In Sir William Gull's classical description of “A Cretinoid State,” which we now call Myxódema, in 1873 he thus describes the mental condition of his first patient: ∗—“In the patient whose condition I have given above there had been a distinct change in the mental state. The mind, which had previously been active and inquisitive, assumed a gentle, placid indifference corresponding to the muscular languor, but the intellect was unimpaired.” He noticed “changes in the temper,” and assumed that the mental changes were pathological and a part of the disease. In Dr. Ord's almost equally classical paper, in which he gave the disease its present name,† he referred to the “slowness of thought,” the “long and diffuse letters” of one of the patients. In every full description of any case of myxódema that I have seen some such morbid mental change has been referred to. In the Report for 1888 of the Committee of the Clinical Society of London on Myxódema, the mental condition of the patients was inquired into, but there is internal evidence that the reporters did not all understand mental symptoms in the same light. Slowness of mental action was the symptom most common, for its absence was only noted in three of the 109 cases. Delusions and hallucinations are stated to have been present in 15 cases, or 14 per cent., and actual insanity in 24 cases, or 22 per cent. There is very frequent mention of morbid suspicions under the mental heading, and memory is usually stated to be impaired where reported on. In his experiments on monkeys, detailed in the report, Horsley specially refers to mental symptons that followed extirpation of the thyroid. He says the “mental operations, normal at first, soon diminished in activity, and then follow apathy, lethargy, coma.” “Gradually the intellect became duller, the energy of the animal diminished, and apathy alternating with idiotic activity resulted.”

I proceed at once to the analysis of the cases that have come under treatment in this asylum. The 730 cases under consideration comprise all the cases of melancholia admitted into the Cumberland and Westmorland Asylum during the twenty-seven years from the beginning of 1865 to the beginning of 1892.

After reading the somewhat meagre discussion which followed the reading of Dr. Thomas Ireland's very interesting paper before the Section of Psychology at the 61st Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association,∗ it occurred to me that your readers might take some interest in a paper on the connection between hemp drugs and insanity in Bengal. The Hemp Drugs Commission is now sitting, and my paper will consist mainly of the evidence already given to me, in the shape of a report, to that Committee. To avoid unnecessary prolixity, I will first of all refer your readers to an excellent report by Surgeon-Captain David Prain, I.M.S.,† which was published a short time ago by the Bengal Government. This report deals fully with the botanical and economic side of the question, and gives also a good resumé of the chemistry of cannabis sativa.

It will always be a subject of regret that the late Sir Andrew Clark left unfinished an article on “Gouty Melancholia,” which he contributed to the “Journal of Mental Science” (Vol. xxvi., p. 343). In this paper, consisting mainly of an imaginary dialogue between the physician and a medical practitioner who consults him about his patient, he graphically describes the symptoms in reply to the inquiry what Sir Andrew really meant by “gouty.”

The comparative disuse of inquisitions under the new Lunacy Acts is naturally giving rise to much uncertainty and diversity of opinion in medico-legal circles. An attempt to explain the nature and extent of the departure which has been taken under these Statutes may not, therefore, be inopportune. It should be premised that—thanks to the somewhat meagre interest which medico-legal questions excite in Parliament—the pages of Hansard throw little light upon the solution of the difficulty, and the matter is, of course, not one that can readily be made the subject of judicial interpretation.

If the Dutch judicial authorities ever seriously proposed to hypnotize De Jong, in order to extract from him a clue, which they believed him to be able to give, as to the whereabouts of his alleged victims, the proposal was very promptly extinguished by public and professional criticism both in Holland and in this country. Even the inquisitorial jurisprudence of the continent surely cannot sanction so flagrant an injustice as to convert a prisoner into his own accuser and judge by the aid of hypnotic suggestion. For this and none other would be the result of the hypnotization of persons accused of crime. We are not unmindful of the subtle distinction which the Dutch law is said to draw between the use of statements made by hypnotized subjects as a medium for further inquiry and the acceptance of such statements as legal proofs; the former, we are told by some authorities (although their opinion is disputed), the law of Holland permits, the latter it prohibits. In point of fact, however, this distinction is worthless. Once let an acute juge d'instruction compel a prisoner to supply him with “clues,” and he will soon both turn them into legal evidence (how far such evidence is reliable we shall consider immediately), and let the jury understand that the case for the prosecution is corroborated by the testimony of the prisoner himself. If the hypnotization of prisoners should ever again become a practical question on the continent, we trust that the fact to which we have here called attention will be kept in view, and that a form of inquisition, which is morally as unjustifiable as the rack, will not be introduced under the cover of a distinction without a difference. The case against the hypnotization of prisoners becomes all the stronger when we consider how unreliable the testimony of hypnotic subjects has been proved to be. It is unnecessary to sum up the evidence on this point in any detail. Every student of hypnotic science is familiar with the story of how Lombroso endeavoured to obtain from a criminal, convicted on the clearest evidence, a confession of his guilt, only to find that the convict repeated the same tissue of falsehoods which he had told at his trial; and this case is corroborated by the incident recorded by Moll, of a subject who resisted suggestions to confess the commission of some crime so strenuously as to induce a violent attack of tetanus. It is true that, on the other side, we have the instance of the hypnotists who were obliged to waken a patient lest he should make them the repositories of inconvenient secrets; but there is apparently nothing to show that these incipient confessions were true, and in any event an isolated case of this kind cannot out-weigh the evidence in support of the contrary conclusion. It is not only because of its repulsiveness and probable uselessness that we rejoice that the proposal to hypnotize Do Jong was abandoned. There can be no doubt that if such an experiment had been tried it would have repelled both the public and the medical and legal professions from giving to the phenomena of hypnotism that respectful consideration to which they are justly entitled. How injuriously the prospects of hypnotic science in this country were affected by what transpired at the Eyraud and Gompard trial, no intelligent observer of contemporary medico-legal history needs to be told. We should have regarded a second contretemps of the same kind with deep regret. In a variety of forms the problem of hypnotism will soon be upon us. We may close our eyes to its approach. Pur si muove. How shall we determine the civil capacity and the criminal responsibility of hypnotized subjects? When is hypnotic influence “undue?” How shall we best protect the patient from the hypnotist, and the hypnotist from possible false charges on the part of the patient? With these and other questions of the same description we shall have ere long to deal. We earnestly hope that no untoward incidents in the meantime will deter the educated public from studying hypnotic phenomena in a spirit of calm and dispassionate inquiry. It would, indeed, be a misfortune if, when the problem of hypnotism comes up for solution, its intrinsic difficulties should be intensified by our want of familiarity with its terms.

The Report for 1892 of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police throws a somewhat startling light on the present position of the controversy as to the relative juridical value of long and short sentences respectively in the case of offences against property, such as burglary and housebreaking, which constitute, as Sir Edward Bradford truly observes, the peculiar work of the habitual professional criminal. Now the statistics for 1892 point to the fact that in so far as crimes of this description are concerned the short sentence theory has already triumphed over its rival. The convictions upon indictment in 1892 for offences under the class in which burglary and housebreaking are included numbered 409. A considerable proportion of these convictions were of habitual criminals, and yet ten years' penal servitude was the maximum sentence recorded, and this sentence was imposed in three cases only. In one case the sentence was eight years, in six cases it was seven years, in two cases six years, in twenty-nine cases it was five years, in two cases four years, and in thirty cases three years. In the 409 cases, therefore, there were 73 sentences of penal servitude, and 61 of these were for terms of five years or under. When we examine the matter more closely the defeat of the long sentence theory appears still more remarkable. Though there were 143 convictions for burglary, only 19 sentences of penal servitude were passed, the maximum being seven years, and this term was imposed in only two cases. The convictions for breaking into dwelling-houses, shops, etc., numbered 179, and in respect of these only 32 penal servitude sentences were recorded. One of these was for eight years, one for seven years, two for six years, and the rest for terms of five years and under. Sir Edward Bradford has no doubt that the policy of judicial leniency which has thus, to all appearances, set in will increase the national roll of habitual crime—(1) because short sentences do not deter confirmed criminals, and (2) because the obvious practical result of the short sentence theory is to raise permanently the proportion of such criminals who are “at large” at any particular time. It does seem undesirable that the legal principles which have hitherto obtained in regard to the punishment of professional criminals should be abandoned before we have at least had an inquiry by a competent tribunal into their working, and also into the probable effects of the system which it is proposed to substitute for them.

The increasing prevalence of suicide in this country is a phenomenon of grave social importance. Many of its causes, doubtless, lie beyond the range of either legislative or administrative remedies. We cannot avert the influence of commercial depression or religious excitement or alter the thousand and one climatic, telluric, and social conditions which lead men to take away their own lives. Nor can we return to the drastic policy of earlier days, when the suicide was buried at midnight in the king's highway with a stake through his body, and without the rites of Christian sepulture. But two deterrents might be tried. In the first place, instead of treating attempted felo de se as attempted murder, it might, in accordance with Sir James Stephen's suggestion, be regarded only as a secondary offence, punishable by secondary punishment. Again—and the prospect held out by the Death Certification Committee's report, of fresh legislation in our “crowner's quest law,” gives to this point an immediate interest—coroners' juries ought not to be permitted to return, nor should coroners be allowed to receive verdicts of “temporary insanity” in cases where not a vestige of evidence of mental disease in the legal sense of the term was adduced. The amiable humanity which inspires such verdicts is worthy of some respect, but its consequences are bad, and further manifestations of this weak disregard of duty ought to be prohibited by law. It may well enough be that the average felo de se is not able fully to appreciate either “The Suicide's Argument” or “Nature's Answer” to it, at the time when he lays violent hands on himself. But this is not what the law means, or ought to mean, by insanity; and we see no reason whatever why the mental state of suicides should not be determined by the criteria which govern the question of criminal responsibility in other cases. We deplore this weak sentimentality.

Mr. Asquith has done wisely in commuting the capital sentence passed on Lewis in this case to one of penal servitude. The circumstantial evidence against the prisoner was utterly inconclusive; and his confession of guilt—deliberate and complete as in point of form it undoubtedly was—had a soupçon of insanity about it of which the mind has some difficulty in getting rid. The jealousy with which the criminal law regards naked confessions of guilt is justified by experience. There can be no doubt that it was mental disease which prompted the witches of old to make their false revelations as to the hideous mysteries of the sabbat. And other cases are recorded in which sometimes from insane delusion, sometimes from insanity without delusion, sometimes from sheer tódium vitó, and at other times from an infamous desire for notoriety, or a laudable impulse to shield the guilty, men have confessed, with the utmost circumstantiality, crimes which it was subsequently demonstrated that they had never committed. The case of Hubert, who falsely confessed that he had set fire to London in 1666, and paid for his falsehood with his life, is an instance in point. A still more remarkable case is that of the two Boorns, convicted in the Supreme Court of Vermont, September, 1819, of the alleged murder of Russell Colvin seven years before (Cf. Taylor, “Evid.,” Vol. i., p. 240, n. 2). It appeared that Colvin, who was the brother-in-law of the prisoners, was a person of weak mind, that he was considered burdensome to the family of the prisoners, who were obliged to support him; that on the day of his disappearance, being in a distant field, where the prisoners were at work, a violent quarrel broke out between them, and that one of them struck him a violent blow on the back of the head with a club and felled him to the ground. Some suspicion arose at that time that he had been murdered, and these were increased a few months afterwards by the finding of his hat in the same field. These suspicions in process of time subsided; but in 1819 one of the neighbours having repeatedly dreamed of the murder with great minuteness of circumstance, both in regard to his death and the concealment of his remains, the prisoners were vehemently accused, and generally believed guilty of the murder. Upon a strict search, the pocket-knife of Colvin and a button of his clothes were found in an old open cellar in the same field, and in a hollow stump, not many yards from it, were discovered two nails and a number of bones, believed to be those of a man. Upon this evidence, together with their deliberate confession of the fact of the murder and the concealment of the body in these places, the prisoners were convicted and sentenced to death. Fortunately they were not executed, as their supposed victim turned out to be in New Jersey, and came home in time to prevent their execution. He had fled for fear they would kill him. The bones were those of some animal, and the prisoners had confessed on the advice of some foolish friends, who told them it was their only chance of saving their lives in view of the strong popular prejudice and the circumstances proved against them. A similar case in Virginia recently came under our own observation. In the light of such miscarriages of justice, it is impossible not to feel a sense of relief that the convict in the Limehouse murder case was not permitted to go to the gallows.

As a “Chaplain's Column” has just been introduced into the Journal, the time and place seem appropriate for a short notice of the life of a distinguished man who was chaplain of a county asylum for more than thirty years.