The heart is sometimes found seriously disorganized. The stomach, liver, and intestines, are the most frequent seats of morbid phenomena in these cases. It is difficult, however, to say whether they ought to be considered as the effect or cause of the suicidal disposition. In many cases of gastric disease, the brain is also found organically affected. How is it possible for us to say which organ was primarily affected? The stomach, intestines, and liver, may be originally the seat of the irritation, and the brain may be sympathetically deranged. This is often the case. Again, the patient may have laboured under a severe mental ailment, which may give rise to disease of the splanchnic viscera. Severe and long-continued indigestion, from whatever cause it may originate, will, in certain dispositions, produce the suicidal mania. Very few cases are examined in which we are not able to detect some disease of the gastric organ or its appendages. It is not our wish to throw discredit on, or to underrate the value of, morbid anatomy; but, with reference to the peculiar branch of inquiry now under investigation, we must confess that very little practical importance can be attached to the structural lesions which the industry and scalpel of the anatomists have enabled them to discover in the bodies of those who have committed suicide. The morbid appearances are so varied and capricious that they cannot lead to a sound conclusion as to the exact seat of the disease. In many cases, the brain is apparently free from structural derangement; and yet, reasoning physiologically, we must believe that in every case the sentient organ must be affected, either primarily or secondarily. There are many instances in which there cannot be a doubt but that the cerebral organ is the seat of the disease, but in which, after death, no vestige of the malady can be discovered! CHAPTER XV. SINGULAR CASES OF SUICIDE.