305 



motions of the brain, which an enormous caries of the bones of the. 

 skull gave an opportunity of observing in her. I wiped off the sanious 

 matter which covered the dura mater, and I, at the same time, questioned 

 the patient on her situation : as she felt no pain from (.he compression of 

 the cerebral mass, I pressed down lightly the pledget of lint, and on a 

 sudden the patient, who was answering my questions rationaily, stopped 

 in the midst of a sentence, but she went on breathing, and her pulse con- 

 tinued to beat : I withdrew the pledget ; she said nothing : I asked her if 

 she remembered my last question : she said not. Seeing that the expe- 

 riment was without pain or danger, I repeated it three times, and thrice 

 I suspended all feeling and all intellect. 



A man trepanned for a fracture of the skull, with effusion of blood and 

 pus on the dura mater, perceived his intellectual faculties going, the 

 consciousness of existence growing benumbed and threatening to cease y 

 at the interval of each dressing, in proportion as the fluid collected. 



There are surgical observations on wounds of the head, containing se- 

 veral facts that may be connected with the preceding observations. There 

 is no one who has had syncope of more or less continuance, but knows 

 that the state is without pain or uneasiness, and leaves no consciousness 

 of what passed while it lasted. It is the same after an apoplexy, a fit 

 of epilepsy, &c. 



The history of temperament supplies us with too many examples of 

 the strict connexion which there is between the physical organization and 

 the intellectual and moral faculties, to leave any necessity for dwelling 

 longer on this truth, which no one questions; but which no philosopher 

 has yet followed into all its consequences. 



CLIX. An English writer, in a work on the history of mental aliena- 

 tion*, has traced, better than had before been done, the physiological 

 history of the passions, which he looks upon as mere results of organiza- 

 tion, ranking them among the phenomena of animal economy, and with 

 abstraction of any moral notion that might attach to them. 



All passion is directed to the preservation of the individual or the re- 

 production of the species. They may be distinguished, therefore, like 

 the functions, into two classes!' In the second, we should find parental 

 love, and all the affections that protect our kind through the helplessness 

 of its long infancy. 



But Crichton, with the greater part of metaphysicians and physiolo- 

 gists, appears to me to have settled incorrectly the meaning that should be- 

 long to the word passion. When he gives this name to hunger, an in- 

 ward painful sensation, the source of many determinations of many kinds, 

 a powerful mover of savage nd civilized man, to the anxiety which at- 

 tends the breathing an air deficient in oxygen,- to the impressions of ex-' 

 cessive heat and cold, to the troublesome sensations produced by the ac- 

 cumulation of urine and fecal matter, to the feeling of weariness and 

 fatigue that is left by violent exertions, he confounds sensation with the 

 passions or desires which may spring from it. 



It is to avoid extreme wants, of which a vigilant foresight perceives afar 

 off the possibility it is to satisfy all the factitous wants which society 

 and civilization have created, that men condemn themselves to those agi- 



* An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement London, If 98, 

 2vols. 8vo.< 

 t See APPENDIX, Note B . 



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