THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JUNE, 1880. 
I. INSANITY AND ITS DIFFICULTIES.* 
BEARD pronounces it “ one of the paradoxes of 
psychology that we can best study the mysteries of 
the mind when that funftion is eclipsed by disease.” 
Leaving to another opportunity, or perhaps to other hands, 
the discussion of the view here conveyed, that mind is 
merely a function, and not an entity, we see in the fa< 5 t just 
mentioned, or rather in the exceptional facilities which it 
offers to the student, little that can be regarded as paradox- 
ical, or even exceptional. For the successful investigation 
of any phenomenon whatever it is highly important that we 
should be able to view it under varying circumstances. But 
there is undoubtedly much that is paradoxical in connexion 
with insanity. No subjeCL probably, of equal importance 
is so completely overlooked by the great mass of the edu- 
cated public. Set on one side certain seftions of the medical 
and the legal professions, a few philanthropists anxious that 
every practicable relief should be afforded to the victims of 
this scourge, and such private individuals as have relatives 
or friends in some asylum, and what cares the rest of the 
world about insanity ? We no longer, indeed, like our pow- 
dered and periwigged forefathers, consider a visit to Bedlam 
as a holiday pastime. But little more than they do we in 
our turn recognise the terrible riddle which such institutions, 
Sphinx-like, propound for us to solve. We perhaps view 
madness merely as one of the horrors with which the sensa- 
tional novelist of the day spices hert narratives, overlooking 
* The Problems of Insanity : a Paper read before the New York Medico- 
Legal Society. By G. M. Beard, A.M., M.D., &c. Reprint from the “ Phy- 
sician and Bulletin of the Medico-Legal Society.” 
f This department of literature is to such an extent in the hands of ladies 
that the feminine is here the more worthy genden 
VOL. II. (THIRD SERIES), 2 G 
