271 HORACE ON INSANITY. BY D. W. NASH, SURGEON. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, TRUE, O princely Dane! And there is more philosophy in Horace than the world in general dreams of, and which, if matters progress after their present fashion, will, in all probability, ere long "be dipped in Lethe and forgotten:" for in these utilitarian days, when cui bono? is the universal question, and the dulce is too often divorced from its long and pleasing union with the utile; when, to use the favourite phraseology of the Göethe school, the substantial has usurped the throne of the ideal; when the argent comptant of practical information is more readily received than the promissory notes of the imagination-there is apparently a growing depreciation of the politer branches of education, and a not unnatural, though perhaps, comparatively, an over-estimate of the value of those acquirements which are more directly available in the world we live in. It has often been stated, of late, in works professedly on education, that the time employed by young persons in the acquisition of the Greek and Latin languages is, in fact, so much time thrown away; for that a knowledge of these languages is not productive of sufficient advantage to them in after life to compensate for the labour and time bestowed on their acquisition, which time and labour could of course have been available for the purpose of acquiring more useful knowledge. In a former number of the Analyst, a quotation from Dr. Shirley Palmer's Popular Illustrations of Medicine was adduced to strengthen the arguments of a writer against the utility of a classical education. "It may even be questioned," says Dr. Shirley Pal. mer, in the work before mentioned, "whether the literary acquirements of early age are worth the sacrifice and the risk incurred in their pursuit. Many a weakly stripling has spent the brightest and most joyous years of a precarious existence in irksome drudgery upon the works of Homer and of Virgil, long ere his mind could comprehend the majesty of the Greek, or be smitten with the splen dour and elegance of the Roman, poet. And what, after all, has he acquired, that can compensate for the lost opportunity of more fully evolving his physical powers, and fortifying his constitution against the inroads of future disease? A knowledge of which, in riper age, a few month's application, under an enlightened system of instruction, would have given him a far more perfect possession; and in the attainment of which a maturer intelligence would then have afforded the most exquisite gratification." Of course the weakly stripling would suffer the same martyrdom whether he applied himself to German or Greek, to logarithms or to Latin; the only question is upon the point of what is to be gained by either, in short, the old query of cui bono? Now I do not purpose entering into an argument on the value of classical acquirements either to the medical practitioner or to students in general, though, in the course of such an argument, I could enlist on my side many of England's best and wisest; but, after these few preliminary observations, will endeavour to shew that a great deal of both moral and medical philosophy may be acquired from the writings of the lyric bard of Rome. One of the chief characteristics of a great poet, of whatever country, is an intimate knowledge of human nature. The face of a country may alter in appearance under the influence of increasing civilization, languages and religions may be modified or lost, the manners and customs of a people may gradually change, but human passions and human affections remain unchanging and unchangeable. Ambition, love, hatred, avarice, revenge, are the same in the barbarian as in civilized man, though clothed in a different dress and seen in a different light. In vice and virtue themselves time has made no alteration, though it has changed the fashion of their garb; the same passions produce the same effects in London and in Paris, as in ages gone by they produced in Athens and in Rome; and the picture which Horace drew of the vices and follies of his day requires but little change to render it a faithful representation of the present time. Horace himself held the same opinions, and tells us, in his Epistle to Lollius, that he was in the habit of reading Homer for the sake of the moral philosophy which it contained. "Trojani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, What Horace here says of Homer is true of Horace : "Mutato nomine, de te, fabula narratur" was his own remark, though with little foresight of the future extent of its application. To prove our position, let us take our old school Horace, imprinted in Ædibus Valpianis, or the Delphine edi. tion, if preferred, and read the conversation which took place between Damasippus and the poet.* What says the heading? "Damasippus, Stertini, Stoici verbis, omnes insanire docet." "Stertinius," says Lempriere," was a Stoic philosopher ridiculed by Horace." This seems more than doubtful: Horace has put his sentiments in the mouth of the Stoic, but by no means does he place him in a ridiculous light; on the contrary, he makes him utter many very philosophical and profound remarks. And, first, he proceeds to tell us the grounds on which he makes the assertion that "all men are mad." "Nunc accipe," says he, "Nunc accipe quare Desipiant omnes, æque ac tu, qui tibi nomen Insano posuere. Velut sylvis, ubi passim Palantes error certo de tramite pellit, Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique Crede modo insanum; nihilo ut sapientior ille And who is there that keeps in "certo tramite"-in the right path of reason? Who can say that he is not led away from it like the rest of his fellow cosmopolites? Who is there that has not some favourite pursuit, some prevailing fancy, which leads him to the right or to the left, and causes him to wander in the tangled paths of error-some hobby, whose prancing disposition carries him into the thickets, and too often deposits the unwary rider amid the briars? Again, how true the poet's remark, "Qui te deridet, caudam trahet!" How few are aware of their own follies! how few can discover their own eccentricities or weaknesses! “ε γνωθί σεαυτον” was an excellent moral precept, but its accomplishment is hardly within the power of man ; and the old fable carries with it much sound sense, which relates that Jupiter placed the wallet containing the faults of men at their backs; so that each man can discern those of his neighbour, while he remains ignorant of his own. Satirarum, lib. ii., iii. VOL, VI.NO. XX. MM That man will have made no inconsiderable progress towards perfection who "Respicere ignoto discet pendentia tergo." But to return to the argument of the Stoic, that "all men are mad." In order to enter fully into it, we must first inquire, In what does insanity consist? "A lunatic," says the learned Judge Blackstone, "is one who hath had understanding, but by disease, grief, or other accident, hath lost the use of his reason." Medical writers of late years, and among them Esquirol, Pinel, and Dr. Prichard, have considered insanity principally as offering itself to our observation under two heads; as insanity with hallucination, and moral insanity, in which no delusion or hallucination of mind can be discovered. The first kind of insanity occurs in four principal forms, namely, 1st. Mania, where the mental delusion is complete and universal, accompanied by excitement; 2nd. Monomania, or partial insanity, an hallucination confined to a single object; 3rd. Dementia, or accidental obliteration of the reasoning faculties; 4th. Idiotism, in which this obliteration is congenital. The second kind of mental alienation has been distinguished, by Spurzheim, under the name of irresistibility; by Pinel, as mania without delirium or hallucination; and by our learned countryman, Dr. Prichard, as moral insanity. "Moral insanity, or Dr. Prichard thus defines this affection :madness, consists in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, and moral dispositions, without any notable lesion of the intellect or knowing and reasoning faculties, particularly without any maniacal hallucination.” If this perversion of the feelings and habits be slight in degree and harmless in character, the individual thus affected is merely considered odd or eccentric, and passes muster with the world in general: but if developed more strongly, it becomes the source of one of the most terrible species of mental alienation. If the above definition be correct, who is there that can be said to be exempt from the taint of moral insanity? who is there in whom some of the natural propensities, to use the words of Spurzheim, do not occasionally become so violent as to be irresistible and incontrollable? "Ira brevis furor est," and so are many other evil passions. The poor man whose breast is gnawed with a feeling of envious dislike towards him who is richer and apparently happier than himselfthe rich and powerful who looks down with contemptuous loathing on his poor and miserable fellow-man, equally with himself the work of God-the gambler who sacrifices health, happiness, honour, and peace of mind, both his own and that of others, in his destructive pursuit-the miser who hoards up useless treasure, and denies to himself and to his offspring the merest necessaries of life-in these and a hundred other cases the same passions are at work which, if developed in a higher degree, would come under the denomination of insanity. But let us turn to our poet, and see what he has to say on this point : "Audire, atque togam jubeo componere, quisquis, Quisquis luxuriâ, tristive superstitione Ambition, avarice, luxury, and superstition, may well be placed foremost among the diseases of the mind; productive of various shades of mental alienation, as injurious to society, in their consequences, as many other more generally recognized varieties of insanity. Of these disorders Horace seems to consider avarice as the most obstinate and most difficult of cure : "Danda est hellebori multo pars maxima avaris Avarice is, indeed, the vice at which Horace most frequently levels his satire, but not at this alone. He asks, "Quisnam igitur sanus? Qui non stultus? quid avarus ? Naviget Anticyram." ambitiosus et audax The numerous gradations of insanity are extremely difficult of distinction, especially in the slighter varieties. It is no easy matter to define the boundary between that state of mind which is commonly called eccentricity, and what would legally come under the denomination of unsoundness of mind. An individual may acquire habits at variance with those of the world in general, and his conduct may be influenced by a mental impression, or some mental faculty which in him is more than ordinarily energetic; and yet he may be capable of reasoning correctly on correct prémises, and may |