There is no statement of this case on record, from which any satisfactory information can be derived; nor have I been able to obtain any account of his former life, or the nature or treatment of his case. There has been nothing of late years to distinguish his case from many old ones, whose minds have sunk into the torpid state, except it be, which is scarcely worthy of notice, that he has sometimes stood on his head to say his prayers; sometimes spit in his pocket; and, when provoked, used indecent language; otherwise his state of mind has not, for many years, exhibited any observable alteration. {116} He will be best known when I say, that he is singled out from the rest, as a little, timid, old-looking man, uniformly sitting in a moping, creeping posture. [Picture: No. 2 page 116] OBSERVATION II. This man is not more of an idiot than the one just described, yet there is much less appearance of mind about him; but his mental powers had not formerly been so much evolved and improved by education; and the mind, like the soil we tread on, once properly broken up and cultivated, will, in defiance of neglect, long retain traces of its former improved state. Besides his want of early culture, being one of the middle class of patients, he was wholly left without mental food or exercise. There was, under the old system, a complete sacrifice of the lowest, utter neglect of the middle, for the sake of the higher class of patients; so that there was, with the middle class, for the most part, no intellectual interest excited by social converse and attention; nor, on the other hand, were the malignant passions kept alive by brutal treatment: and hence we now find amongst this class, the greatest proportion {117} of those whose minds have sunk into torpid inactivity; and not so much because they are lost, but because, from their want of excitement, they have too long continued in this motionless state. It is true, that their minds may, by the first attack, have undergone some great shock, to derange or paralyse the more perfect performance of its functions; but it is certain, that afterwards, no means were used to resuscitate or feed the powers of the mind into renewed vigour and activity. Few, even in the perfect possession of their faculties, could bear to be excluded from the air and sunshine of social life, and mingle only with beings in this melancholy state, without feeling its effects upon them. We are not to wonder, then, that those whose spirits have thus been prematurely entombed within them, should have become almost as dead to themselves and the world, as if the soul had already left them. To prevent these consequences, I shall state all that I think ought to be done, in another number of this work; which I conceive is the most interesting part in the treatment of insanity. _No._ 3.—_Admitted_ 1787.