At a time when so much public interest is manifested in lunatic asylums and their inmates, it scarcely requires the memory of the illustrious Pinel, Esquirol, and Guislain, or the knowledge of what has been done by the present Morel, Baillarger, Falret, Moreau, &c., to tempt one over the Channel, more especially when a visit to the far-famed Gheel is contemplated. So in July and August last, having leave of absence from my duties to spend some weeks in rest and recreation, I resolved to find both in a visit to the French and Belgian asylums, having learned by experience that to travel without an object is neither profitable nor pleasant. Believing that what interested me, and regarding which my curiosity had sometimes been excited at home, might not be devoid of interest to others, I made “notes” regularly of what I observed, recording facts and impressions on the spot and on the day, rather in the order of observation than of coherence, and striving only to observe well, and to state the exact truth.

The subject which I am permitted to-night to bring before this Society is one I have long had at heart, and one which the daily experience of my practice at Hayward's Heath prevents my passing by merely on account of the difficulties which evidently attend the realisation of my hopes, should such an issue be granted to them. I refer to the want in our county of an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane of the middle class–a class with which, while separated by education and calling, we, in our profession, are, on the other hand, too often linked by the cominoli bond of narrow means and pressing daily cares.

In the Journal of Mental Science for July, 1861, there is a review (which I wrote) of Mr. Erasmus Wilson's work on the Eastern, Turkish, or, more properly, Roman bath. Besides entering into the general history of the revival of the bath in England, and of the method of its administration (as now used in London), a ground plan and description is given there of a Roman bath erected by the Visitors of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, on my representations of its possible efficacy in the curative treatment of mental disease. For facility of reference I reprint at the end of this paper this description of the Hayward's Heath Bath, with the illustration.

Of late years, science has analysed more closely, than beforetime was practicable, the relations connecting the organic with the inorganic world. It has demonstrated that the substance of animated beings does not differ from that of inert and insensible bodies; life lays hold of its materials in the physical world without thereby altering their fundamental properties, and death returns them un-impaired to that abyss of material substance, whence they have been for a moment abstracted to be clothed in ephemeral forms. Science has made a further step; she is not content to prove the true and lasting identity of the simple bodies diffused through the inorganic and the organic kingdom; by a re-union of all the parts she has formed, if not a living being, at least the constituent parts of organisms; she has not formed a flower, a fruit, or a muscle, but she has made the chemical principles from which they are extracted. Will she go yet further ? Will she be able some day to control or order those mysterious forces which unite these principles, so as to make of them true organisms, and combine these organisms together, and cause them to co-operate in the formation of a common and individual action? We may doubt this, and it even needs some audacity to propound such a question. Such problems can only present themselves to us within that, vague and uncertain limit which separates the domain of science from that of metaphysics. Happy are they who, limiting their desires and their hopes, are content to extract some secrets from the world of phenomena, patiently analysing its laws and registering its facts, without seeking to penetrate the very essence of natural forces, or of the substance which they put in movement! He, on the contrary, who takes in the whole world in his ambitious investigations, who will not accept the convenient duality of mind and matter, who wishes at least to reconcile their limits, and to fix their point of contact, condemns himself to strange doubts, which scientific certainty cannot yet completely dissipate. Yet are there certain minds who cannot resist the attraction of these problems. Science always leads us towards man, and man towards philosophy. All optical science is in our eye—all acoustic science in our ear. The weight which old age drags, and which youth carries with so facile a grace, is that which binds the worlds in their orbits. The caloric which animates our bodies is a portion of the universal heat; the nerves are telegraphs which imprint upon the brain the sensation produced by our surroundings, and which transmit the dictates of our will to the senses. All the forces of nature, without exception, have been put in requisition to create the wondrous composition called man. Time, space, the world at large, can teach us nothing that we cannot study in him, and in him we shall find more than we can ever discover elsewhere. Man is not only a weight, a combination of chemical atoms, an aggregate of the most delicate physical instruments, he is besides all this, a personal force. It is not, therefore, without reason that biology or the study of life has been the keystone, of the scientific edifice. After traversing the numerous circles of human knowledge, we are forcibly led to this centre, which on one side metaphysics takes as its point of departure, only studying the being in itself, without form or exterior support, without definite action upon that which surrounds it; on the other hand, science considers it chiefly in its manifestations, and only approaches by degrees that unknown which lies under the phenomena. These two methods each present a legitimate operation of the mind. To proceed from object to subject, or inversely from subject to object, is it not to clear the same interval, to pass over the same abyss? To study the relations of the corporeal substance with the hidden substance which regulates its movements, such is the grand problem of metaphysics; such also is the final aim of science. The former has more immediate reference to the mind, the latter to the life; but we do not know more of the mind than we do of the life, and under these differing terms is doubtless hidden one and the self-same mystery. Is the principle of life different from that of the mind ? or, on the contrary, is it identical? Who are right, the materialists who identify mind and matter; the vitalists, who interpose life as a bond between body and mind; the animists, who make the mind the source and the principle, not only of intellectual phenomena, but also of organic functions? Such are the grave questions which I desire to examine with the aid of the most recent labours of metaphysicians and men of science. The physiological school of Montpellier did not invent vitality, neither did Stahl discover animism; the germs of these great doctrines are to be traced in the remotest antiquity. In reality, one can scarcely apprehend that man exists without demanding from himself, in terms more or less precise, what relation he bears to the rest of the world, in what manner he differs from inert matter, if the secret principle which gives him life and thought must die with him or survive him. But these formidable questions do not assume the same aspect in the minds of all, and even in the same individual there are moments when they are rejected as useless, and other moments when they intrude themselves with irresistable authority. That which is true of man is true also of humanity. One of the strongest attractions of the history of philosophy is to show the successive weaknesses, the victories, and transports of a great soul which develops itself in time and circumstance. A rapid glance at the modern treatises will show what numerous solutions the problem of the mind has already received on the part of the materialists, the animists, and the vitalists, in France and Germany; we shall endeavour to show in what the several schools differ, and what sources of enlightenment must be sought from natural as well as from historical science.

Although the axiom ex nihilo nihil fit may unquestionably in strict logic be pronounced to be a pure assumption, for as much as it is not impossible that an enlarged experience may sometime furnish us with an instantia contradictoria, yet it is plainly necessary within the compass of human knowledge to consider it an established truth. Within human ken there is, indeed, no beginning, no end; the past is developed in the present, and the present in the prediction of the future; cause produces effect, and effect in its turn becomes cause. Dust is man, and to dust he returns; the individual passes away, but that out of which he is created does not pass away. The decomposition of one compound is the production of another, and death is an entrance into a new being. This is no new truth, although modern science is now for the first time making good use of it; the earlier Grecian philosophers distinctly recognised it, and it has many times been plainly enunciated since their time. “All things,” said Empedocles, “are but a mingling and a separation of the mingled, which are called birth and death by ignorant mortals.” Plato expressed himself in like manner; and the plain statement of the truth was one of the heresies of the unfortunate Giordano Bruno. The imagination of Shakspeare, faithful to the scientific fact, traces the noble dust of Alexander till it is found stopping a bung-hole, and follows imperious Caesar till he patches a hole to keep the wind away. The immortality of matter and of force is an evident necessity of human thought.

The great progress which medicine in general has made during recent years, must in considerable part be ascribed to the anatomical direction it has assumed. The study of pathological anatomy has entirely changed the character of medical science, which, instead of a chaotic medly of unfounded theories and ingenious hypotheses, the fruits of speculation, is now a philosophic system resting on a firm foundation of facts with mutual and definite relations. To such an extent has the pathological investigation of disease been carried, that, in the ordinary maladies which attack the body, the instances are now exceptional where we cannot demonstrate certain gross, palpable changes of structure having an invariable causal connection with functional disturbance. By bringing diagnostics to our aid, we can also in many cases predict with confidence and precision the nature and extent of the lesion which will be found after death. But the triumph does not cease here. In conjunction with chemistry and the microscope, pathological anatomy has passed from the gross alterations of organs, and succeeded in elucidating the processes and changes which take place in their ultimate elements; and Virchow, bringing to the subject all the zeal and instinct of genius, has given us an insight into the arcana of cell-life, and laid down the comprehensive generalisation as the basis of a new pathology, that the cell is the ultimate agent by which, both in health and disease, structural and functional alterations are effected. All the practical departments of the healing art have participated more or less in this progress. Medicine proper, or that branch which restricts itself to the study of internal diseases, has separated itself more and more from dynamics, and found a natural explanation of its symptomatology in anterior changes of structure; while surgery and mid-wifery, with their outbranching specialities, are daily becoming more anatomical in character.

It might seem unaccountable that, notwithstanding the common sense of mankind has in all ages recognised the existence of intellect in animals, certain philosophers should always have been found to repudiate the vulgar opinion; were it not that experience proves there is much truth in the description which Condillac gives of the philosophers, as “men who love much better an absurdity that they imagine than a truth which all the world adopts.” Though Plato tells us that in the golden age men derived all their knowledge from communication with beasts, and though the little understood and much misunderstood Egyptians of old paid divine honours to certain animals—not, as is sometimes superficially concluded, on account of their brute wisdom, but really as living symbols of Divine intelligence, which they embodied and instinctively displayed—yet the Cartesian philosophy actually denied sensibility to animals, and designated them living machines. For such unmerited ignominy they have, however, been more than compensated by writers who, like M. Charles Bonnet, maintain the existence of immortal souls in them, and predict for them a future world and a happier destiny. The ancients would appear generally to have entertained a somewhat similar opinion; for, without referring to the doctrine of metempsychosis, we have the authority of Homer, who represents Orion as chasing the souls of stags over the plains of hell. And modem instinct, when not perverted by the prejudices and conceit of learning, never fails to acknowledge the rationality of brutes. According to a Scandinavian aphorism, the bear has the strength of ten men and the sense of twelve; and the Red Indians are so impressed with the intellectual powers of this animal that, whenever they have killed one, they scrupulously strive to appease its manes with various important ceremonies. They deck out its head with various trinkets, and make a long speech in which the courage of the departed is praised, its living relatives profusely complimented, and a hope expressed that the conduct of its slayer has been satisfactory both to itself and them. The intelligence of civilisation may dismiss with a smile of pity or contempt such barbarous displays; but the most advanced intelligence will not forget that there is some substratum of truth beneath every superstition, by virtue of which it lives. As no nation ever yet worshipped a piece of carved wood or chiselled stone otherwise than as a symbol of the Great Incomprehensible, by which both barbarous and civilised men are surrounded; so we may rest satisfied that the Red Indian only labours to propitiate the ghost of the bear because he has at times found, to his cost, that its intelligence has surpassed his own. The extremes of attributing too much and too little intelligence to animals will, however, be alike avoided by that sincere and unbiassed observation which, while discrediting all exaggerated theories, willingly recognises the undoubted existence in them of intelligence in its rudimentary form, and strives to point out the evidences of its gradual development through them.

Two recent numbers of the ‘Journal of Mental Science’ contain two communications, respectively entitled—

1. 1. On the Principles and Method of a practical Science of Mind. By Dr. Thomas Laycock. (Journal, January, 1862.)

2. 2. On the practical use of Mental Science. By Dr. J. Stephenson Bushnan. (Journal, April, 1862.)

There is no branch of the healing art in which modern medical science can point to greater results than in that which concerns itself with the care and treatment of mental disease—none which has made such progress since the time of our third and greatest founder.

A little more than a year ago a public meeting was announced as having taken place in this metropolis for the purpose of establishing a “Benevolent Asylum for the Middle Classes.” Though many were without doubt pleased with the project of so useful an undertaking, it appears that the vast majority of the public regarded it with great indifference. For, from time to time, an advertisement in the papers—a doleful and undignified document—has complained of the want of support, begged for further aid, and reminded lately the public that the amount subscribed for the Hartley Colliery Fund over and above what was wanted, would have been more than sufficient to have started the benevolent asylum. The public indifference must be the result of public ignorance; for we well know that when the heart of the country is touched, its sympathy and help are given in a profuse and practical manner. To elicit such aid, however, there must be a reasonable and well understood end in view; and the question is, whether the promoters of this proposed asylum have given a clear idea of what they want, of what they propose to do, and of the way they propose to do it.

At the close of our last paper on personal identity we had just turned to the consideration of those apparent morbid divisions of the unity of consciousness which are sometimes, though happily rarely, brought under the notice of medical psychologists. Double consciousness, as we have already hinted, is essentially a result of diseased action, and comprehends a variety of conditions, distinguished from each other by differences in the mental symptoms, and by the relations to each other of the lucid and insane or of the two insane “oscillations.” In all of them, however, there is, for the time, a change, a perversion, or an exaltation, of the mental identity of the individual, of that principle which is, as it were, a centre round which the other faculties of mind revolve, and about which memories cluster. In the intensest forms of double consciousness, so called, mental identity is separated or multiplied into two distinct parts, so that two identities reside in the same individual, while in the milder manifestations of this condition there is a partial division of the same principle, a confusion of two natures in the same person. Where two alternating, though altogether unconnected, lives are lived by the same being, there is afforded, we think, a proof that mental identity is something more than consciousness, and so far independent in its affections. Indeed, it appears to us that the morbid states at present under examination would have been more aptly described as instances of double identity rather than of double consciousness. The phrase double consciousness is a contradiction in terms, for it is manifestly absurd to suppose that the mind can exist in two different states at the same moment. It is also a misleading expression, for this is not, of course, the meaning which it is intended to convey, nor is it at all descriptive of the conditions to which it is applied. These conditions are not necessarily characterised by any alteration of consciousness; that is to say, if consciousness is regarded as having reference simply to the present existing operation of the mind, for the man who inhabits alternately two distinct mental spheres may be perfectly conscious in both of them. In both of them his eyes, his ears, and all his organs of sense, may be normally active. In both of them, with equal accuracy, he may appreciate his surroundings, govern his movements, and express his ideas. In both of them he may be equally conscious, but he is not similarly conscious. The same world is inspected from different points of view in each. In the one it may be the real world, as it is to the perceptions of ordinary people; in the other, the world clad in the unsubstantial figments of a feverish fancy; or in both, a shadowy world, made up of metamorphosed realities. But whatever the metamorphoses may be, they arise, not from errors of perception, but of the personality—perceiving. A man who has passed into the abnormal phase of double consciousness sees all the familiar faces that surround him, but he does not recognise them; he hears loved and well-known voices, but they fall upon his ears as strange sounds; he beholds his household gods, but these do not, as they were wont, awaken emotion in his mind; in short, he regards everything in a new light and apart from former associations. The mind, shorn of its past, begins to learn the lessons of life anew, and perceives every object in relation to its new condition, the result of internal changes. The outward creation becomes subordinate to the inward idea, and is regarded only as it harmonises with the reigning delusion.

[The French alienists, as deeply interested as we have been in this country, in the much-mooted question of the value of the Gheel system, have preceded us in an earnest and praiseworthy effort to solve it with an impartial and educated judgment. At the meeting of the eminent Medico-Psychological Society of Paris, held in July last, the society formed a commission to visit Gheel and to report. The commission consisted of the following eminent alienists:—MM. Michèa, Moreau, Mesnet, and Jules Falret, Trelât and Baillarger. The report has been drawn up by M. Jules Falret. The multiplied writings upon Gheel which have hitherto been put before the general and medical public have dealt, for the most part, only with the surface of the system, and too frequently with its sentimental appearances; this careful consideration, therefore, of its merits and demerits, founded upon a minute investigation made by a commission of eminent psychologists, is of great value. The early pages of the report, in which the details of the Gheel system are described, have been omitted by us, because they do not differ materially from the descriptions given in these pages by the able pens of Dr. Cox and Dr. Sibbald, and even in the present number by Dr. Carmichael McIntosh.—Ed.]

We perceive with no ordinary satisfaction that our talented and straightforward Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, has put his hand to the plough in right earnest, by carrying, on 10th January, 1862, fortiter et suaviter, through the Irish Privy Council, the revised rules for Irish Asylums, cancelling the stupid and contradictory ones of 27th March, 1843.

So much difficulty is experienced in producing the slightest alleviation of the sufferings of those affected with that form of derangement of the nervous centres which gives rise to what has been termed a hallucination, that the suggestion of any means by which this disease can be directly attacked, must be regarded as a decided advance in the treatment of this affection. Such a suggestion has recently been made by M. Baillarger, of Paris, in the recommendation of electrization.