480 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



iai" ' ich he ornamented each page of his day's work with arabesques in differ- 

 ent colored inks. He was very vain of this accomplishment, and was constantly 

 in the habit of calling attention to the manner in which, as he supposed, he had 

 beautified what would otherwise have been positively ugly. His fellow-clerks 

 amused themselves at his expense, but his superior ofificers, knowing his value, 

 never interfered with him in his amusement. Gradually, however, he conceived 

 the idea that they were displeased with him, and at last the notion became so 

 firmly rooted in his mind that he resigned his position, notwithstanding the pro- 

 testations of the directors that his idea was erroneous. Delusions of various oth- 

 er kinds supervened, and he passed into a condition of chronic insanity, in which 

 he still remains. In most of the cases occurring under this head the intellectual 

 powers are not of a high order, though there may sometimes be a notable devel- 

 opment of some talent, or even a great power for acquiring learning. Painters, 

 sculptors, musicians, mathematicians, poets, and men of letters generally, not 

 infrequently exhibit eccentricities of dress, conduct, manner, or ideas, which not 

 only merely add to their notoriety, but often make them either the laughing-stocks 

 of their fellow men or objects of fear or disgust to all who are brought into con- 

 tact with them. 



Idiosyncrasy. — By idiosyncrasy we understand a peculiarity of constitution 

 by which an individual is affected by external agents in a manner different from 

 mankind in general. Thus, some persons cannot eat strawberries without a kind 

 of urticaria appearing over the body; others are similarly affected by eating the 

 striped bass ; others again, faint at the odor of certain flowers, or at the sight of 

 blood; and some are attacked with cholera-morbus after eating shell-fish — as 

 crabs, lobsters, clams, or mussels. Many other instances might be advanced, 

 some of them a very curious character. These several conditions are called 

 idiosyncrasies. 



Begin, ^ who defines idiosyncrasy as the predominance of an organ, a viscus,. 

 or a system of organs, has hardly, I think fairly grasped th,e subject, though his 

 definition has influenced many French writers on the question. It is something 

 more than this — something inherent in the organization of the individual, of 

 which we only see the manifestation when the proper cause is set in action. We 

 cannot attempt to explain why one person should be severely mercurialized by 

 one grain of blue mass, and another take daily ten times that quantity for a week 

 without the least sign of the peculiar action of mercury being produced. We 

 only know that such is the fact; and were we to search for the reason, with all 

 the appliances which modern science could bring to our aid, we should be entire- 

 ly unsuccessful. According to Begin' s idea, we should expect to see some re- 

 markable development of the absorbent system in the one case, with slight de- 

 velopment in the other ; but, even were such the case, it would not explain the 

 phenomena, for, when ten grains of the preparation in question are taken daily, 

 scarcely a day elapses before mercury can be detected in the secretions, and yet 



'i "Physiologic Pathologique," Paris, 1828, t. i., p. 44. 



