For some time previous to this he had been low in spirits, troubled with what some people call _religious melancholy_, but which, at that time, was no very prevalent disease in the army. He scarcely ever spoke to any one, and was in the habit of wandering out from the encampment, with his Bible in his pocket, and seating himself in some place where he was not likely to be disturbed, he would sit for hours poring over it. While in Ustaritz, he conceived some ill will against the landlord of the house where he was quartered, and very unceremoniously knocked him down. Being confined for this offence, he remained a prisoner when we entered Hasparin. On the guard being placed in a house, he sat down, and having taken out his Bible, he commenced reading it. But suddenly rising, he laid down the book, and going over to a man who was breaking wood with a hatchet, he asked the loan of it for a few minutes. When the man gave it to him, he walked very deliberately into an inner apartment, and placing his right hand on the sill of the window, he severed it at the wrist. The first two strokes that he made did not finish the business, and he had nerve enough not only to repeat it a third time, but afterwards to wrench the lacerated integuments asunder, and throw the hand into the court below. He had been observed by some of the men in a window opposite, but too late to prevent the deed. I assisted in leading him to the assistant-surgeon’s quarters, where the stump was dressed in a manner which I shall describe, and leave to the profession either to praise or censure, as they may feel inclined. The bone had been rather splintered than cut, and its sharp point protruded about two inches beyond the mangled integuments. Having prepared his apparatus, he placed the patient on a seat, and after half-an-hour’s poking with a tenacalum, he succeeded in taking up and tying the two principal arteries. He then nipt off the rough angles at the point of the bone, and forcing down the retracted integuments by straps of adhesive plaster, under which he had introduced some dry lint, he rolled the whole up with a bandage, and left him, congratulating himself, no doubt, on his dexterity. The man, on being questioned as to his motive in thus mutilating himself, replied, ‘that he had only done what the Lord commanded, in a passage he had been reading,—If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee,’ &c., which injunction he had literally fulfilled, as his right hand offended him by knocking down his landlord. This was the only reason he ever assigned. As he went to the rear some time after, and did not join the regiment again, I had never an opportunity of learning whether the operation proved successful.