LUNAR INFLUENCES. 



observations of M. Girou de Buzareingues have given countenance to this 

 opinion. But such observations require to be multiplied before the maxim can 

 be considered as established. M. Girou inclines to the opinion that during 

 the dark nights about new moon the hens sit so undisturbed that they either kill 

 their young or check their development by too much heat ; while in moonlight 

 nights, being more restless, this effect is not produced. 



Supposed Lunar Influence on Mental Derangement and other Human Maladies. 

 The influence on the phenomena of human maladies imputed to the moon is 

 rery ancient. Hippocrates had so strong a faith in the influence of celestial 

 objects upon animated beings, that he expressly recommends no physician to 

 be trusted who is ignorant of astronomy. Galen, following Hippocrates, main- 

 tained the same opinion, especially of the influence of the moon. Hence in 

 diseases the lunar periods were said to correspond with the succession of the 

 sufferings of the patients. The critical days or crises (as they were afterward 

 called), were the seventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first of the disease, corres- 

 ponding to the intervals between the moon's principal phases. While the 

 doctrine of alchymists prevailed, the human body was considered as a micro- 

 cosm ; the heart representing the sun, the brain the moon. The planets had 

 each its proper influence : Jupiter presided over the lungs, Mars over the 

 liver, Saturn over the spleen, Venus over the kidneys, and Mercury over the 

 organs of generation. Of these grotesque notions there is now no relic, ex- 

 cept the term lunacy, which still designates unsoundness of mind. But even 

 this term may in some degree be said to be banished from the terminology of 

 medicine, and it has taken refuge in that receptacle of all antiquated absurdities 

 of phraseology the law. Lunatic, we believe, is still the term for the subject 

 who is incapable of managing his own affairs. 



Although the ancient faith in the connexion between the phases of the moon 

 and the phenomena of insanity appears in a great degree to be abandoned, yet 

 it is not altogether without its votaries ; nor have we been able to ascertain 

 that any series of observations conducted on scientific principles, has ever 

 been made on the phenomena of insanity, with a view to disprove this con- 

 nexion. We have even met with intelligent and well-educated physicians who 

 still maintain that the paroxysms of insane patients are more violent when the 

 moon is full than at other times. 



Mathiolus Faber gives an instance of a maniac who at the very moment of 

 an eclipse of the moon, became furious, seized upon a sword, and fell upon 

 every one around him. Ramazzini relates that, in the epidemic fever which 

 spread over Italy in the year 1693, patients died in an unusual number on the 

 21st of January, at the moment of a lunar eclipse. 



Without disputing this fact (to ascertain which, however, it would be neces- 

 sary to have statistical returns of the daily deaths), it may be objected that the 

 patients who thus died in such numbers at the moment of the eclipse, might 

 have had their imaginations highly excited, and their fears wrought upon by 

 the approach of that event, if popular opinion invested it with danger. That 

 such an impression was not unlikely to prevail is evident from the facts which 

 have been recorded. 



At no very distant period from that time, in August, 1654, it is related that 

 patients in considerable numbers were by order of the physicians shut up in 

 chambers well closed, warmed, and perfumed, with a view to escape the in- 

 jurious influence of the solar eclipse, which happened at that time ; and such 

 was the consternation of persons of all classes, that the numbers who flocked , 

 to confession were so great that the ecclesiastics found it impossible to admin- | 

 ister that rite. An amusing anecdote is related of a village curate near Paris, 

 who, with a view to ease the minds of his flock, and to gain the necessary 



