There are two methods by which an approximate analysis of the elements or constituents and of the laws of Mind may be arrived at. They may be submitted to examination in the mind itself; or they may be inferred from character, conduct, or individual acts. In both processes there are sources of error, and limitations. When subjectively considered, the nature and the accuracy of the result depend upon the original capacities to observe, abstract, report; upon those as affected by education, physical health and external circumstances, and upon the influence of preconceived opinions in estimating mental phenomena.

Disease, in the great majority of its forms, consists, according to the most scientific pathologists, in either an excess or deficiency of those transformative processes by which new structures are built up and the old dissolved and carried away, and on the continuance of which the healthy growth and sustenance of the organism depend. Until an animal is full grown the constructive processes are in their maximum state of normal activity; while, relatively, the destructive processes are at their maximum of abeyance. But for the continuance of healthy adult life the balance of organic change must remain always even: growth must be equalled by decay; the agents of each must do equal work. If after the attainment of maturity the relative activity of the composing and decomposing processes should continue the same as before in any part of the organism, hypertrophy or abnormal growth would be the result. If, on the other hand, that relative activity is reversed–the destructive metamorphoses becoming predominant, either locally or generally–there is corresponding atrophy. Moreover, as one of the essential conditions of normal life, the co-ordinate action of the constructive and destructive agencies must range, within certain degrees of rapidity, beyond those limits in either direction the regions of disease are entered on. If that action be unduly slow, the physical frame is weak, the emotional nature is apathetic, the intellect lacks energy–systematic thinking being a toilsome or impossible task; if successively slower still, corresponding phases of vital degradation are passed through, until at length death itself ensues. If, on the contrary, the transformative processes be unduly rapid, there is exuberance of activity, both muscular and mental: repose is suffering; the feelings are intense, but quickly changeable; the intellect exhibits an excess of energy– ideas too rapidly formed to admit of adequate development chase each other through the mind in quick succession, and, having no stability, fail to become effective forces, shaping the life of the individual to some great or definite end. The physical and mental calm of conscious strength which the most healthy natures experience is wanting, existence being impulsive, restless, tumultuous, feverish– a sort of border land between normal activity and the most temperate zones of inflammation.

It will not, I think, be disputed that, in an investigation into the nature or pathology of any disease, some light may be thrown upon it by producing a similar disease artificially. If we ascertain how we can produce it, and what are the fewest conditions required for its presence, we have gained an important step in the inquiry. and if, aving learned how to cause certain symptoms, we can carefully examine the state of the bodily organs when these symptoms have supervened, and compare it with their condition previously, we undoubtedly have an opportunity of acquiring knowledge which no one accustomed to such investigations will despise. If, by adding caustic ammonia to the jugular vein of a living sheep, the lining membrane is afterwards found to be studded with pink fibrin, we see at once that a fact has been ascertained of great interest in the study of the adherent clot of phlebitis. The same may be said of rheumatic endocarditis, if deposits can be produced upon the valves of the heart by injecting a known substance into the blood of an animal. I might refer to other examples, but these will suffice to illustrate my first position.

Certainly it would have been more agreeable to those gentler feelings which the occurrence of death rarely fails to produce in men, and more in harmony with that charity which willingly covers over the sins and evil behaviour of an erring creature, once he has paid the last debt of nature, to have made no mention more’ of the convicted murderer, George Victor Townley, but to have allowed him to pass in silence to his suicidal rest. That he whom an audacious intrigue saved from the extreme penalty which the law metes out to the murderer should have become his own executioner, was, perhaps, the last small act of justice which he could do to outraged society; and of him, therefore, it may not untruly be said that nothing in his life became him so well as the leaving of it. But it has been the misfortune of Townley–a misfortune which pursues him even after death–to have been cursed with injudicious friends, and to be the helpless victim of some who, after the manner of parasites, would feed upon his notoriety and make to themselves capital out of his crime. It becomes then a duty not to keep silence under these circumstances, but truthfully to expose the passionate, though unsuccessful, attempt which has been made, by taking advantage of his suicide, and the vulgar prejudice in regard to such act, to set up a sort of justification of that foul disgrace into which, not the medico-psychological speciality only, but the whole medical profession, was mercilessly dragged on the occasion of his trial, and subsequently to it. Furthermore, since Townley's eventful life now constitutes a pathological fact in the annals of great crimes, and since tender feelings of compassion can have no place in pathological investigation of a felon's nature, it is necessary, in the cause of science, however much we may regret the necessity, to present the issue of a case the previous course of which has been recorded and discussed in the numbers of this Journal for January and April, 1864, and more fully in a special pamphlet on ‘Insanity and Crime’ by the Editors. The following is the account of his death and of the inquest upon his body as given in the daily papers:

In the ‘Journal of Mental Science’ for January, 1866, I published a paper containing a few remarks ‘On the several means of providing for the yearly increase of Pauper Lunatics.’