the thorax by a sword in a duel; but the man was progressively recovering, when in the fourth month from the period of the injury, he died suddenly in consequence of a violent fit of anger; upon dissection, the heart and pericardium exhibited traces of inflammation. We should also learn, if possible, _whether the deceased had been at the time of death in a state of intoxication_: for in such a condition a comparatively slight injury may occasion death. The following case, related by _Dr. Cheyne_, in which _Mr. Charles Bell_ was concerned, we quote from _Mr. Shaw’s_ excellent _Manual of Anatomy_[6], (p. 165.) “An industrious man returning home from his work, found his house empty; the bed he was to lie upon, and the tools of his trade, sold for liquor by his wife, whom he found in a gin shop, where she had been drinking and dancing. He brought her home, and in the passage of his house struck her, and ordered her to go up stairs; she refused to go; he carried her upon his shoulders, and the contention continuing up stairs, he struck her again. There having been no one present, we have only the husband’s account of her death. He said that whilst sitting on her chair, she fell down, upon which he threw her on the bed, conceiving that she was in a fit, such as he had seen her in formerly. Some of her neighbours coming in, found her dead. _Mr. C. Bell_ was requested to examine the body of this woman. The man was afterwards tried at the Old Bailey, for murder, when _Mr. Bell_ deposed, that upon taking out the brain, and tracing the vessels in the base, the anterior artery of the cerebrum going off from the internal carotid of the left side, was found torn half way across. The cause of this woman’s death was the bursting of the blood from the ruptured vessel; as to the cause of the rupture, _Mr. Bell’s_ opinion coincided with the best authorities in pathology, that there is a state of the vessels, in which an external injury or shock is more apt to produce rupture; and drunkenness may be supposed to be the artificial state of excitement which most resembles this state of the vessels. Being asked whether the blows were the cause of the rupture, he said he conceived it very likely that a shock would rupture the vessel; and being then asked whether he conceived that this woman was more likely to have a vessel ruptured, from having been intoxicated—he was of opinion that intoxication, and the struggle, were likely to produce such a degree of activity of the circulation in the head, that a less violent blow might produce rupture, than what, in other circumstances, would have proved fatal.” The prisoner was acquitted.—At the York assizes in the year 1820, a somewhat analogous question arose,—whether the deceased might not have been attacked with apoplexy during the struggle? The light of anatomical dissection will be required in such a case, and the remarks which Mr. _Shaw_ has offered upon the subject, appear to us to