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population of Bohemia and the eastern skill of diplomatists turned to the study of provinces of the empire, under the dominion the peculiarities of nations, instead of the of the emperors of the house of Luxem- petty artifices by which unprincipled courburg; the history of the fine arts in those tiers endeavor to outwit each other, perhaps countries in the 14th and following century, a result in some degree to be depended upon with the influence which the connexion might be expected from the labors of cenwith Constantinople probably exerted in the turies. This study it will be necessary to earliest times, and the check which the de- take up, as soon as it shall seem more advelopment of letters and the arts probably visable to contract alliances with nations received through the rival and conflicting than with their rulers, and we are much influence of the western church and policy; mistaken if this grand epoch in the politi-finally, the causes of the better success cal world is not rapidly approaching. Had that attended the German schools of art on the diplomatic body at the late grand corothe Rhine and at Nürnberg, would be- nation at Prague not been too much taken come apparent as a result of the compari- up by the ceremonies, the etiquette, and son between the social state and foreign pomp of the occasion, to attend to the disrelations of the Germans and Slavonians. position manifested by the middle and lower The true history of the martyrdom of classes of the people, in which not a few of that remarkable Bohemian saint, John of the nobility joined, they would have reNepomuck, is certainly of mere local in- marked the scarcely suppressed feeling of terest; its historical investigation at an earlier period would have saved the good people of Prague from the charge of at least one absurdity, it being now ascertained that the spot marked on the bridge as that from which the confessor was thrown by the tyrannical justice or cruelty of Wenceslaw, did not exist at the period. The bridge was then in process of building, and did not extend so far across the river. A true and impartial detail of the story of John Huss and his resolute friends and adherents, with the causes of their remarkable success with the people, would, however, be an invaluable acquisition, particularly viewed from the Slavonian side of the question. Nor could less important communications be made respecting the chief actors in the thirty-years war; the true designs and wishes of the Elector of Bavaria, and others, who took a conspicuous part, as well as the means by which the Austrian party was at length enabled to gain so decided a triumph in Bohemia. A singular instance of the proneness of the multitude to follow the leader of the day is given in the pilgrimages of the Bohemians at the present day to the chapel on the White Hill, near Prague, which, although built to commemorate their defeat, and ornamented with paintings descriptive of the triumph of Ferdinand over their national and religious feelings, they have been taught to look upon as a spot of peculiar sanctity.

Were but half the pains which are now taken to mislead the nations of Europe, and to suppress and restain the energies arising from local influence and national feeling, directed to useful ends, what different scenes would not most countries present, from what they now display! And were the

indignation which the prospect of the continuance of their oppression awakened. The emperor, whose lamentable incapacity is not even veiled by his courtiers, appeared amongst them, surrounded by the men whose political sentiments had been but too well displayed under his father's reign, and who now arrogate the task of compelling their sovereign as well as his people to implicit obedience. Forty thousand men, principally Hungarians and Poles, quartered in the city and its immediate neighborhood, who were ostentatiously reviewed in the town itself before the opening of the ceremonies, and fifty pieces of cannon on the heigh's of the Hradchin, were considered necessary to insure silence, if they could not inspire enthusiasm.

We doubt very much whether any minister present on that occasion was in a situation to remark the different effects produced on the minds of the Bohemians by the grand parade in the cathedral and by the appearance of the two works named at the head of this article. Had any of them noticed it, perhaps they would have thought it of little importance. But we cannot agree with them. The first volume of M. Palacky's work was published in honor of the coronation, and was hailed by every Bohemian as the harbinger of a time to come, when his nation should be suffered to assume the rights of a separate member of the European confederation, and be judged according to the peculiar bias of its character. That the ceremony in the cathedid not tend to hasten this object of legitimate desire must have been but too evident to all.

The new sovereign has it certainly in his power to identify his accession to the throne with a literary work which must (if worthi

ly completed) outlive all the storms which

his reign, or those of his successors, may THERE are few, if any, questions, connectencounter. Even should his dynasty passed with the science of medicine, so eminentaway, this monument of his accession willly deserving the patient and persevering be imperishable, if he so ordains it. But inquiries of the medical philosopher, or this can only be achieved by giving the that come home more closely to all classes historian the utmost freedom. The archives and conditions of men, than that which of Prague, Vienna, and Venice, contain forms the subject of our present notice. documents whose publication must mate- Insanity, until very lately, has been viewed rially change the face of the histories of as a disease over which medicine could many states of Europe. What is there to exert but little control, and the asylums to fear from their publication? The very which its unhappy victims were consigned, fact of allowing them to come to light were established as receptacles where, withwould draw so marked a distinction between out fear of offending the public eye, they Ferdinand of the 17th century and Ferdi- might drag on a few years of miserable nand of the 19th, that the stronger the na-existence, rather than with a hope or prospect tional hatred to the former grew, the more hope and attachment would be inspired by the candor of the latter. If iniquitous proceedings on the part of the papal see should be disclosed, the same remark will again apply; if the Romish court has discarded the dark intrigues of former ages, it can only gain in the eyes of the world by the contrast between the present and the past being held up to view. Poor Venice exists no longer to regret or regain her vanished power and crooked policy.

The second work, whose title stands at the head of our article, is in the Bohemian tongue, but the celebrity which M. Szafarik has attained cannot fail to ensure its speedy translation into all European languages. Only two numbers have hitherto appeared, and we must therefore confine ourselves to the plan of the work. It proposes to fur. nish a comprehensive survey of the antiquities of the Slavonian nations in the earliest times of which any monuments, whether buildings, mere names, legends, or historical notices remain. Considerable attention will of course be devoted to the explanation of many of the names we find in Procopius, Jornandes, Claudian, and the Byzantine writers, according to Slavonian etymology, which must render the book acceptable to the classical student. M. Szafarik's former work in German," Ueber die Abhunft der Slawen," contains much valuable information of this nature.

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of ultimate recovery. The wretched and degraded state to which some of the fairest portions of our fellow creatures have, for a succession of years, we might almost say ages, been there reduced, by the cruel and absurd notions which then prevailed on general treatment, are revolting to our finer feelings, and it cannot fail to afford unmingled satisfaction, to contrast the past and present state of those asylums.

"I visited," says Sir A. Halliday, "a few days ago, the cells of the Edinburgh found fifty-four individuals in that abode Bedlam, in company with Spurzheim. We of misery, two-thirds of them females, having had scarcely a sufficiency of rags to cover their nakedness, and even the shreds that remained appeared not to have been cleansed for months. In a distant cell we discovered a woman worn out by the viopallet, and sinking rapidly to the grave. lence of her disease, stretched on a straw A rat was perched upon her bed. I will not affirm that this animal attempted to mangle the exhausted body of the dying maniac, but the sight was horrible. Spurzheim exclaimed, That palaces were provided for the accommodation of the greatwhile those unfortunate beings were left est villains and disturbers of society, in misery, and I am a living witness that the swine of Germany are better cared for."

Happily such scenes are now no longer to be met with.

So late as 1772 there were only four hospitals throughout the kingdom for the reception of lunatics: two in London, one in Manchester, and one in Newcasle; and and navy were all sent to a private asylum previous to 1815, the insane of the army near London, where, as was proved before their cure was a matter of secondary moa committee of the House of Commons, Sir James Macgregor, an asylum for those ment. Through the valuable exertions of deserving sufferers has been established at

Fort Pitt, Chatham, where they now enjoy | fined merely to the resident attendants; it all the comforts which their unhappy con- extended to the visiters, who were appointed dition so eminently entitles them to. from the college of physicians. One of those visiters being asked,

Now Bethlem will afford a tolerably fair idea of the state and condition of those retreats in general. Here, in the first instance, the windows were left unglazed, so that the unhappy inmates were either kept in total darkness or exposed to the inclemency of the weather; and the generous efforts of Lord Robert Seymour were hardly sufficient to persuade the committee to lower the windows of this establishment, so that the poor sufferers might have a view of the animated scenes which were passing around them.

In 1806 and 1807 we find the first attempt at statistics of the insane, and such was the imperfect state in which they were found to exist, that in all England and Wales not more than 2247 lunatics and idiots could be found, while we find Suffolk and Norfolk alone returned 230.

Doubtless much of the evil which existed in those asylums arose from the very absurd regulations, which vested in the hands of the governors the medical and other arrangements. We find by a declaration of the governors of Bethlem hospital, made in 1814, "" that all patients chained there were incurable;" though, in one year after 1815, there remained but one lunatic chained. In this year the question, "What constitutes an incurable case?" was put to the apothecary of Bethlem; to which he replied, "After a residence of twelve months, if such person has exhibited symptoms of malevolence, or is mischievous, and it is considered necessary that society be delivered from them, they are declared incurable." And this, too, in the nineteenth century!

At the White House, Bethnal Green, the custom was to chain the unfortunate lunatics every Saturday afternoon at 4 o'clock, and leave them so until 8 o'clock on Monday. In 1827, a Mr. Hall visited the infirmary of this establishment, and found it so filthy that he could not breathe in it. 66 I was obliged to hold my breath while I staid to make a short survey of the room."

"Did you ever visit the infirmary? "I do not know that I have. "You can give no information to the committee?

"No, I cannot; whether I have seen the infirmary or not I do not know."

And yet such men were continued in their vocations for a series of years!

Mr. Roberts states in his evidence that when he visited this place by order of the parish of St. George, he found five crib rooms that he knew nothing of before. In this state it was reported to have remained for twenty-seven years of statute visitation. In this horrid place there was an unfortunate man of the name of Norris cased in iron for a period of nine years; and in 1814 there were in the women's ward ten patients chained by one leg and one arm to the wall. The chain merely allowed then to stand up or sit down. Their entire covering was a blanket tied like a gown. In the men's ward the men were chained in the same way.

Thanks to the untiring labors of the physicians of the present day, we turn from those revolting scenes to more cheering and happy prospects, at least for the doomed to such retreats. Insanity, which, in its inost comprehensive sense, may be considered an ineptitude for conducting one's-self in the ordinary affairs of life and its relations with society, has of late been stripped of those terrors which, in times less enlightened, consigned its unhappy victims either to perpetual imprisonment or the less objectionable evil,-premature death, from the treatment to which they were subjected.— They are now no longer handed over, on the fiat of an apothecary, as we have already seen, to perpetual imprisonment on the grounds of incurability.

Though the nature of this review prevents our entering into a minute and critical investigation of the various theories of inThe evidence of John Nettle is scarcely sanity, yet we deem it not altogether foreign to be credited in a civilized community.to its general principles to dwell a little on “When Mr. Warburton came to have the a subject from which no one has a special infirmary cleaned, I turned the straw out immunity. of the cribs, and there were magots at the bottom of them where the sick lay." The infirmaries of those asylums were a kind of sanctuaria where none but the elect were admitted. "Did they ever admit any persons to this infirmary?" was a question put to this witness, to which he replied, "No, never." This indifference was not con

Esquirol remarked some years back, that insanity belongs almost exclusively to civized nations or races of men. In a savage state the mind is uncultivated, its reasoning faculties undeveloped, and, consequently, free from the various exciting causes which are perpetually operating on highly cultiva ted minds. In civilized life we may be

said, by our excessive refinements, to beat | suffering any inconvenience. Others have out or expand our brains, and thus expose gazed for entire days at the sun without any a more extended surface to the action of injury to vision. It would seem that phyexternal causes, than those who are actua- sical sensibility diminishes in proportion as ted only by the ordinary excitements of the cerebral excitement increases, and during natural wants and appetencies. Prichard the paroxysm, pain may cease altogether, is disposed to believe that congenital pre- or be changed into a state of well being. disposition, so powerful a cause of insanity We see mad men frequently commit horrid in civilized life, is wanting in the uncivili mutilations with very blunt instruments, zed state; and it is not going too far to sup- sometimes with red hot iron, without expose that, as we see in refined states of so- hibiting the least symptom of pain, but on ciety varieties of structure created, morbid the contrary, the strongest appearances of varieties of organization may be increased pleasure. or multiplied. There are many diseases, constitutional in civilized life, wholly unknown in the savage state.

It is admitted by travellers that insanity is seldom met with among the negroes of Africa or the native Americans; and Dr. Winterbottom says that, among the tribes of Sierra Leone, mania is a disease which seldom, if ever, occurs and it is scarcely known in the West Indies among the negroes.

The early writers on insanity divided it into two orders; mania and melancholia. Esquirol's division, which is now considered the most approved, is into four; mania, monomania, dementia, and idiocy. The mortality in the first is one in twenty-five; in the second, one in sixteen; in the third, one in three; in the fourth, the returns are not quite determined. He considers the hallucinations of the insane as intellectual phenomena, quite independent of the organs of sense, and which may take place though those organs may have been destroyed, or so affected as to be no longer capable of performing their functions; as when deaf men hear sounds, and blind people see colors, which are processes carried on in the brain, without any participation of the sensual organs. Many cases arise from a want of power of attention. In monomania, the attention is too much concentrated on one object, in mania it is too much distracted. The imbecile, Esquirol says, differs from the victim of dementia. The former never possessed the faculty of the understanding in a state sufficiently developed for the display of reason; the latter was once endowed with them, but has lost their possession. The imbecile lives neither in the past nor future; the victim of dementia has some thoughts of time past, reminiscences which excite in him occasional gleams of hope.

The effect of madness on our ordinary sensibilities is in many cases quite incomprehensible. Very delicate mad people have been often known to sleep on the ground for nights in succession, without

The moon has long been considered to exercise a powerful influence over the insane. Esquirol says that, though he cannot confirm the general opinion of it, yet he is disposed to admit that at the full of the moon mad people are more affected than at any other period. They are also affected, he says, at day-light every morning, and he is, from this inclined to think that light is the chief cause of excitement. "Light," he says, "frightens some, pleases others, but agitates all."

Madness has been frequently feigned with a view of escaping some dangerous or laborious duties. Such was the extent to which it was carried in France during the conscription, that Fodere says, it was as difficult to detect a feigned case as to cure a real one. Some pretended to be deaf. In one case of this kind, it was so well managed, that a pistol let off close to the patient's ear, without his expecting it, produced no effect. A very curious case is recorded of feigned blindness by Mohon, a French writer. A young conscript was sent to a corps blockading Luxembourg. Having passed the night at the advanced post, he declared himself blind the next day, and was sent to the hospital. The surgeons used the most powerful remedies, and were convinced that the disease was feigned, as the pupil contracted perfectly. He assured them, however, that he could not see, thanked them for their care of him, and asked for the application of new remedies. He was sent to the superior medical officers of Thionville. They were also convinced that it was a fraud, but hearing the course that was pursued, they determined on a last trial. He was put on the bank of a river and ordered to walk forward. He did so, and fell into the water, from which he was immediately taken by two boatmen stationed for that purpose. Convinced of his blindness, but unable to explain the dilations and contractions of the pupil, the surgeon gave him a discharge, but warned him, at the same time that, it the disease was feigned, it would prove of no avail, as it would,

set the question in its true and proper light.

"Some writers have endeavoured to the material organic cause of madness, turn altogether from the investigation of resting on the belief that this disease is not a physical disease, or material disease, but rather a disease of the soul.

"This singular proposition is evidently an absurd profession of materialism; is it not in fact to deprive the soul of its most to the level of matter, to suppose it susnoble attributes, to degrade and debase it ceptible of alteration?

sooner or later, be ascertained that he was not blind. They offered him another if he would confess the fraud. He hesitated at first, but being assured they would keep their word, he took up a book and read. The illusions of the insane are often exceedingly whimsical. A lunatic once refused to eat anything for several days, alleging that" Dead men never eat." After all attempts to persuade him to eat had failed, he was left alone for a time, when persons entered his room dressed in white shrouds, and, after talking in his presence, to per- "The soul should be a stranger to our suade him that they were dead men or ghosts researches, but, considering the brain as sat down to the table and began to eat. the material instrument of its manifestaWhen his curiosity was excited by the tion, as the organ of intelligence, we seek strange scene, they invited him, as belonging in this organ the cause of the derangeto their own state of existence, to partake of ment which occurs in its functions." the repast. At first he expressed surprise, but at length sat down, ate voraciously, fell asleep, and awoke with a consciousness that

he was alive.

Georget, regard it as an idiopathic affection of the brain, the nature of the organic alteration being unknown.

in the stomach and intestines, from which Pinel placed the primary seat of insanity he supposed it radiated, and ultimately deWriters who insist on insanity being a ranged the understanding; but having Writers who insist on insanity being a found, in the heads of mad people, appeardisease of the mind adduce, as proofs, the absence of any characteristic phenomena ances similar to those found in other diseases after death, he was inclined to give up uniformly exhibited by post mortem examithe hope of ever being able to account for it nations, as connected with insanity; and bring forward cases where, after death, no which Esquirol is disposed to a acquiesce. by pathological appearances, an opinion in alteration in the natural texture of the or- Indeed, such has been the difficulty of logan could be discovered. Lunatics, they allege, live many years in high health, calizing insanity, that many have altogether whilst the mind is in a state of high excite- given up the idea. Bayle thinks its primament. Those men are of opinion that mad-y seat is the brain, but fixes it in the meninness is caused by such circumstances as in-ges. Cullen, Cox, Haslam, Foville and fluence the mind-joy, grief, care, violent passions, &c., and that it is cured by moral treatment suited to the disease of the mind, often too, without any measures adapted to the physical disorders. Of this class, the most zealous advocate is Professor Heinroth, who insists that moral depravity is the essential cause of madness. With him guilt and sin are its real sources. Inordinate passions, want of a proper mild discipline, give a preponderance to the infirmities of our nature, which render them frequently so impetuous as to destroy all restraint, on the total loss of which, even over the actions of the mind itself, consists that subversion of the understanding which he say constitutes insanity. This doctrine of Heinroth's has met with a warm opponent in Jacobi, who adduces cases where insanity occurred in persons remarkable for their moral and religious lives.

Foville, physician to the lunatic asylum for the department of Seine Inférieure, at Rouen, is a strong advocate for the material origin of insanity, and, though medical men terialize too much, we think that Foville has

are sometimes accused of a desire to ma

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Georget says that, from his own experience and that of others, he concludes that among 100 lunatics 99 at least have been so from the influence of affection or moral causes. There is an expression at Salpetrière which has almost passed into a protions d'esprit." Pinel found moral causes verb, "qu'on perd la tête par les revolu464 to 219, and the first question which he to operate in the proportion to physical, as generally put to patients, who still preserved some intelligence, was, Have you undergone any vexation or disappointment?" The reply was seldom in the negative. "It mind is most susceptible of strong feelings, is," he says, "in the age in which the in which the passions are excited by the strongest interests, that madness is powerout anxiety, incapable of long and extensive fully displayed. Children, calm and withcombinations of thought, not yet initiated into the troubles of life, and old men, whom the now vanishing illusions of their prece ding age, and the increasing physical and moral weakness, render indifferent as to

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