A gentleman in early life was exposed for a few weeks to an amount of mental excitement almost sufficient to bring on a severe maniacal attack. He complained for some time of a sensation in his head as if some person was hammering on his brain. In the course of a few years he apparently recovered. During a tour through Italy, he had a renewal of his old sensation, and became liable to head-aches, giddiness, and severe attacks of indigestion. He placed himself under the care of an Italian physician of eminence, who did his best to restore him to health. Instead of improving, the symptoms of his disease became more apparent; and one morning he was found dead on the floor of his dressing-room, having with a penknife effectually divided the carotid artery. On examining the brain, extensive _ramollissement_ was discovered. In this case the structural disease originated in a _moral shock_, the effects of which remained suspended for some years, and then gave rise to the train of symptoms that drove the unfortunate man to terminate his life. It is one of the most important facts connected with this subject, that mental excitement may produce as extensive and serious organic disease as that which so commonly follows the receipt of physical injury. With a knowledge of this fact, how cautious we ought to be in pronouncing an opinion as to the absence of disease of the brain in cases of suicide resulting from an apparently trifling departure from mental quietude, without being intimate with the previous history of the individual.