OP HEALTH AND HUMAN NATURE. 51 



our other qualities,, corporeal conditions ; and the mind is often 

 disordered upon the disappearance of a bodily complaint, just as 

 other organs, besides the brain, are affected under similar cir- 

 cumstances, — the retrocession of an eruption may affect the 

 lungs, causing asthma, the bowels, causing enteritis, or the 

 brain, causing insanity ; phthisis and insanity sometimes alter- 

 nate with each other, just like affections of other organs. The 

 argument of Bishop Butler, that the soul is immortal and in- 

 dependent of matter because in fatal diseases the mind often 

 remains vigorous to the last, * is perfectly groundless, for any 

 function will remain vigorous to the last if the organ which 

 performs it is not the seat of the disease, nor much connected 

 by sympathy or in other modes with the organ which is the seat 

 of the disease, — the stomach often calls regularly for food and 

 digests it vigorously, while the lungs are almost completely con- 

 sumed by ulceration. All the cases that are adduced to prove 

 the little dependence of the mind on the brain, are adduced in 

 opposition to the myriads of others that daily occur in the usual 

 course of nature, and are evidently regarded as extraordinary 

 cases by those who bring them forward. An exact parallel to 

 each may be found in affections of every other organ, and each 

 admits of so easy an explanation that it may be always truly said, 

 " Exceptio probat regulam." f 



que demum Neronem, post sexecntos annos desitura." — Gregory, Conspectus 

 Medicina: Theoretical. So true is the verse 



Et patrum in natos abeunt, cum semine, mores. 



* The Analogy of Religion, natural and revealed, to the Constitution and 

 Course of Nature. By Joseph Butler, LL. D. Lord Bishop of Durham, p. 33. 



t I will not insult the understanding of my readers by showing that we have 

 no authentic instance of the real absence of brain in the cranium of a being 

 possessed of a mind. The records of medicine no less teem with wonders than 

 those of theology. The miracles of the Fathers and of the Romish Church 

 may be matched by cases not only of mind without brain, but of human im- 

 pregnation without males or by males without testes, and of human foetuses 

 nourished without communication with the mother. 



E 2 In 



