DISEASE OF THE BODY A MENTAL STIMULANT. 71 



sible effects on the inmates of Hanwell, but to concentrate in one con- 

 cise and complete vade mecum all the irrelevant twaddle of the ancient 

 house of Dogberry. If Mr. Darwin survives this attack, he will at least 

 know that the force of utter flabbiness can go no further. To the 

 present generation he is a very Goliath of the Philistines ; but, though 

 the cranium of a catarrhine-ape may some day confute him, he is not 

 to be annihilated in this off-hand fashion by the jawbone of an ass. 

 Examiner. 







DISEASE OF THE BODY AS A MENTAL STIMULANT. 



DURING special states of disease the mind sometimes develops 

 faculties such as it does not possess when the body is in full 

 health. Some of the abnormal qualities thus exhibited by the mind 

 seem strikingly suggestive of the possible acquisition by the human 

 race of similar powers under ordinary conditions. For this reason, 

 though we fear there is no likelihood at present of any practical appli- 

 cation of the knowledge we may obtain on this subject, it seems to us 

 that there is considerable interest in examining the evidence afforded 

 by the strange powers which the mind occasionally shows during dis- 

 eases of the body, and especially during such diseases as are said, in 

 unscientific but expressive language, to lower the tone of the nervous 

 system. 



We may begin by citing a case which seems exceedingly significant. 

 Miss H. Martineau relates that a congenital idiot, who had lost his 

 mother when he was less than two years old, when dying, " suddenly 

 turned his head, looked bright and sensible, and exclaimed, in a tone 

 never heard from him before, ' O my mother ! how beautiful ! ' and 

 sank down again dead." Dr. Carpenter cites this as a case of abnor- 

 mal memory, illustrating his thesis that the basis of recollection " may 

 be laid at a very early period of life." But the story seems to contain 

 a deeper meaning. The poor idiot not only recalled a long-past time, 

 a face that he had not seen for years except in dreams, but he gained 

 for a moment a degree of intelligence which he had not possessed when 

 in health. The quality of his brain was such, it appears, that with the 

 ordinary activity of the circulation, the ordinary vitality of the organ, 

 mental action was uncertain and feeble ; but when the circulation had 

 all but ceased, when the nervous powers were all but prostrate, the fee- 

 ble brain, though it may have become no stronger actually, became 

 relatively stronger, in such sort that for the time being, a mere moment 

 before dissolution, the idiot became an intelligent being. 



A somewhat similar case is on record in which an insane person, 

 during that stage of typhus fever in which sane persons are apt to be- 

 come delirious, became perfectly sane and reasonable, his insanity re- 



