Is a given prisoner fit, so far as his mental condition is concerned, to undergo the discipline to which his sentence of imprisonment commits him?

The relationship existing between the mental constitution of prisoners, and the active and passive penalties which go to make up their prison experience, requires some notice before we can recognise how a special class of weak-minded criminals arises apart from those who are positively insane.

The forms of insanity which we passed under review, with the exception of the epileptic insanity, were all more or less connected with the organs and function of generation, and the next five forms are also of the same class. The first three, as you will see by a reference to the table, are connected with child-bearing—the Insanity of Pregnancy, of Parturition (or puerperal insanity), and of Lactation.

The scientific method of studying the phenomena of the human mind by founding it on a physiological basis, and thereby tracing the cerebral functions through the lower animals and uncultivated man, according to the plans adopted in other physiological investigations, must necessarily tend to modify or even change much that is contained in our received systems of psychology. In the hands of such men as Darwin and Huxley, the comparative method, when worked out in all its truthfulness, must necessarily bear good fruit, and be unaffected by any of the bias which the purely metaphysical method of the schools is apt to give to the investigation. The objection that it is degrading to compare the human being with the lower animals, or to take mankind in the mass, is of no value to the scientific investigator, who is merely seeking after truth, and knows that no researches of his can in any way affect man's history in the past or for the present; although they may afford many explanations of human conduct.

Gentlemen,—In assuming the honourable position to which, by your kindness, I have been elected, I must thank you sincerely for the confidence you have placed in me; at the same time I can assure you honestly that, so far from having sought this distinction, only the feeling that one ought not to shrink from any duty to which one is called by one's professional brethren, has induced me to accept it. Looking back upon the many distinguished names who have preceded me in this office, I may well feel some diffidence in addressing you.

Having made ourselves acquainted, in a measure, with the more rudimentary perversions to which mental operations in prisoners are liable, we shall be the better able to enter upon a consideration of those more advanced perversions which establish themselves at the expense of the healthy exercise of a reasonable intelligence, and which induce behaviour so eccentric or obstructive as to necessitate medical interference. These latter I propose to deal with under the general term of delusions; not being always careful to discriminate between a “delusion proper” and a hallucination; for, after all, what is a hallucination in its outward manifestion but a delusion credited (upon grounds not always well established) with some relationship to the organs of sense.

Some years ago I published a pamphlet (reprinted, with slight alterations, from the “St. Andrew's Medical Graduates' Transactions,” vol. iv., 1868) on Nervous Affections in Inherited Syphilis. At that time I had had bat one post-mortem examination. The patient was a girl, the daughter of the patient Joseph Mx., whose case is the second of two related by me in this Journal for July, 1874. She had epileptic fits. She died of typhoid fever, and no lesion of a syphilitic nature was discovered post-mortem. Thus I learned nothing from this case. In the “Brit. Med. Journal,”* May 18, 1572, I have reported a case of hemiplegia, previously unpublished, in a woman aged 22, who was manifestly the subject of inherited syphilis. That patient was in good general health, and is, I hope, still living.

It has been a question for curious speculation since man began to reflect on the origin of knowledge and the nature of his own faculties, what would be the character of a human being growing up without any intercourse with his kind, and having no ideas and no knowledge save those derived by his own unassisted intellect from his observations of the external world. Man's acquired knowledge being evidently the combined product of his own innate capacities, tastes, and sympathies, and the suggestions and customs resulting from his contact with other beings, it is only by a very difficult and somewhat doubtful process of analysis that philosophers have been able to distinguish what is innate and what is acquired; and, as every one knows, great discussions have taken place as to the line of demarcation between those ideas which are the result of education, and those supposed to be of spontaneous growth. The experiment said by Herodotus∗ to have been performed by King Psammitichus is one likely enough to have been made by an eastern prince addicted to those speculations on the origin of ideas which so naturally present themselves to human curiosity. In order, as the priests of Memphis told the great father of history, to decide the important question:—Which was the most ancient of nations?—the king gave two newborn children to a shepherd to educate. They were nursed by goats and separated from all human beings.

The details of the case I now propose to speak of have been published in the January and July numbers of “The Journal of Mental Science” of this year. In the January number the clinical history was reported as far as it went; shortly after its publication the patient died, and in the July issue the further progress and termination of the case were given, and the result of the post-mortem examinations detailed. I will not now detain you by reading the full report, but in order to carry you with me it will be necessary to recapitulate the main features of the case, supplementing them by a few particulars which have been evolved by further study of the pathological appearances presented in microscopic sections.

All the forms of insanity we have hitherto been considering have been more or less connected with the sexual organs or sexual functions and conditions, with the exception of the first and last—the epileptic and phthisical insanity. The forms which follow are mostly connected with disease of the body, affecting the brain sympathetically, or disease of the brain acting on its functions directly.

I wish to bring under the notice of the Association the case of a gentleman who some years ago became notorious through the graphic pen of Charles Dickens, and whose recent death has drawn fresh attention to his strange mode of life. Already nearly 10,000 copies of a biographical sketch of the hermit have been sold, and a brisk sale, I am informed, is still going on, while a large quantity of crockery, tea services, &c., representing his dwelling, have been sold. Being familiar with the residence of Lucas, the so-called Hermit of Red-Coat's Green, near Hitchin, and having visited him, I feel considerable interest in the question of his insanity (if indeed a medical psychologist could question it), and in the larger question whether, if insane, the character of the mental disorder in this and similar cases calls for any interference with the individual's liberty.

We were engaged, when we left off last, in considering some points bearing on the prison-conduct of criminals in relation to their crimes; and we now proceed to show how various questions as to mental condition are started by prison-misconduct.

Several cases of so-called Syphilitic Insanity have now been recorded, including some good examples of the affection, in the last number of the “Journal of Mental Science,” by Drs. Newington and Batty Tuke. I now add two more which have lately been under my care in Guy's Hospital. They present no peculiar features of interest, having a general resemblance to those already reported; but I publish them in furtherance of obtaining a collection of cases in order that we may gain such a correct knowledge of their nature as numbers alone can afford.

With the exception of the condition of a person labouring under acute mania, no phase of insanity so thoroughly arrests the attention of even an uneducated observer as that which has been styled stupor in late years. Painful as it is to see the vagaries and extravagances of the former, hardly less so is it to contemplate in the latter the great impairment of mental power, which may reach even to almost total obliteration. But while on the one hand acute mania has been elaborately described from every point of view—indeed, the very nature of its symptoms force a recognition, and demand prompt treatment—yet stupor has received but little attention, considering what an important element it may become in a case. In fact, it is only comparatively recently that it has been looked upon as anything more than mere “depression.” For more than a casual mention of it, we must chiefly refer to French psychological literature, to the writings of such men as Baillarger, Esquirol, Brierre de Boismont, Dagonet, etc. But these authorities differ much in their opinions, even as to the fundamental nature or natures of the sets of mental phenomena which are included under this comprehensive term.

In striking contrast to the frequent introduction of madness into their plays by the tragedians, is the rarity of any allusion to it by the great comic writer of Athens. This is not due, as might be supposed, to any feeling that good taste would be violated by putting so terrible an affliction as insanity on the stage in a ludicrous light. The marvellous genius of Aristophanes was bound by none of our modern canons of delicacy; while no flight of fancy was too high for him, no depth of coarseness was too base; and he, who in his satire was no respecter of gods or men, was not likely to refrain from putting the antics of a madman before his audience, if he thought it would serve his purpose.

Everything that Mr. Browning writes has claims upon the attention of those who study the philosophy of mind. There may be some difference of opinion as to Mr. Browning's position as a poet; it may be argued that, simply regarded as possessed of poetical faculty, he must be looked upon as inieriorto many other writers of poems in these fecund days; that much that he has written in rhyme would have been as readily communicable in prose; but there can be no difference of opinion as to Mr. Browning's exceptional mental vigour and calibre, nor can it be denied that very few men of equal capacity have either in this or in other ages devoted themselves to imaginative literature.

The subject of cannibalism cannot be omitted from such an inquiry. The consideration of this revolting instinct and practice becomes imperative because there are grounds, derived both from history and psychology, for believing that cannibalism, either as a primitive or corrupted instinct, has at one time or other been universally prevalent, has characterised certain states or stages in the progress of every race. This proposition does not exclude the existence, either originally or in certain stages of progress, of purely vegetarian nations. We are so accustomed to regard modern communities in their civilised and mature condition, and in the same manner as the ancients fabled Minerva starting from the front of Jove, perfect, graceful, armed, that we forget that nations had beginnings, that their growth was from a mist or a myth which we cannot grasp, or that they emerged from barbarism so gross and degraded that we can scarcely realise its enormity. It would be a vain and futile task to establish by reference the proposition that a craving for human flesh, or, at all events, its use as food, preceded the habits and manners of civilised life, and we shall confine the allegation to our own progenitors as conveying a lesson at once to our pride and to our philosophy. Montalembert, after eloquently painting the striking and pleasing contrast between the aspect and social state of the west of Scotland, between 412 and 1867, perhaps the very spot in which these words are now written, says “Dion, Strabonius, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome have emulated each other in painting the horrible cruelty, the savage and brutal habits of those inhabitants of North Britain, who, successively known under the name of Caledonians, Scots, or Picts, were most probably nothing more than the descendants of the British tribes whom Rome had not been able to subdue. All agree in denouncing the incestuous intercourse of their domestic existence, and they have even been accused of cannibalism.”

The relations of body and mind are becoming not only much more comprehensible, but even much better understood, since science has shaken off the incubus of theological teaching as to the severance of soul and body. As long as the mind was something separated from the body, or only united to it by slack and loosely fitting ties, mental phenomena could have nothing to do with bodily conditions—insanity was a disease of the soul; and the monk, standing over a miserable lunatic chained to a staple in a wall, and flogging him in order to make him cast his devil out, was a logical outcome of this hypothesis, however repugnant to more recent and correcter views. The baneful psychology of theologians is now thoroughly undermined, and the erroneous and mischievous superstructure is cracking and gaping on every side, and ere long the ground occupied by a crumbling ruin will be covered by a gradually growing erection based on a foundation of facts, and reared by an expanding intelligence. The union of psychology and physiology is the closing of the circuit, in one direction, of the pursuit after knowledge, and forms the initiation of a rational and intelligible comprehension of the mind and of its relation to corporeal conditions. How such mistaken and false ideas of the word melancholia, as those entertained by the monk as an alienist physician, could have attained their sway in the face of such maxim as mens sana in corpore sano, only becomes intelligible when we remember the ignorance, the superstitious prejudices, the contempt for the knowledge of the natural man, which ever characterise the theological mind, and which found their highest expression during the monkish supremacy of the dark ages—that interval of black ignorance which intervened betwixt the decadence of Latin civilisation and that intellectual evolution, the Renaissance, which indicated the advent of the reign of human intelligence. Slowly but surely was the emancipation of the intellect from the fetters of priestly tyranny achieved, as death thinned the ranks of its opponents, and the grim despotism of Torquemada and his coadjutors waned into the pettier and less terrible persecution of more recent ecclesiastics, and the tremendous grip of hierarchical supremacy gradually merged into the palsied, nerveless grasp of a doting and dying theology, the mere spectre of its former self. Curious men were the Church's leaders of the middle ages. In their cathedrals the light of day was only permitted to enter to a limited extent, and that too through the medium of coloured glass, so as to produce the “dim religious light,” while artificial lights burnt up before their altars; so were their minds closed to the natural light of the human understanding, and artificially illumined by the creations of their diseased imaginations, amidst whose coloured rays the white light of truth was always obscured, if not rarely utterly lost. But in the mortality of man lies the hope, the salvation of truth.

According to the promise made in our last number, we shall endeavour to give a brief abstract of the chapter on Treatment in the third edition of Drs. Bucknill and Tuke's “Psychological Medicine.” The chapter in question, as our readers are aware, is by Dr. Bucknill, and contains not only his own views, but those of various other writers on many questions connected with the treatment of the insane.

In the “Journal of Mental Science” for October, 1870, Dr. Howden, the Superintendent of the Montrose Asylum, published an analysis of the lesions observed by him in the brains of 235 persons who died insane, and expressed a hope that some uniform method of arranging the morbid appearances found in the insane after death would be adopted by Psychologists, so as to render of scientific value the postmortem records of the different asylums, and be a ready means of reference to any one working at special lesions. Dr. Tuke, in an appendix to the annual report of the Fife and Kinross Asylum for 1871, followed the plan proposed by Dr. Howden, and arranged in a tabular form the lesions found by him in the brains of 75 insane persons. With the sanction of Dr. Marshall, I collected and arranged, in a similar way, the lesions observed in the brains of 390 women who died in Colney Hatch. From these sources Table I. has been formed. It shows the lesions and their frequency in the brains of 700 people who died insane, and although its value is greatly lessened by the absence of the history, symptoms, and form of insanity under which the patients laboured, still it gives the changes from health to disease, which are, to a certain extent, peculiar to insanity.

To one who does not admit the divine mission of Mahomet it is very difficult to explain the pretensions of that remarkable man, and at the same time to uphold his sincerity. There have undoubtedly been instances where mere politicians have resorted to religious impostures as temporary expedients to advance their ends; for example, the woman whom Pisistratus got dressed up in the traditional costume of Pallas, and who conducted him back to Athens from exile, or the milk-white hind which followed Sertorius in Spain, and by means of which he was reputed to hold converse with the Gods. But a contrivance of this kind is a very different thing from the foundation of a religion which now numbers about a hundred and forty millions of votaries, and which possesses to this day a very singular power over the minds of its followers. By the persistent claim of being a messenger from God, after a struggle of twenty-one years Mahomet made himself master of the greater part of Arabia, and roused a mighty religious movement which continued after his death. In a few years more a number of wandering tribes, who had previously no more cohesion than the sands of their deserts, had run a mighty career of conquest, which bore them to the banks of the Loire and of the Oxus. It is generally admitted that men cannot excite in others feelings which are wanting in their own breasts. A man without honesty and destitute of religious faith could no more found a religious system like that of Islam than a man without an ear for music could compose an opera. The old notion that Mahomet was a mere impostor appears so difficult of belief that no one of any recognised skill in historical inquiry now upholds it. But it has always been a great difficulty to explain how Mahomet could in good faith say that he had seen the angel Gabriel, and heard voices from heaven calling him the Messenger of God, and revealing chapter after chapter of the Koran. It had long seemed to me that the question was beyond human solution, and that it might have been a very difficult one, even had the inquirer lived in Mecca or Medina during the time of Mahomet's mission.