It is a great pleasure to me to have the opportunity of speaking to a number of my professional brethren on the subject announced for to-night's lecture—a subject whose vastness and far-reaching connections with the problems, not only of practical medicine, but also of physical and mental education for the young, are daily presented to my mind with increasing force by the facts that I observe in hospital and private practice. The inheritance of the neurotic temperament, with its ever shifting modifications and transformations of outward form, I need hardly tell you is not exactly a new discovery. Commenced, as far as scientific research goes, by Morel, in his treatise, “Des Dégénerescences Humaines,” the investigation of the hereditary neurosis has been since carried out by many observers, and has been specially illustrated by one of the most eminent alienists of the present day, Dr. Maudsley. It has now been sufficiently demonstrated in a general way, that there is handed down, in certain families, a tendency of the individual members to inherit from their parents either a particular nervous disease—for instance, insanity—from which they suffered, or else—and this quite as frequently—some other disease of the nervous system. Thus it often happens in these neurotic families, that an insane progenitor will endow a variable number of his descendants respectively with epilepsy, with neuralgia, with insanity, with invincible tendencies to drink, with brain softening, or with chorea; the more fortunate of his descendants escaping with only some more or less strongly marked irritability of nervous system, which may express itself chiefly in mental sensitiveness and impulsiveness, or in the existence of some slight local spasmodic affection, or in a general eccentricity of character which it is impossible to define. Or it may be that the vicious circle of nervous degeneration began at an earlier stage; for instance, the insane progenitor was himself the child of a drunkard, whose habitual intemperance had been the starting point—as there is reason to believe it often is the starting point—of a lowered nervous organisation of the family stock, which will show itself in the various ways already mentioned. These general facts are doubtless familiar to your minds, and you are also well aware that this sad inheritance is a curse that seems to fall with special weight upon families, many of whose members are of a mental calibre that would fit them to be the salt of the earth, possessing quickness of insight, original cast of thought, genius for mechanical invention, or, it may be, delicate artistic faculties. These are the men that really make the world march; it is they who give society its impulses to progress of all kinds; but, unhappily, it must be also said that they are too frequently the victims of their inherited temperament, and that their lives, even when they are not interrupted by any positive catastrophe, are too often overshadowed by the gloom of hypochondriasis, or poisoned by some unhappy intellectual or moral weakness, which may be known only to themselves, but is to themselves a perpetual misery, perhaps even a perpetual terror. Of course I am not here referring to the possessors of the highest kind of genius, that rare excellence which flowers only once or twice in a century of a nation's history; such natures are calm and strong, the typical embodiment of the mens sana in corpore sano, at its highest and best. Tour Shakespeare or your Goethe is no weakling. But, unhappily, it is not such as these that bear the heat and burden of modern progress, and among the men of second rank, upon whom that burden actually falls, a lamentable number are the victims of that inherited defect of nervous balance which is at the foundation of those associated hereditary neuroses, respecting which I ask permission to say a few words to you. And if we farther reflect on the fact that for one such partial, even if brilliant and useful success, as nature achieves in the persons of these neurotic men and women of talent, she probably makes at least two failures in the shape of their relatives who are nervous, but not talented, we cannot avoid the conviction that the subject of inherited neurosis is one of the most important that engages the attention either of the physician or of the student of social science.

That our convict prisons should be the theatres upon whose stage are enacted day by day a varied round of farces and burlesques of a more or less tragical significance, is a thought whose development may be interesting, or simply amusing, according to the direction in which our fancy for the time being leads us.

I am desirous of making a few critical remarks upon the address of its President, read before the Medico-Psychological Association in August last, as also upon some of the observations which were elicited thereby from various members at the time of its delivery.

We have it on the word of Justinian, that “by the law of nature all men were born free.” Yet the Blue Book of the Commissioners in Lunacy, recently published, shows that 36,871 Englishmen are deprived of their liberty, and confined in lunatic asylums. And if we compare these numbers with those in the Report for 1869 it will be found that during the year 1870 the insane of all classes have increased in number by 2,042, or 174 private and 1,868 pauper patients. This increase is not exceptional, but has been going on for many years.

Most asylum physicians admit that in acutely excited cases in whom the ordinary means of inducing sleep, viz., out-door exercise and liberal diet, fail, sleep should be induced by some medical agent, in case the continued excitement may prove too much for the patient, and that in cases of mild melancholia and nervous irritability, where insomnia has been and is the most prominent symptom, that some sleep-causing medicine should be given. As to the medicine, the preparations of opium and the tincture of hyoscyamus long reigned supreme, for some time bromide of potassium was much extolled for its sedative and soporific properties, and latterly chloral has totally eclipsed every other sedative or hypnotic.

In supplement of my paper on “The Physiology of Mind in the Lower Animals,” and in anticipation of the correlative essay, which I hope by-and-bye to contribute to the “Journal of Mental Science,” on “The Pathology of Mind in the Lower Animals,” I am desirous—so long as the whole British public has a vivid memory of certain signal illustrations of the fact, or phenomena—to direct attention to the circumstance that the lower animals, in common with man, are subject to certain forms of Epidemic Mental Derangement. I allude more especially, at present, to that form thereof which is popularly known as Panic, and technically described as Timoria or Panphobia; an affection that is very properly included among “Epidemic Mental Diseases” in the short account given of them by Dr. Browne, ex-Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland, in “Chambers's Encyclopædia” (vol. iv, 1862, p. 92). The illustrations to which I would specially draw attention, in the case of the lower animals, are to be found, on the one hand, in the notorious Stampedesof Cavalry Horses, which characterized the well-known “autumn manóuvres” at Aldershot, about the end of August and beginning of September, 1871, as well as the later military manóuvres near the Russian capital (in September, 1871); and on the other hand, the Stampedes of other domestic and wild animals, during the more recent devastating conflagrations of Chicago, and of the prairies or forests of Michigan and Wisconsin, (in October, 1871.)

In a certain section of the public mind the impression seems somehow to have taken root that in a well-regulated asylum no accident can ever occur without affording evidence of want of care and forethought on the part of the responsible officers.

Those who read the Italian Retrospect in the last number of this Journal, may, perhaps, remember that Professor Lombroso's book was reserved for a separate examination. Mere excellence of treatment would hardly have led us to ask for further room in reviewing a work which deals with a disease happily unknown in England, and therefore of no practical importance.

Considering the history of France for the last eighteen months, there would have been little reason for surprise if our brethren there had entirely ceased to contribute their share to the literature of psychological medicine. They have, however, continued to write and to publish, although three numbers of the “Annales” were published during the siege of Paris, and one under the reign of the Commune, when Paris was cut off from the rest of the world. The “Journal de Médecine Mentale” seems to have been more unfortunate, as only one number was published for the last four months of 1870, since which we have received no more.

When this case first appeared in the Court of Session, Edinburgh, in March last, it excited much attention among the general public, and it formed a frequent subject of discussion among members of the medical and legal professions. The progress of the suit was watched with much interest; the evidence led was carefully weighed; the opinions of the medical experts were freely criticised; the charge of the judge gave the utmost satisfaction to some, while the verdict of the jury equally delighted those who held a contrary opinion. The case presents many points of interest for those engaged in the study and treatment of mental diseases, but any remarks to be made on the points which demand special notice will be given after an abstract of the evidence has been presented to the reader. It may be remarked that the evidence was very voluminous, and that while every effort has been made to make the present abstract as short as possible, care has been taken to avoid obscurity, and no really important piece of evidence has been omitted for the sake of brevity. It must also be added that this account of the case has been made up from the reports of the proceedings which appeared in the “Scotsman.”