POPULAR MISCELLANY, 



283 



that the effect of education had been, even 

 in the midst of a rapidly-increasing popu- 

 lation, to diminish the absolute number of 

 children admitted to asylums. So, of the 

 gi-oup described as teachers, schoolmasters, 

 schoolmistresses, governesses, professors, 

 and lecturers, the proportion admitted to 

 asylums was less than that of any other 

 profession. This statement should dispose 

 of much of what is said about the ordinary 

 routine of school occupation leading to men- 

 tal disease. While pupils who are stimu- 

 lated or pressed, by cramming, to over-exer 

 tion may suffer injury, a lively exercise of 

 the mental faculties on some varieties of sub- 

 jects, which is the most that the majority 

 of school-children attain, is more likely to 

 be promotive of vigor. The fact that insan- 

 ity prevails most among agricultural labor- 

 ers in the rural counties, where the standard 

 of education is lowest, and mental vacancy 

 is least interrupted, tends to show that ab- 

 solute blankness of mind, like the non-use 

 of a physical faculty, promotes disease. So 

 with teachers : while the demands on their 

 brains are constant and call for vigorous 

 exercise, they are, as a rule, seldom of a 

 kind to involve overwhelming pressure, or 

 so irregular as to admit of intervals when 

 the mind is wholly unemployed and liable 

 to morbid reaction. 



Poisons developed in the Body. — On 



this subject Dr. Benjamin "W. Richardson 

 says : " In my reports to the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, I have 

 pointed out that the substance amylene, an 

 organic product which can be easily con- 

 structed in vital chemical changes, produces 

 phenomena identical with those of somnam- 

 bulism and with some of the phenomena of 

 hysteria. I have pointed out, in the same 

 reports, that another organic product, 

 called mercaptan (sulphur-alcohol), causes, 

 when inhaled, symptoms of profoundest 

 melancholy, and that, in the process of be- 

 ing eliminated by the breath, it gives to the 

 breath an odor which is identical with the 

 odor evolved in the breaths of many pa- 

 tients who are suffering from the disease 

 called melancholia. From these observa- 

 tions I have ventured to suggest that vari- 

 ous forms of mental affection and of nerv- 

 ous affection depend for their development 



on the presence in the body of organic 

 chemical compounds, formed and distilled 

 through an unnatural chemical process car- 

 ried on in the body itself. I have en- 

 deavored to develop this subject some- 

 what further by my researches on the 

 action of lactic acid on animal bodies. I 

 have shown by experiment that this acid, 

 diffused through the body by the blood, 

 acts as a direct irritant upon the lining 

 membrane of the heart, the endocardium^ 

 and all the fibro-serous membranes of the 

 body, so that a synthesis of heart-disease 

 and rheumatism can be established by its 

 means. Lactic acid is the most copious 

 product thrown out in the disease called 

 rheumatic fever, and, as many of the phe- 

 nomena resulting from that disease take 

 the same form and character as those pro- 

 ducible by lactic acid, I infer from the best 

 evidence attainable that this acid, the prod- 

 uct of a fermentative change going on in 

 the body during acute rheumatism, is the 

 cause of the secondary structural affections 

 which so frequently follow acute rheuma- 

 tism. It has been for some time past ob- 

 served by several able physicians that persons 

 who are suffering from the affection known 

 as diabetes give off a peculiar odor from 

 their breath — an odor which to some is like 

 that of vinegar, to others of sour beer, to 

 others of a mixture of ether and chloroform, 

 to others of acetic ether. I should compare 

 it myself to the odor of grains as it is de- 

 tected in a brewery. When this odor is ob- 

 served in the breath of diabetic patients, it 

 frequently happens that they become sleepy, 

 cold, and unconscious, with the results of 

 coma and death. At one time it was sup- 

 posed that these phenomena were urgemic, 

 and were due to the presence of urea in the 

 blood ; but the absence of convulsion and 

 of some other symptoms destroys this hy- 

 pothesis, or at all events shakes it. It is 

 now believed that the symptoms owe their 

 origin to the decomposition of the diabetic 

 sugar which is in the body, and to the 

 production from that decomposition of a 

 volatile ethereal fluid called acetone^ a 

 fluid which has been discovered in the 

 blood and secretions of these affected per- 

 sons, who are said therefore to be suffer- 

 ing from the disease ' acetonsemia.' From 

 the action of acetone upon animal bodies 



