Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/138

128 in each which are preferred to deductions—in nervous exhaustion and anæmia, in affections of the uterus and other internal organs, in local neurasthænia, in affections of the central nervous system, in writer's cramp and allied affections; in neuralgia, peripheral paralysis, muscular rheumatism, muscular rupture, elephantiasis, œdema, scoliosis; in sprains and affections of the joints; in disorders of the head, face, eyes, ears, and throat, and in catarrhal affections.

author has endeavored, not so much to describe and enumerate, as to account for the phenomena of insanity. It is agreed that certain occurrences are occasional, others common, and others invariable in insanity, and that certain occurrences are frequently associated; but why such connections should exist has never been explained, nor, so far as the author knows, inquired into. Many hypotheses are experimentally applied in the pursuit of the inquiry thus outlined, without claiming that they are the true explanations of the facts, but because "at any rate, they are explanations of some kind," the author believing that the state of our science "has reached a point at which some explanation of the facts of insanity has become desirable, and that any hypothesis, even if erroneous, is a step toward the attainment of truth, and is better than a mere unorganized accumulation of facts." A more clear distinction is insisted upon than is observed by some physio-psychological writers—perhaps the careless ones—between nervous processes and the mental states that accompany them. While there is no thought or mental condition without a nervous process, the relation between the two is like that of a shadow, equivalent, obverse, or accompaniment of inexplicable association. It is found, in the search for a definition of insanity, that in every case of the affection three factors are present—"disorder of the highest nerve arrangements, disorder of conduct, and disorder of consciousness; and in every case the disorder of consciousness includes disorder of thought and of feeling, of self-consciousness, and of consciousness of the relation of self to the surroundings. In no two cases, however, are these various factors combined in quite the same way, and thus no two cases precisely resemble one another. On the way in which they are combined depends the form which the insanity assumes." Among the causes of insanity are those arising from heredity, which may work under the law of inheritance or under that of sanguinity, in which are involved the effects of different degrees of similarity or dissimilarity in parents; direct stress, or the action of noxious agents immediately on the nerve-centers; and indirect stresses—which are of internal origin when the agent is some commotion in the organ itself, as in the case of morbid affections; or of external origin, when the agent is some commotion in the environment, as when cares of family or business or social and political relations worry. The forms of insanity are various, and are hardly susceptible of a fixed classification. They may be arranged from different points of view, and may run into one another. The author treats idiocy, imbecility, sleep, old age, and drunkenness as being marked by one or more of the features that may enter into insanity, and discusses the forms of the real affection under the heads of melancholia, exaltation, and dementia. The discussion of the points brought up is lively and bold, and the observations upon them are pungent and often witty.

author is Corresponding Secretary of the Tennessee Historical Society. He does not in this work expound a theory, but presents a series of historical and ethnological studies, very largely his own, but with those of others often brought in for illustration and comparison, the aim of which is to exhibit precisely the evidence which the mounds and their contents afford of the degree of civilization attained by the builders and the character of their social life. The book has grown out of the author's labors in describing the fine types of pottery and other objects found in the large aboriginal cemetery which was discovered near