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(Again, on p. 399.) He has been speaking of certain phenomena which he asserts are explainable under physiological and pathological laws. "Now, should we stop inquiry here, when insanity results? Can we admit that insanity is any thing more or less than a pathological condition, or that it lies beyond the boundaries of ordinary and legitimate medical study, and beyond the range of clinical observation or pathological investigation? Will not the patient study which elucidates the one be likely to elucidate the other? But in the latter the mind is affected? So is it in delirium, so is it in a degree in its operations in all diseases, when the mind is affected.''. . . Farther on: "We do not treat these mental phenomena; but we regard them simply as exponents of physical states. We hold that it is not necessary, in order to establish the physical origin (that is, producing cause) and nature of insanity, or other cerebral disease, to show that every case is of such origin and nature. If, in a single case, insanity is shown to come on as the result of a well-recognized bodily disease, and the mental disturbance disappears pari passu with the physical restoration, the argument is invincible."

Running through these extracts, it will be observed, the thread of argument is something like this: Inasmuch as insanity is a physical disease, of which mental derangement is only a symptom, the cause or influence determining it must be a physical one; the ultimate pathological seat must be in the encephalon; the means of cure and hope of relief must lie in remedial agencies based upon such pathology, recourse being had occasionally to the faint, indirect, and strictly reflex influences, of a moral nature.

Now, let us examine the statistics, to see the origin of insanity; or, in other words, to see what produces this bodily state, for it is upon these statistics that his opinions upon the origin and nature of insanity are professedly based. In Dr. Gray's annual report for 1863, to which he refers, and from which he largely quotes in the present paper, his present views were somewhat foreshadowed, though then less pronounced, and more deferential to those previously held by his professional brethren. He contented himself, then, with expressing the conviction that more careful observation would reveal physical causes as productive of more cases of insanity than moral causes.

A table of analysis of the causes of insanity was given in that report, covering a period of twenty-one years, in the history of the Utica asylum. This showed a decrease of moral causes from 46 per cent. to 9 per cent., an increase of physical causes from 33 per cent. to 72 per cent. The percentage of unascertained causes did not differ very much at the different intervals. In the paper before us, the table is brought down to 1870, inclusive. The first thing to be done is to exclude the "unascertained causes." They only confuse the lessons to be drawn from the tables, and destroy the proper ratio of percentage of the two classes of causes. For, in analyzing statistics, the value of the induction depends upon the assumption that any ratio established in the known cases will also hold good of the unknown or general population.

Table showing the Analysis and the Percentage of Moral, Physical, and Unascertained Causes as recorded in the Admission for Twenty-eight Years.