed 

 in the world of learning. This doctrine is 

 reflected in the sentiment which despised 

 and contemned the human body and dis- 

 couraged the studies of physiology and 

 pathology. It followed also that bodily 

 diseases were attributed to sin or to pos- 

 session by evil spirits. Mental disorder 

 especially was considered a disorder of the 

 soul, and moral insanity was thought to de- 

 mand punishment rather than to excuse 

 from it. It is easy to see how such a be- 

 lief operated to cause that abuse and neg- 

 lect of the insane which so long prevailed. 

 Its evil effects upon society also appear in 

 the monastic rules, the severe penances, and 

 the thousand extravagances of religious fa- 

 naticism which history records." 



The reaction from this doctrine, begin- 

 ning in that higher respect for matter 

 which modern science inculcates, professes 

 to base itself upon the results of physiology 

 and pathology, and propounds the view that 

 mental disorder is in all cases simply a 

 bodily or brain disease. The implication is 

 that mind, in its normal or usual mani- 

 festation, is a cerebral function, and this is 

 held to necessitate the inference that ab- 

 normal mental manifestations are caused 

 only by physiological derangement. This 

 is the ground taken by that eminent alien- 



