wife administered some restoratives, which appeared to be productive of relief, and therefore no medical man was sent for. About twelve o'clock he complained of severe headache over the occipital region, and had a second attack of vomiting. About half an hour after he became drowsy, and eventually sank into a state of profound coma. He died in the course of the night, never having recovered from this state of unconsciousness. The post mortem examination revealed an aneurismal tumour of the middle cerebral artery (which was never suspected), with a state of general sanguineous congestion of the brain.

Romberg refers to the case of a girl who, when very young, had a severe attack of small-pox. She lost her sight, but acquired an extraordinary memory. She repeated perfectly on her return home a long sermon she had recently heard. "It is well known," adds Romberg, "that the scrofulous, and frequently the rachitic diathesis in childhood, is accompanied by this phenomenon."

In the incipient state of brain disease of early life connected with acute fevers, disturbed conditions of the cerebral circulation and vessels, and in affections of advanced years, there is often witnessed a remarkable exaltation of the memory. Events that have occurred many years previously, and which were, apparently, obliterated from the mind, have been distinctly reproduced, and that, too, with extraordinary accuracy and vividness.

A sudden "lighting up

lighting up" and improvement of the memory, occurring to persons in advanced life, are occasionally precursory of death and fatal apoplexy. Hippocrates notices this phenomenon. A gentleman, aged seventy-six, exhibited, with other signs of brain disorder, a remarkably vivid recollection of a complicated transaction previously entirely forgotten, that had taken place

thirty-five years before. On the following day he had an attack of apoplexy, of which he died.*

Portal has observed among the incipient symptoms of cerebral hemorrhage and paralysis, a disposition to talk garrulously respecting events that have long since been apparently forgotten. An old gentleman surprised his family by recounting the minute particulars of an eventful epoch that had occurred in early life, known only to himself, as if the circumstances were familiar to those about him, and were of recent date. Two days subsequently he was found in bed in a state of apoplectic coma, from which he never rallied.

An intelligent American was travelling in the State of Illinois, and suffered the common lot of visitants from other climates, in being seized with a bilious fever. "As very few live," he remarks, "to record the issue of a sickness like mine, and as you have requested me, and as I have promised to be particular, I will relate some of the circumstances of this disease. And it is in my view desirable, in the bitter agony of such diseases, that more of the symptoms, sensations, and sufferings should be recorded than have been, and that others in similar predicaments may know that some before them have had sufferings like theirs, and have survived them. I had had a fever before, and had risen and been dressed every day; but in this with the first day I was prostrated to infantile weakness, and felt with its first attack that it was a thing very different from what I had yet experienced. Paroxysms of derangement occurred the third day, and this was to me a new state of mind. That state of disease in which partial derangement is mixed with a consciousness generally sound, and a sensibility preternaturally excited, I should suppose the most dis* Hagendorn, "Observations Médicale." Paris.

tressing of all its forms. At the same time that I was unable to recognise my friends, I was informed that my memory was more than ordinarily exact and retentive, and that I repeated whole passages in the different languages which I knew with entire accuracy. I recited, without losing or misplacing a word, a passage of poetry I could not so repeat after I had recovered my health, &c."*

MEMORY OF THE INSANE.-In ordinary cases of insanity the memory is not, as a general rule, impaired or lost.? Dr. Haslam appears to think that this faculty is the first mental power that decays in insanity. I doubt this. It is true that in many cases the patient has but a feeble and confused recollection of the transactions of recent date, but is able, vividly, to recal to the mind the scenes of early life. It is, undoubtedly, a fact, that the conversations of old, incurable lunatic patients relate principally to the events of past years, but, at the same time, they do not manifest that utter obliviousness and forgetfulness of recent circumstances that Dr. Haslam and others appear to believe.

I have witnessed some singular instances among the insane, of extraordinary retentiveness of memory, relating to recent transactions, but I am bound to admit, as a general postulate, that this faculty is found, in the majority of cases, in an impaired and muddled state. ?

According to Shakspeare, one of the essential elements, in all cases of insanity, is an inability to revive past impressions, to "re-word" that which he says

But this Shakspearian test has been long exploded.
I have, in a previous part of this work, spoken of the

* Flint's "Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi," Letter xiv.

exaltation of memory often observed in cases of cerebral disorder. The same phenomenon is remarkably characteristic of many forms of insanity, particularly of the hysterical types. In these cases, the organic and psychical sensibility is in a condition of extreme exaltation, and the memory generally exhibits marked evidence of activity.

CHAPTER XVII.

Psychology and Pathology of Memory.

Ir is difficult to suggest a physiological or metaphysical hypothesis which satisfactorily explains those remarkable conditions of mental paralysis, singular manifestations and aberrations of memory (to which I have previously referred), as preceding, accompanying, and following acute and chronic affections of the brain, unless we espouse the doctrine of the indestructibility of ideas, and subscribe to the notion that no impression made upon the mind is ever destroyed.

If we accept this as an established philosophical theory, we can easily understand how subtle microscopic changes in the delicate nerve vesicle (grey matter of the brain), may cause great eccentricity and singular irregularity in the exercise of the memory, and occasionally, in certain morbid as well as healthy conditions of cerebral exaltation, awaken into active consciousness, ideas imagined either to have no existence, or long since supposed to be buried in oblivion.*

Annihilation exists but in the fancy. It is an illusion of the imagination, a dream of the poet, the wild and

Is the permanent character of the pictures traced upon the memory dependent (as Locke surmises) on the "temper" of the brain, as if some impressions were made upon marble, others on freestone, and some on little better than on sand?

"Cur seniores amplius mente valeamus, juniores citius discimus ?" asks Aristotle; why is it that in youth we learn more quickly, and wherefore is it, as age advances, the intellect becomes more powerful ?