"Be which educational efforts may seem, at first sight, entirely thrown away, I must think that vicious habits are in many instances broken, and the direction of the thoughts turned, for a time at least, into a healthier channel. "Whence is it," says Pascal, "that this person, who has lately buried his only son, and who this morning was so full of lamentation, at present seems to have forgotten all ?" not surprised," he replies, "he is wholly taken up with looking which way the stag will turn which for the last six hours his dogs have been pursuing. This is sufficient, full as he is of sorrow. As long as you can engage him in something, so long you can make him happy." The application of this truth to the insane is obvious. I have said there is nothing new in the endeavour to edu. cate the insane, but in many instances where this has been done, it has been in the form of individual culture, by encouraging a patient to read, compose, draw, or play music, rather than by obtaining the services of a schoolmaster whose duty it is to teach the patients as systematically as he would give instruction in an ordinary Elementary School. I believe more has been done in England to induce the Greek scholar to read his Homer, the German scholar his Goethe, and to encourage the artist and musician to interest themselves in the pursuits they followed before they entered the asylum, than to teach those who are more or less ignorant. In short more has been attempted among private patients than among the pauper class, and it is to this point, the introduction of well qualified, and therefore well paid schoolmasters and mistresses into all our County Asylums, that I am anxious to attract fresh attention by the present paper. I hope the day is near when the schoolmaster will be regarded as an essential officer in every county asylum (possibly also in others where middle class patients are received) and that its organization will be regarded as seriously defective if it does not provide regular classes for elementary instruction as in ordinary day schools. Where no class for teaching the rudiments of knowledge exists, where writing, reading, and arithmetic form no part of the daily work of the pauper patients; where they are not taught to sing and induced to commit poetry to memory for recitation, I hold that one important aid to treatment, and to the attainment of greater mental quietude, is over-looked, even although such an asylum may have a band of music, concerts, dances, and amusements of various kinds, and as regards the female patients, may provide in addition, plenty of occupation in the way of knitting, sewing, and worsted work. Cricket, and other pastimes common in our asylums, excellent as they are in their way; farm labour, essential as it must always be; dramatic representations, fitted as they may be in some cases to divert the mind from melancholy thoughts; even lectures and writing essays for an asylum periodical (the latter not applicable to a pauper asylum) very beneficial as they doubtless are, will prove insufficient and by no means supply the place of regular daily school teaching. To Dr. Lalor, who since 1857* has worked at this very important branch of the moral treatment of the insane, and has improved the small school he found, till it has attained its present efficiency, I might almost say perfection, is due the greatest credit, and I am sure that he would feel that the best reward he could obtain, next to witnessing the advantages derived therefrom by his own patients, would be the extension of systematic teaching as practised in his institution into all asylums adapted for it throughout Great Britain as well as Ireland. The date of his appointment. Ten years after its establishment, the Head Inspector of National Schools made the following entry: "The experiment of bringing lunatics under regular instruction, has been attended in this place with great success. Many of them take an evident interest in the business brought before them. Discipline and order are well maintained, mind and body are kept occupied. Some write an excellent hand, and all who have copy books manifest a great interest in keeping them neat and clean. I would add that one cause of Dr. Lalor's success is that he has kept in view the restoration and improvement of the weakened moral, intellectual and physical powers, and not merely the teaching of the three R's." MONUMENT TO THE LATE DR. SKAE. A handsome granite monument has recently been erected in the Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh, to Dr. Skae by his old Assistants. It is in the form of a sculptured Celtic Cross on a massive pedestal, is made of grey Aberdeen granite polished, and has the following inscription:-"DAVID SKAE, M.D., born 5th July, 1814; died 18th April, 1873. For twenty-seven years PhysicianSuperintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum at Morningside. Erected to his memory by those whom, receiving as Medical Assistants, he parted from as life-long friends. How good! How kind! And he is gone.'"-In Memoriam. Correspondence. To the Editors of the Journal of Mental Science. GENTLEMEN,-Will you allow me, through the medium of the "Journal of Mental Science," to ask for information from Medical Superintendents of Asylums upon the following point :-What is their experience as to the mortality in epilepsy, as epilepsy ?—that is, excluding accidents incidental to the seizures, such as suffocation from the prone position, or impaction of food during meal times. In my experience I have known three out of a total of forty epileptics to die-one from exhaustion consequent on repeated fits (56 in twenty-four hours), and two from arrest of respiration in rapidly recurring and very severe fits. The able Superintendent of Broadmoor in his last report records two deaths (out of a total of 18) from epileptic seizures. I should be glad to obtain further information on the subject. I beg to remain, &c., FREDERICK MACCABE, L.K., and Q.C.P., &c. State Criminal Asylum, Dundrum, co. Dublin, 10th September, 1875. Appointments. BLACKALL, J. J., M.D., C.M., has been appointed Assistant to the Medical Superintendent of the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum, Dublin, vice Petit, appointed Resident Medical Superintendent of the Donegal Lunatic Asylum, Letterkenny. CALLCOTT, J. T., M.R.C.S.E., has been appointed Assistant Medical Officer to the Durham County Lunatic Asylum, Sedgefield. COOKE, E. M., M.R.C.S.E., has been appointed Senior Assistant Medical Officer and Deputy Superintendent to the Worcester County and City Lunatic Asylum, Powick, vice Gowan, appointed Medical Superintendent of the Toronto Lunatic Asylum, Canada. HARRISON, H. B., M.R.C.S.E., has been appointed Second Assistant Medical Officer to the Metropolitan District Asylum for Imbeciles, Caterham. HICKSON, A. T., M.B., L.R.C.S.I., has been appointed Assistant Medical Officer to the Lancashire Lunatic Asylum, Rainhill, vice De Denne, resigned. ISAAC, J. B., L.R.C.P.Ed., L.R.C.S.Ed., has been appointed Assistant Medical Officer to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, vice Davies, appointed Senior Assistant Medical Officer to the Kent Lunatic Asylum, Barming-heath. LOVETT, H. A., M.R.C.S.E., L.M., has been appointed Second Assistant Medical Officer to the Worcester County and City Lunatic Asylum, Powick, vice Cooke, appointed Senior Assistant Medical Officer and Deputy Superintendent. PETIT, J., L.K.Q.C.P.I., L.M., L.R.C.S.I., has been appointed Resident Superintendent of the Donegal Lunatic Asylum, Letterkenny, vice Merrick, appointed to the Antrim Lunatic Asylum, Belfast. The W. and S. TUKE PRIZE is open to all without restriction as to country, profession, &c., but the right is reserved to withhold it, should there be no essay of sufficient merit. Essays, to be written in English, and not in the author's handwriting, to be sent in a sealed envelope, bearing the motto of the essay, containing the name of the writer, to the undersigned, not later than June 30th, 1877. The microscopical preparations, but not the essay, to belong to the Association. W. RHYS WILLIAMS, M.D., Hon. Sec. Bethlem Royal Hospital, London," It will be observed that the time at which Essays are to be sent in has been extended from June 30th, 1876, to June 30th, 1877. DR. WILLIAMS wishes to express his regret that, owing to some mistake which at present he is unable to account for, several members did not receive the usual notice of the annual meeting. THE JOURNAL OF MENTAL SCIENCE. [Published by Authority of the Medico-Psychological Association.] No. 96. NEW SERIES, No. 60. JANUARY, 1876. VOL. XXI. PART 1.-ORIGINAL ARTICLES. Reflex, Automatic, and Unconscious Cerebration: A History and a Criticism. By THOMAS LAYCOCK, M.D., &c. Physician in Ordinary to the Queen for Scotland, and Professor of the Practice of Physic and of Clinical Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. An Essay in the Journal of Mental Science for October, 1875, entitled, "Can Unconscious Cerebration be Proved ?" by Dr. Ireland, Superintendent of the Institution for the Education of Imbeciles at Larbert, ends thus:-"In any case the theory of unconscious cerebration derives no support from physiology. It is a child of the old metaphysics, to be brought forward and repelled by the study and analysis of mental operations, cognisable by internal examination." I. I do not understand, whatever meaning may be attached to terms, how it is that the theory controverted derives no support from physiology; but I clearly see that the method recommended is that of speculative philosophy, which leaves the brains and their doings, or cerebral physiology, out of consideration, and depends upon the abstract process termed "internal examination." The question as to method thus raised involves an answer to two other questions-viz. (1), Do all men use their brains in thinking and doing, so that, without brains, they can neither think nor do? And (2), if this be answered in the affirmative as a fact of experience, then is consciousness a cause, or is it a coincident and a result, of these changes in the brain-tissue upon which all manifestations of mind depend, and itself due to an "immaterial" cause? In the year 1837, when I first turned my attention to the phenomena of mesmerism and of cerebral hysteria with a view to practical results, it was the general opinion, in this country XXI. 32 at least that consciousness was the cause of all those changes with which it is associated. Mind considered as a cause and consciousness were held to be identical. This doctrine I controverted. Many of the old school denied, too, that the brain had any essential connection with the intellectual powers. Sensations might have their seat there, but the reason was independent of brain-function. This doctrine I also controverted. Dr. Ireland also opens his essay with another statement. "Unconscious cerebration," he says, "is regarded as so important a discovery that two well-known scientific men have contended for the priority of its publication." I cannot doubt that Dr. Carpenter and myself are here referred to. I therefore think it right to disclaim not only the paternity of the phrase "unconscious cerebration," but also of much of what is included under that phrase; and not merely because, like the phrase, it is Dr. Carpenter's, but because it is opposed to my views. And I would add, as only an act of justice to Dr. Carpenter, that in my opinion he has honestly endeavoured on various occasions to indicate our respective shares in the doctrine, although he has not, I think, been altogether successful. These acknowledgments include the fundamental principles upon which certain portions of Dr. Carpenter's views as named by him are based, together with their chief applications to the problems of mental philosophy and the needs of medical science and art. As to certain other principles, I differ entirely from Dr. Carpenter; neither do I agree with him as to his method, which includes too much, I think, of "the old metaphysics." Dr. Ireland's whole business as a physician is with brain-structure and brainfunction; and being an intelligent thinker, although evidently of the old school, and a careful observer in his own department, I may assume that he is an example of the difficulties which men of culture find in understanding and accepting the theory. As to the doctrine of causation implied in the phrase "unconscious cerebration," and as to my share in its development, perhaps no one has manifested more strikingly these difficulties than Dr. Carpenter has from the date when he first took cognisance of my researches. These difficulties are due to two circumstances; firstly, the ambiguous meanings attached to phrases and terms derived from the "old metaphysics," and, secondly, to a too superficial perusal of the works in which my views are set forth. For these reasons, it happened, as I shall show, that Dr. Carpenter |