242 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



" 3. So large a proportion of the mental derangements of women 

 being sympathetic and reflex, and referable to local derangements, 

 herein differing from what obtains in men, where insanity is more fre- 

 quently of centric and cerebral origin, there is decided indication for 

 local curative treatment much oftener than it is now resorted to in 

 cases of insane women, either at asylums or in private practice." 



Dr. Storer presented various evidence corroboratory of his 

 views, and related an illustrative case. He also alluded to a 

 peculiar sensational torpor of the insane as explanatory of the 

 otherwise unaccountable fact that severe physical lesions, as 

 fracture of ribs, &c., are not unfrequently discovered at post- 

 mortem examinations of the insane, of which no complaint or 

 suspicion had existed during life. From this he drew another 

 deduction of practical importance in the administration of 

 criminal law. 



" 4. In medico-legal investigations, whether they are coroner's in- 

 quests, trials for homicide, or for the abuse of insane patients in con- 

 finement, it must not be forgotten that the insane, so far as regards 

 matters of sensation, whether as to effects from wounds or from acute 

 or chronic disease, are not to be judged by the oi'dinary physiological 

 laws." 



Fl-ve hundred and thirty-gecond Meeting. 



March 8, 1864. — Monthly Meeting. 



The President in the chair. 



The President called the attention of the Academy to the 

 recent decease of three of its members ; viz. Professor Ed- 

 ward Hitchcock of the Resident Fellows, and Baron Plana 

 and Heinrich Rose of the Foreign Honorary Members. 



The following papers were presented. 



On thS Right Ascension of the Pole Star, as determined from 

 Observation. By Truman Henry Safford, Assistant at the 

 Observatory of Harvard College. 



1. The fixed star a Ursse Minoris, the Pole-Star, has been the ob- 

 ject of very numerous observations, — more indeed than any other celes- 



