It must be observed that the latter return, in which we find twenty-eight persons maddened by disappointed ambition and offended pride, is of a private establishment, whose inmates of course belonged to the better classes of the community. By the return from Pennsylvania, out of fifty lunatics, thirty-four cases arose from moral causes. Of physical causes hereditary madness is the most prevalent, as appears clearly from the following table extracted from the registers of the Salpetriere. Hereditary insanity 105 Convulsion during gestation 11 Epilepsy 11 Female derangements 55 Diseases of child-birth 52 Critical periods 27 Old age 60 Insolation 12 Injuries of the head 14 Fever 13 Syphilis 8 Effects of mercury 14 Worms 24 Apoplexy 60 When speaking of hereditary madness, Dr. Abercrombie is of opinion that where a tendency to insanity exists, there may be in many cases, circumstances in mental habits or mental discipline calculated to favour or to counteract the tendency, when the mind wanders away from the proper duties of life or luxuriates amid scenes of imagination, thus permitting mental emotions, of whatever kind, to be excited in a manner disproportional to the true relation of the object which gave rise to them; allowing the mind to ramble among imaginary events, or to be led away by slight and casual relations, instead of steadily exercising the judgment in the investigation of truth. These observations are no doubt most luminous, yet as I have elsewhere remarked, hereditary predisposition to insanity may be brought into action, by the constant scenes that pass in the presence of those individuals who may daily have to witness the aberrations of an unhappy relative. The mind dwells on the sad subject, and it becomes a source of constant apprehension, when the mere dread of an hereditary evil is perhaps sufficient to drive to madness. So powerful is the sway even of imaginary terror, that we need not wonder that natural fear should be productive of results still more injurious to our intellects. There seems to exist a certain fascination in what we should dread and avoid; instead of resisting evil, by a strange fatality we seem to be self-impelled to court it. We indulge in thoughts, in hopes and fears, too often chimerical, instead of endeavouring to dismiss them from our mind, by other pursuits and busy occupation; and we brood upon future and ideal miseries until we actually, from supineness and timidity, sink under their overwhelming influence.