whatever labour may attend it, and given me, with your sanction, every encouragement to go on rejoicing.""

Nothing can be more gratifying than these details, particularly as the mental improvement would indicate, in some degree, the restoration of the intellectual faculties. We must now take farewell of the present Report. Whatever improvements the progress of science may suggest in the management of Hanwell Asylum, the committee of visitors is entitled to the thanks of the community for the zeal, assiduity, and humanity with which they have discharged their duties. And we cordially join them in their benevolent wish, that "long as the poor and helpless, suffering the worst of Heaven's visitation, need such asylums, may Hanwell remain for their reception and recovery. And may it, under the care of their successors,

long continue to flourish and improve."

Original Communications.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND DEGENERATION IN THE UPPER CLASSES OF SOCIETY.

BY W. M. BUSH, M.D., F.L.S.,

Medical Superintendent of Sandywell Park, near Cheltenham.

THE increased attention bestowed within the last fifteen years upon the nature and causes of insanity, has resulted in other benefits than an improved treatment of the insane. It has converted the crude, empirical notions which previously existed, and enveloped that disease in mystery, into a science, shedding light upon the path of the inquirer, and revealing truths which had been long concealed from the world.

Among the many benefits likely to accrue to society from the more enlightened views of medical men on this subject, is the success which has attended their investigation into the operation of various agencies upon the human mind; whereby we, becoming better acquainted with those circumstances which favour or disturb the healthy action of the brain, may learn to conduct ourselves in conformity with those rational principles which such knowledge necessarily provides.

The more we inquire into the influence of disturbing agencies on the mind, the more convinced must we be of the danger of any protracted exposure to them, and the necessity of avoiding, at any sacrifice, the numerous ills which follow in their train. It is in pointing out these disturbances, and their effects upon the mind and general

health, that the improved modern notions of insanity so much excel; and it is in accordance with these notions that attention is directed to the important social question which forms the subject matter of the following essay.

If, then, the metaphysical truths revealed by medical psychology, or the science of mind in relation to health, be of use as a guide to the general preservation of the mind, the recognition of those truths certainly belongs to early mental cultivation, and more especially so to the management of weak intellect, or defective morals developing themselves in early life.

Improved pathological science confirms this opinion, and explaining as it does the cause of those mental and moral peculiarities observable in many children, forcibly points out the mischievous and dangerous consequences of subjecting such as are of a peculiar nervous conformation to the ordinary curriculum of a school.

It is a most certain though melancholy fact, in confirmation of the above remark, that there are many children brought prematurely to a miserable death, or to a state of protracted idiocy, through the illdirected zeal of their instructors, who being ignorant of the principles of mental pathology-mistaking incapacity for idleness, precocity for vigour, and perversion for immorality-increase the very mischief they profess to avert.

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How important, then, in such cases, becomes an intimate and practical acquaintance with the phenomena arising out of the connexion of mind and matter!-with their several reactions, healthy and diseased. For the fate of every young person who is considered "genius," or "dull," or "wayward," will be involved in the management to which he is subjected in tender life. It will depend on this whether he shall be a misery to himself and a disgrace to others, be prematurely cut off by mental and moral decay, and even by physical death, or (under an appropriate discipline, founded on the acknowledged principles of medical psychology) shall enjoy the possession of those moral attributes which adorn the individual, and make him an useful member of society.

To explain the subject more fully, it may be useful briefly to sketch the ordinary career of one boy at least in almost every school. Incapable, from defective organization, of acquiring that amount of knowledge which his tutor imperatively, and often dogmatically, demands, his parents expect, and his age would warrant, he is condemned as "idle," and punishment is used to excite physically, what is morally impossible-viz., certain mental manifestations from a brain too weak or disordered to evince them. From that moment his troubles and his ruin may be dated: his slight remaining energy (always fugitive) is destroyed by frequently-repeated punishment; dismayed and listless, he becomes the opprobrium of the school and the jest of his companions-a mingled feeling of injury and shame degrades him in his own estimation, and he is at length made, what he is but too truly called, "incorrigible”—neglected and discouraged,

the slender fabric of morality breaks down, and, as though it were designed to complete and perpetuate his ruin, the last stone of hope is removed, every avenue of reformation closed, by expulsion from the school to a home where he is unwelcome, for the commission of some vicious act which he has lost the mental power to resist, or the moral sense to appreciate.

In such a career, we see the gradual destruction of a fragile vessel, hastened by the ambition of the world, till it comes broken to the asylum or the grave-we trace the progressive decline of an immortal creature to usages founded in error, and maintained by an almost monastic bigotry-we observe each human attribute, though weak, still noble, crushed by conventional exactions too onerous to be borne; till at length, the course being run, the school ordeal passed, we find the victim of all these destructive influences (bereft of intellect and sapped in morals) left to dwell in the mental wilderness which an over-zealous system has produced.

It may be urged that an extreme case has been selected for the exposure of this evil, that the consequences arising from overpressure of the mind do not accumulate within so brief a space of life, nor arise and terminate in the rapid course described, and that the dulness and perverseness of youth have been overcome by the severity now condemned. But these are deceptive arguments, the mere excuses of ignorance, the temporary evasions of a truth which will only peal the louder on the ear of conviction the longer it is postponed. The terrible consequences may not, indeed, be fulfilled at so early an age; for as jealous nature will, when violated, attempt her own defence, it is found that the imbecile mind when young will often put forth some buds of promise, affording to the too sanguine parent hopes of future blossom. A few dim rays of reason will now and then break the uniform obscurity of the dullest mind, and may be hailed by some as the forerunner of a more constant mental sunshine.

But let us not be deceived by such flattering appearances. Let us remember that there are degrees of imbecility-that with only a little less weakness of mind, and a little more constitutional vigour, the consequences predicted will not reveal themselves at so young an age, but at a later period; not perhaps at school, but at the university-in the counting-house-in the tavern-in haunts of vice-wherever can be traced the steps of mental prostitution or moral depravity.

It may not be very agreeable for many parents and instructors to be informed of what daily experience proves to the medical practitioner-viz., that with the exception of congenital idiots, the great majority of idle and profligate young men have been made what they are by mismanagement at school-by the indiscriminate system to which boys of every temperament and shade of mind are subjected; that so long as our present system of education is adapted to only one set of individuals-to those only having a sound mind in a

sound body-and that so long as the phenomena of those complicated and ever-changing reactions between mind and body continue unrecognised in the management of youths, our schools will contribute, as they now do, to break the charm that sanctifies the English home, and to destroy the beneficial influence which rank and fortune ought always to exercise upon the community.

If there be any truth at all in what has been stated, it becomes. incumbent on the part of every parent to test it by his own experience, and to inquire whether the perverseness of his child does not date its origin from the causes assigned?-whether the popular remedy of the school has proved the panacea he expected?-and if not, whether some other system, more rational and certain, cannot be substituted? Before proceeding to answer these questions and to propose a more satisfactory plan of management, it will be necessary to describe, in more definite language, those distinctive characteristics which mark the individual cases unsuited to modern scholastic discipline. As it is at the age of ten years, or nearly so, that any marked peculiarities in mind or body begin to show themselves, and as it is at this time also that they require so much attention, this age and the following six years will be selected as the period to which these remarks more particularly apply.

Although there are many morbid conditions of the body which incapacitate youth for the ordeal of schools and the exactions of modern education, the present article will be confined to a notice of those only which exist in the nervous system.

The subject will be considered in reference to the existence of general want of tone, with excessive or diminished nervous energy. 1st. Excessive irritability of the nervous system, with general want of mental and bodily vigour.

1. Idiopathic epilepsy, or convulsive fits with unconsciousness, arising from constitutional causes, being the great type of all convulsive affections, is placed at the head of the list. Childhood, from infancy upwards, is liable to every form of convulsions. The same diathesis, the same nervous condition which produces a momentary stiffening of the limbs, a transient unconsciousness, or a single sudden scream, may be aggravated by undue excitement of the great nervous centres to such a degree as to excite the dreadful struggles of epilepsy. A few only, however, will be selected from the great variety of fits to which boys at the above age are more frequently liable.

2. Many boys at the age of eight or ten years will be found to have contracted various unsightly tricks of a purely nervous character, such as blinking, stammering, a spasmodic action of the muscles of the face, and an awkward movement of the limbs. It will be found that all these eccentric muscular movements are increased by moral emotions; for springing as they do from an oversensitive condition of the nervous system, whatever excites the great

centres of that system (the brain and spinal cord) will be sure to aggravate the symptoms. This morbid sensibility of the nerves is exhibited in mental as well as bodily peculiarities, and we accordingly find these subjects to present a character different to, or in the extreme of, what is observed in other boys. They are reserved or fond of solitude; do not enter at all into juvenile sports, or else engage in them with excessive ardour. They are easily cowed, irascible, timid to an excess, terrified at darkness, and are either unusually dull, or show a precocity of intellect which very speedily decays. It would seem as though nature were in a state of morbid intensity in these cases; as though the puerile character were exaggerated; for whereas all boys are by nature awkward and rude in their manners, these are more so, they are eccentric; and where others are shy, these are confused; or where timid only, these are altogether overcome by terror. It is in these cases, too, that the imitative character common to all children, becomes so prominent as to amount to disease; for it not only keeps up those eccentric habits incidental to innate nervousness, but leads to the adoption of such as are observed in others; and moreover, extending its influence to the weakened moral faculties, induces them to follow the more easy course of a bad than a good example.

3. A very remarkable and-because so seldom regarded by parents or instructors—a very dangerous fit is mentioned by Dr. J. Conolly, of Hanwell, who describes it as follows:-" Sleepwalking and short attacks of a cataleptic kind occurring in young persons, are, I fear, often precursors of complete epilepsy, which supervenes after the age of puberty. In the cataleptic seizures to which I allude, the consciousness of the little patient is lost for a few seconds, or for nearly a minute, the eyes become fixed, and the head is moved gently up and down, but the patient does not struggle or fall. Reading, or any other occupation, is of course interrupted, but soon, after a little appearance of confusion, resumed. The conjunction of such affections with marked mental peculiarity in young persons is, consequently, alarming, foreboding epilepsy, uncertain life, or derange. ment of mind."

In this case, described by Dr. Conolly, of the early indications of approaching epilepsy, we see an example of the same nervous conformation, only a little more developed, as that mentioned in our second case, and which may be designated the convulsive temperament. In that case, (No. 2,) merely a constant and uniform eccentricity of muscular movement, accompanied with certain moral and intellectual peculiarities, without any absolute fit or loss of consciousness, and it is the presence of these two latter symptoms which shows a greater intensity only of the same pathological condition.

4. But there is still another form of this morbid state of the nervous system, in which likewise neither voluntary motion nor consciousness are prominently implicated, but in which the convulsive