THE CRIME OF LUNACY.

hæmorrhoidal affections, it may possibly offer, as an applicationLfoul bilge-water; by the incident at the Island of St. Thomas’ combined with opium or the salts of morphia, some advantage the other day, and previously, I believe, there and in other over the reigning preparation-unguentum gallae compositum, West Indian islands, when disturbing coal which had been it being more tenacious and at the same time lubricating, and acted on by heat and moisture ;-quœre, was the steamer La when combined with the salts of morphia, in place of opium, itPlata, in which yellow fever made such havoc two or three possesses the decided advantage of not staining the linen. years since, exposed to these circumstances ?-and indeed by The hydrochlorate and acetate of morphia are readily soluble the well-known depressing effects of some poison generated in glycerine, making a clear, limpid solution of a slightly yellow under these circumstances. What is that poison? I am not tinge, forming, as it were, a kind of syrup, which might pos- chemist enough to say that the knowledge that sulphur, ammosibly prove in many ways useful in the hands of the profession. nia, cyanogen, &c., are found in such localities, makes me susGlycerine also dissolves the ferri et quinae citras, in the pro- pect it must be some combination of these. However, there is portion of five grains to the drachm, forming an olive-yellow- the fact that, after exposure to these emanations, I have as an evident consequence had many violent cases of diarrhoea and ooloured liquid peculiar to the solutions of that salt. There are other substances which glycerine eminently pos- some of cholera. Before exposure to the exciting causes, place the patient in a position to eliminate the sesses the property of dissolving in a larger proportion than poison, any other known fluid, but sufficient has been said to intro- and exposure to the excitants will not affect him, as I believe. duce the subject to your readers. Perhaps the pathological chemists will find out what this acute I am, Sir, your obedient servant, predisposing agent is. The common expression of being " struck with the disease" probably indicates the time of the imbibition A. F. HASELDEN. P.S.-Since writing the above, I have seen a letter in your of this predisposing cause. Amongst the excitants I had occaobserve the common culinary rhubarb, its extreme journal of Aug. 1st, relative to the solubility of the disulphate sion to and luxuriant growth; but though one of the com. of quinine in glycerine, from your correspondent, Mr. Blockey; acidity but I do not hesitate on that account to forward my own views monest causes of diarrhoea, it had not that tendency to produce fatal results which existed where the complaint was traceable upon the subject, which I have been some time testing; one to diseased meat, especially pig meat, and I think with this communication, simply substantiating the other.-A. F. H. latter whether diseased or not. My supposition upon the occurrence of diarrhoea from the rhubarb was, that the body being prepared by the predisposing THE CRIME OF LUNACY. causes, the rhubarb contained, or was readily converted into, To the Editor of THE LANCET. oxalic acid when undergoing digestion, or into some active of this acid, acting not at once like a large quanSIR,-It was with much pleasure that I read your very combination of oxalic acid, but producing more gradually by a frequent tity valuable leading article " On the Crime of Lunacy, and How You are, perhaps, aware that during repetition of the irritation the effects manifested. Cholera, as we Punish it" (p. 62). I said before, I look upon as an exaggerated diarrhoea, the many years I have been closely connected, not only with blueness, cramps, and other symptoms being attributable to lunatic asylums, but especially with the colony of Gheel, of which I was the late inspector; therefore, whatever I may the exsanguinate state. I regret my chemical deficiency in being unable to investigate this point; still the convertibility say in this respect must not be considered as egotism. You of saccharine matter into the acid is well known, and it would have, Sir, deeply penetrated the vital question of lunacy: the loss of personality in large asylums is certainly the chief cause be curious to find that the unwholesomeness of pig meat depended upon the animal feeding upon materials of a highly why the curable cases turn so fatally into hopeless dementia. saccharine character, from circumstances converted into an You enunciated, likewise, a great truth: There must be a natural connexion between real science and the number of cures irritant poison. I had more success in arresting the diarrhoea effected. I completely agree with you; and am quite convinced and sickness with spirits of camphor, given in ten-drop doses Had on sugar every ten minutes, than with any other drug. that, had the Belgian government insisted on the erection of- it produced no impression when a drachm had been taken, I what I called in my book (" L’Air Libre et la Viè de Famillea, Gheel ")-un centre therapeutique-an infirmary in the middle, should have discontinued it. This, however, never happened. of the beneficial free-air treatment, the number of 22 per cent., I suppose that it acted by deadening the sensibility of the nerves; but beyond doubt in a case of Asiatic cholera, which of cures would probably have risen to more than 50 per cent. had proceeded from bad to worse all night, and in which no I remain, Sir, your faithful servant, medicine had been given till I saw it in the morning, this T. PARIGOT, remedy checked both sickness and diarrhoea, and produced re’Inspecteur des Etablissement d’Aliénés de l’Arrondissement de Bruxelles. action in half an hour, and the patient recovered. ug. 1857. I observed in 1854, as well as 1849, (1) that some kinds of correspondent may refer with advantage to an article in a late number of the Quarterly Review, from which vegetation were unusually luxuriant; also the frequent prevalence of unnatural calm in the air. 2. The greasy state of much of our information was derived. The opinions we exglass, giving one an adipocerous impression. 3. The number pressed are such as we have always entertained. We shall of flies dead upon the windows, in a standing posture, an accumulation of the greasy material forming a ring round them, take a further opportunity of developing them. and their excrement lying at such a distance from them as to make one think that its emission was about their last act, and was spasmodic. 4. The great frequency of cruralfold excoriaCHOLERA AND DIARRHŒA. tions in children, and of the glans penis in adults. 5. A To the Editor of THE LANCET. general complaint of what appeared to me to be symptoms of a SIR,-Diarrhaea, the precursor of cholera, is rife in many flaccid heart, one symptom being a feeling of absence of sumparts. It was argued by me in a short note you did me the cient good air to breathe, and especially a facility of being honour of inserting during the cholera period of 1854, that the affected by mercury, as if the more solid portion of the blood predisposition to disease was marked and important. I again and body were tending to deliquescence. Several times I was hold that the point of most importance is the establishment, vexed by having persons on the very verge of salivation by immediately before the attack of cholera, or insidiously for taking four or five grains of mercury with chalk in divided months or years before, of an asthenic state, softening the doses of. one grain every three hours. If this tendency to facile patient’s system for any impression which in the shape of an disintegration of the human body increase, what will be its

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result ? I placed two bottles side by side, one containing aqua pura healthy may, in reality, be, as compared with his previous (Lond.),the other aqua pura with five grains of camphor to health, very sickly, it must be remembered. I assume as a twelve of water. In a few days the aqua pura had a heavy certainty that diarrhoea is always the premonitory stage of green sediment: in three months the camphoretted had nothing cholera. My attention was directed to what I conceive one whatever visible in it. It would be as well to observe that of the acute predisposing causes of diseases of this kind by a there probably exists a soil under the whole of London thonumber of simultaneous attacks of cholera in a road in which roughly imbued with sulphur, ammonia, bullocks’ and pig’s the gas-pipes were under repair; by the repeated presentation blood, &c. &c., which generates virulent poison under certain as also that there of persons engaged in works of that nature, with severe forms circumstances of wind, heat, moisture, &c.; of diarrhoea, not, however, displaying itself till the patient had is a little arsenic afloat, for various purposes, which, being exposed himself to some of the common excitants of gastro-in- soluble to a certain extent, will gravitate towards the Thames, testinal irritation; by the occurrence of attacks in ships with except where intercepted bv the London scrinss or pumps.

exciting cause may present itself-plague, typhus fever, yellow fever, cholera, or aught else. A person apparently strong and

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