Biographical Memoir of M. Philippe Pincl. 215 



for cases of mental alienation, and still asked if they were soon 

 to be taken there, so tranquil are the patients, so much engaged 

 in their ordinary occupations, walking about singly or together ; 

 in a word so much does their life there resemble that of ration- 

 al creatures. 



The history which M. Pinel has given of so many unfortu- 

 nate beings *, is not only an important medical book, but a first 

 rate work in philosophy, and even in morals. Nowhere can the 

 irresistible influence of the organs on the faculties be belter 

 learnt ; but a still more useful knowledge that may be derived 

 from it, is that of the influence of the passions on the organs. 

 In his treatise, we see that more than half of the cases of alie- 

 nation take theif rise in passions, which an enlightened reason 

 has not kept within just bounds; that madness is but the pas- 

 sions themselves carried to a monstrous excess, and that even in 

 most of the alienations which are supposed to be attributable to 

 physical causes, it is not certain whether these causes had not 

 merely developed a disposition generated by former passions 

 and feelings. 



In the Academy, M. Pinel belonged not to the medical section, 

 but to that of anatomy and zoology. Too desirous of having him, 

 to wait till a place should become vacant in the first of these sec- 

 tions, the society found him sufficiently entitled to the second, 

 as the writer of his essays on the Mechanism of Animals, and 

 elected him as a zoologist, when, in 1783, one of the members 

 of that section was raised to the situation of perpetual secretary. 

 His publications on these subjects, though not numerous, evi- 

 dently shew that he would have taken great interest in zoolo- 

 gical investigations, had he not been obliged to relinquish them, 

 when he devoted liimself entirely to the teaching of medicine. 

 In a memoir on the Zygomatic Arch -f-, he shewed that its cur- 

 vature upwards is so much the stronger the firmer the support 

 it has to afford to the muscles that close the jaws. This is what 

 takes place in carnivorous animals. The herbivora have it 

 nearly straight, and sometimes in the glires it is bent downwards. 



• Traite Medicale, &c. Medical and Philosophical Treatise on Mental AKe- 

 nation or Mania, one vol. 8vo. 1 800. The second edition was published in 1 809. 



■f- Journal do Physique, t. xli. p. 401. 



2 



