1828.] Insanity: 457 
whole of a family are rarely affected. Some of the offspring, in other 
matters plainly, and, no doubt, in this respect, partake more of one 
parent than the other. The child that resembles the insane parent in 
features or complexion, will probably resemble him in constitution and 
disposition. Dr. Burrowes speaks of questions being put to him, pro- 
fessionally, by parties contemplating marriage, when it was known 
insanity had existed in the progenitor of one or the other—whether, for 
instance, a person born of parents descended from an insane family, but 
not themselves insane, was capable of propagating it—to which, sup- 
ported by his own experience, he answered, yes. And, again, whether 
a child, born before insanity had been developed in either parent, was as 
liable to become insane as one born after it had been developed—to 
which he replied, of course, yes, if the insanity were hereditary, but no, 
if it were adventitious, that is, originating with the individual. Dr. Burrowes 
hesitates about the child born after the development of adventitious mad- 
ness. Yet why he should, we see not. All hereditary insanity had a begin- 
ning, and was then adventitious. And in the same page of his most 
valuable work, of which we have made so liberal use, Dr. Burrowes must, 
haye thought so, when he himself remarked the predisposition must 
have originated in some one—it could not have run to the creation. 
Now we must turn for a moment to other causes of the physical kind, 
for which we must depend almost wholly upon the evidence of physi- 
cians, because such matters do not come in a manner sufficiently direct 
and obvious before the cognizance of unprofessional persons. Many of 
these, and indeed the chief of them, pass under the name of sympathies, 
by which is meant, in plain terms, where one organ is injured, and. 
another, somehow or other, is simultaneously or consecutively affected. 
A blow on the head will disturb the functions of the liver, and even dis- 
organize it; and vice vers?, the injury of this organ will sometimes 
occasion mental disturbance—so will secretions of morbid bile—obstruc- 
tions of the biliary ducts by gall stones—spasms, &c. In the Cork 
Asylum, Dr. Halloran found 160 out of 1,370 insane from drunkenness ; 
the liver is confessedly affected by ardent spirits, and thus apparently 
by sympathy—for want of a better name—the brain. In the hospitals 
of Paris, also, 185 out of 2,507 were insane from drunkenness, and of 
these 59 women—notwithstanding the supposed comparative sobriety of 
the French people. 
The morbid state of the viscera occupied in concocting the chyle is, 
again, sympathetically, a cause of mental derangement. Irritations in 
the stomach, through the same mysterious agency, is a more frequent 
cause than is usually imagined. Long continued nausea—and violent 
_ sea-sickness have produced mania within Dr. Burrowes’s own know- 
ledge in three instances. Irritations of the intestines, also—worms— 
d diet—apparently, are frequent causes of sympathetic irritation of the 
ain. Reciprocal sympathies between the brain and the uterine system 
are frequent and better known. Puerperal mania is quite common, 
Of 57 cases, not more than half were connected with hereditary predis- 
position. Scrofula is a frightful cause of insanity, and of the most inve- 
terate character—for scrofula is almost the despair of medicine. 
Different temperaments appear to some physicians to predispose to 
particular species of insanity—the sanguine, to mania—the nervous, to 
both mania and what is termed monomania—the dry or melancholic, 
characterised by timidity and inquietude, to melancholy—the moist and 
M.M. New Series —Vou.VI. No.35. 3.N 
