the duty of an author to choose and to adopt from amongst the synonyms of a species the best name with which he is acquainted.

"RULES OF ETYMOLOGY. I. The character by which a species is distinguished, such as its resemblance to something else, its quality or property, its colour, its use, or its native situation when constant, suggest the most appropriate names, as Pterocarpas, Chenopodium, Dulcamara, Glycirrhiza, Erythrodanum, Pyrophorus, Origanum, Cydonia.

"2. New names must always be of the second quality if possible, but never so bad as the sixth. If of the first quality, they are destitute of euphony.

"3. Modern writers have taken the liberty of naming spe cies from their discoverers, as Spigelia and Quassia; but such as Geoffroya, Witherites, Swietenia, Kraschenninikofia, &c. are, in my opinion, rather too incongruous.

"4. Names in point of orthography and etymology must not be contrary to analogy, as Barytes for Barites, Ipecacuanha, for Ipecacuania, &c.

"5. Names must not be too long nor inappropriate, as Hypophyllocarpodendron, Spermaceti, Pulvis creta compositus cum opio, for Opium cretaceum compositum.

"6. The solution of an inorganic or chemical substance, including oils, essences, soaps, camphor, and the like, in a menstruum, may either receive a name from both, that of the solvend being in the genitive case, as Aqua calcis, lime-water; or the solvend may give an epithet to the menstruum, for salt water or solution of salt is rendered into Latin by Aqua salina probably better than by Aqua salis.

"7. If we suppose that the common names of salts are of this description, the acids may very properly be called Nitrate, Oxalate, &c.

"8. All organic preparations are to be named in the same manner as inorganic, except Decoctions, Infusions, Liquors, Elixirs, and Tinctures.

"9. In Pharmacy, water impregnated with any air or gas may take the name of that air or gas, as Murias, &c.

"10. When two or more articles are dissolved in a menstruum, the basis must be in the genitive case, and the other

1. Report together with the Minutes of Evidence, and an Appendix of Papers, from the Committee appointed to consider of Provision being made for the better Regulation of Madhouses in England. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 11th July, 1815. Each subject of Evidence arranged under its distinct Head, by J. B. Sharpe, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.

2. A Letter addressed to the Chairman of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to enquire into the State of Madhouses; to which is subjoined Remarks on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of Mental Derangement. By Thomas Bakewell, Author of " A Domestic Guide in Cases of Insanity," and Keeper of Spring Vale Asylum, near Stone, Staffordshire.

3. Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums. Including Instructions to the Architects who offered Plans for the Wakefield Asylum, and a Sketch of the most approved Design. By Samuel Tuke.

4. Observations on the Laws relating to Private Lunatic Asylums, and particularly on a Bill for their alteration which passed the House of Commons in the year 1814.

[From the Eclectic Review, for March, 1816.]

AFTER a sanguinary conflict, especially when it has been of unusual and unexpected severity, as in the case of the victory of Waterloo, we hear with horror of numbers, who, although not the immediate victims of death on the field where they had fought and bled, nevertheless, subsequently lose their limbs and their lives for want of timely medicinal aid; and in consequence of that pressure and hurry in the business of healing, which directly succeed to the business of slaying. But the feelings which are excited by this consideration, must sink very low in comparison of those which are occasioned by the reflection, that mental soundness, and mental life, if we may so express it, are frequently lost for want of opportunity and of pecuniary resources, to preserve them. How many wretched beings do the wards of a public lunatic asylum en

!

close, who, having been once as we are, are now reduced to a state of worse than brutal ferocity, uttering horrid blasphemies, and denouncing malignant menaces on all who pass by; but who, had their circumstances been such as to command the exercise of tenderness and skill equal to the exigencies of their cases, might now have been taking their places in the social circle formed by sympathy and affection, thinking, and feeling, and acting, like ourselves! In the great round of human misery and wo, there cannot surely be found any case that comes at all near to this in dreadful and heart-appalling in

terest.

That this statement is not a figment of the imagination, but a recital of facts, has been repeatedly asserted with all the confidence of conviction; and if such be the shocking state of things, in reference to lunatic hospitals, no wonder that, in this age of reformation and of public spirit, the attention of the legislature should have been called to the consideration of this momentous inquiry-' Whether the circumstances and treat'ment of lunacy are susceptible of melioration and amend'ment.'

This question has indeed been recently agitated in the British Senate, with an earnestness and interest which will command the admiration of posterity.

"The labours of Mr. Rose and his associates," (as is well observed in one of the pamphlets before us) "were labours of simple humanity and benevolence unmixed with party feeling, and of too partial an influence to produce them fame: while the unhappy objects of their compassion are shut out, perhaps for ever, from the world, and generally unable to express or even to feel gratitude. May they live (adds the writer) to receive the only reward they appear to aim at or desire, in the certainty that their completed deliberations and exertions have removed all the evils which occasioned them."

Before we proceed to a more detailed account of this investigation and its results, we shall say a few words on the recently much agitated inquiry, which immediately and obviously arises out of the preceding one, and which was repeatedly urged by the members of the committee of investigation in the course of their individual examinations. It is this-Whether is inVOL. VI. 2 Z No. 23.

sanity under the control of remedial agents, in the same manner as those maladies which are more properly and strictly regarded as affections of the bodily frame? Is madness to be cured by medicine? The remarkable discrepancy which was displayed before the committee, in reference to this very important question, must have necessarily excited some degree of scepticism, or at least of uncertainty, in the minds of those who entered upon the inquiry with anxious but unprejudiced minds. We are told by one person, a man of unquestioned talents and extensive experience, that he considers vomiting rather injurious than beneficial in cases of insanity; another, of equal experience, and of great name, stated his dependence upon the medicinal power of emetics; and in this opinion he is countenanced by a recent writer of great merit, on the subject of mental affections. One physician, who has directed his knowledge and attention principally to these unhappy affections, approves generally of venesection; a second, similarly circumstanced, describes this practice as fraught with extreme danger. Purgatives are the sole dependence of some, alteratives and tonics of others. This practitioner prescribes warm, that, cold-bathing. Some say little is to be done by any curative means; others, with even greater confidence, assert that insanity is the most remedial of all the maladies to which man is heir.

The fact is, we believe, that a great deal of this diversity of sentiment and opinion, has arisen in consequence of regarding the subject in too empirical a manner. Medical men talk of curing lunacy, as the vulgar speak of curing a cough. Indeed, while a generic term is made to include so many varieties, in relation to the causes upon which derangement depends, it cannot in strict propriety be made a question, whether insanity is, or is not curable. When a man receives a sabre wound on his skull, and consequently loses his senses, we are in the habit of considering the case without cure, from a general feeling, founded upon obvious truth, that as an organic lesion has here been the occasion of the deranged state of the intellect, it cannot be set to rights, because it is not within the compass of medicine or management to re-organize. Again, if part of the brain is annihilated by accident or disease, we cannot re

store the lost material, nor by consequence its particular functions; or if a tumour grow in the interior of the encephalon, the derangement of functions to which it gives rise, is irremediable, inasmuch as the cause of the derangement is itself untangible. Now, our knowledge of sentient and intellectual faculties, as connected with structure, is so extremely limited; the knife of the anatomist does so very little in clearing away the obscurities which hang over sentient organization, that we may conceive of alterations quite as effective, and quite as permanent, as those just supposed, although they may not, even by any artificial means, be capable of being detected by our senses; and, in that case, the mental malady might be quite as hopeless, in respect to any prospect of recovery, as in instances where it has been dependent upon such palpable causes, as obviously to place it out of the possibility of cure. Disordered intellect, therefore, having in its display to do with the sentient system, of which our knowledge is so confined, cannot be calculated upon, either in respect to its essential nature, or any probability of advantage to be derived from treatment, with any thing like the accuracy with which we predicate the remedial nature or fatal tendency of mere bodily ailment.

Although it is not within the scope or intention of the present paper, to pursue the subject of insanity in the way of regular dissertation, we shall, we trust, be excused for adverting to one particular feature in the phenomena of deranged intellect, which we conceive has not been sufficiently recognized or dwelt upon, in investigations relative to the rationale of mental alienations. We allude to the alternate, and, as it were vicarious manner, in which diseases of the body and of the mind oftentimes succeed to, and take place of each other. In a pamphlet which Mr. Tuke some time since published, there is one remarkable example of this kind, which, from its very interesting nature, deserves recital.

“A young woman, who was employed as a domestic servant by the father of the relater when he was a boy, became insane, and at length sunk into a state of perfect idiocy. In this condition she remained for many years, when she was attacked by a typhus fever, and my friend, having then practised for