At noon, on Tuesday, the 15th of January last, Mr. Eugéne Hamburger met, in the busy Metropolitan thoroughfare, “Holborn Viaduct,” a jewel dealer, named Jackson, with whom he had some slight business acquaintance. With the view of exhibiting his wares, Hamburger consented to accompany the dealer into an as yet unoccupied office of the latter on the Viaduct. Upon entering the room, Hamburger was about to take a parcel of pearls from his bag, when Jackson fired a pistol at him, wounding him in the head, and afterwards continued the assault by drawing a dagger and stabbing him. In the struggle that ensued, Hamburger succeeded in overpowering and disarming his assailant, who escaped from the room and disappeared. The wounded man thereafter proceeded home in a cab, and recovered from his injuries.

In any large group of cases of general paralysis, there are such differences in the mental symptoms, the paretic signs, the mode of onset, the course, intercurrent affections, duration, variability and mobility of symptoms, and pathological anatomy of the several cases, that one must feel that there are varieties of the disease. This has led to subdivisions of the affection, or grouping of its cases, scarcely any of which have had a pathological basis. True it is that Bayle, who was the first to differentiate general paralysis, and who attributed its striking phenomena each to a special morbid change, was led to place his cases in five series, in the first of which were simply the lesions of chronic meningitis, and in the second abundant serous effusion was added to these; in the third consecutive inflammation of the grey cortex; in the fourth arachnoid false membranes (cysts); and in the fifth various cerebral affections, complicated the chronic inflammation of the soft membranes. Yet many of his explanations are obviously incorrect, although his work marks a marvellous advance in science. Again, Baillarger, Requin, Prus, Duhamel, Duchenne, Sandras and others, held that general paralysis occurred either with or without insanity, and the first-named of these denied that the insanity is anything more than secondary and accessory in general paralysis of the insane.∗ Further, he speaks, and in this is followed by Lunier, of the symptoms of general paralysis as being produced by (1) chronic meningo-encephalitis, and by (2) chronic hydrocephalus (Dance, Moulin), or serous effusion following apoplexy (Rochoux, Moulin), or symptomatic of organic lesions. But they do not in any way distinguish between the cases arising from the two kinds of lesion, further than that Lunier asserts an absence of trembling of the limbs in those from lesions of the second kind.

Metropolitan (English) cases of spurious hydrophobia are both less numerous and less instructive than those that occur so frequently in the Midland counties and their great cities, especially in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire. But some of the London cases are, nevertheless, full of interest. Thus, death from a cat-bite formed the subject of an inquest at the St. Pancras Coroner's Court, in April, 1877. The deceased was a woman of 64, who was described as naturally irritable and nervous, and who was sent to the insane ward of the St. Pancras Workhouse in a “state of mania…… on account of her madness.” And there she “died from congestion of the lungs, brought on by hydrophobia”—said the verdict.

As the knowledge and appreciation of light are rendered more distinctive by the near presence of a shade, and as the idea of absolute smoothness is presented to the mind with a keener readiness when viewed in relation to an inequality of surface; so in mental science such phenomena as are normal, and therefore in a sense unvaried, are better known when studied in connection with others that are abnormal, and in consequence more clearly to be individualised.

The macroscopical and the microscopical researches on the pathology of the brain, in insanity and other neuroses, though hitherto carried on with zest to an almost unlimited extent, have yet been devoid of any very definite trustworthy results. Nor is this to be wondered at when we consider that infinitesimal particles, acting on the nervous system, are capable of producing very decided effects. Thus, a distinct sensation of smell is produced by so small a quantity of odorous particles as to be practically immeasurable. Therefore, the wonder is, as Dr. Maudsley observes, that any morbid appearances should have been expected to be found in many cases of insanity.

This Bill, for the establishment of County Boards in England, contains several provisions affecting the care of the pauper insane, which renders it incumbent on us to examine carefully what will be the probable effect of the changes it produces, and its general tendency as bearing on the interests of lunacy. The principal enactment of the Bill is to take from Quarter Sessions, as now established, all administrative as distinguished from judicial business, the latter remaining with the Quarter Sessions, the former to be transacted by a new body, the County Board, constituted by equal moieties, appointed and elective members; the former to be Justices appointed by the Justices in Quarter Sessions, two for each Petty Sessional Division of the County, the latter to be elected by the Guardians not of each Union, but of each Petty Sessional Division, two in each such division; and the qualification is that they shall be guardians of that division or qualified to be guardians. The elective members of the Board to be ipso facto magistrates in all that regards administrative business.