382 Notices respecting New Boaks. 



Dr. Spurzheim has been for a long time preparing for publi- 

 cation a work on Insanity with the following title, ''Pathology of 

 Animal Life, or the Manifestations of the Human Mind in the 

 State of Disease termed Insanity." Every person ^vho is acquaint- 

 ed with the very distressing conditions of persons afflicted with 

 diseases of the mind, but particularly the 'insane poor who are 

 confined for the security of society in the melancholy cells of a 

 madhouse, must he glad to hear that any new light is about to be 

 thrown on this hitherto very obscure and incurable disorder. The 

 public attention, too, has been particularly drawn towards this 

 subject of late, by the very intimate scrutiny made into public 

 lunatic asylums by persons invested with authority, before a com- 

 mittee of the house of commons: — an investigation rendered ab- 

 solutely necessary by the shamefully neglected state of insane per- 

 sons, and the general ignorance of the causes and cure of the 

 disease itself; — an investigation, too, which has loft the public 

 mind in a state of alarm for the treatment of their unfortunate 

 fellow-creatures. Dr. Spurzheim, who has devoted many years of 

 his life, and has exercised the most powerful talents, in pursuing 

 this disease through all its stages and varieties, aiid who has 

 spared neither time nor expense in visiting the principal asylums 

 for the insane in Europe, has at length determined to lay his la- 

 bours before the public, with the hope that, since such a consider- 

 able progress in the knowledge of the physiology of the brain and 

 the manifestations of the mind in a healthy state has of late been 

 made, a great deal may yet be done for those who suffer from its 

 partial or general derangement, by a philosophical comparison of 

 a very numerous collection of cases, with the peculiar organiza- 

 tion and moral habits of the individuals. The work will be pub- 

 lished in the course of a few months. 



Several copies have recently been imported from Germany of 

 that immense work on Meteorolosy, the Ephemerides Societatis 

 Palathice Meteor ologicce, which contains abundant matter for 

 the meteorological speculators, who have become so numerous of 

 late in our coiuitry, to exercise their ingenuity on. It is remark- 

 able that a work which contains so much information on a branch 

 of philosophy now so very popular, should be so little known in 

 Great Britaiii. 



Mr. T. J. Pettigrew is preparing for publication. Memoirs of 

 the Life and Writings of the late John Coakley Lettsom, M. and 

 LL.D. F.R.S. F.A.S. F.L.S., &c. With a Selection from his 

 Correspondence with the principal Literati of this and foreign 

 Coimtrics. 



LXXIX. For- 



