ity as partaking of the marvelous. Subjects of these affections have ever been adjudged by the credulous, as deriving their powers, either from the demoniacal or heavenly agencies. Persons in the apathetic state, have tolerated with apparent indifference the effects of fire, of cold, and mechanical irritants, to a degree that those possessing a healthy sense would be unable to endure. Those in the latter condition have been able readily to detect objects so inapprecicable to ordinary feeling, that the ignorant, who witness such operation, have ever been prone to impute the process by which it is effected to a degree of prophetic inspiration. Smell and taste, as related to feeling, have manifested similar extraordinary deviations from their natural functions, and have no doubt contributed to aid that sense in some of its erratic and inexplicable revelations. Thus, atmospheric changes, serpents, cats, and other animals and objects, are announced by subjects endowed with such powers, when in conditions which render them concealed from all the senses of ordinary persons. Illusion, whether manifested by intellectual personifications, as ghosts; or by morbid association of ideas, exhibiting the false reasonings of the insane; or whether those of individual senses, as unnatural sounds, smells, tastes, or feelings, are unquestionably dependent upon a degree of morbidly altered state of the brain in the one case, and an altered condition of the nerves of sense in the other. In the former, the disordered activity of the brain recalls former sensations by the aid of memory, and often depicts those susceptible of form, in their respective representative images, as ghosts, &c., or combine ideas in discordant trains, as in dreams or delirium. In the instance of particular disordered senses, the actions of which are illusive, their functional representations are brought into activity, without the presence of the appropriate stimulus derived from the immediate impression of external objects; but effects representative of those, are no doubt caused by the impression which diseased action makes upon the local nerves on which specific sensible function depends, All illusions, therefore, whether intellectual or sensitive, may be considered but as indications of a degree of disordered action of the whole, or a portion of the nervous system, and are worthy of attention mainly, in view of the consequences to which vitality may be subected by an uninterrupted progress of the unnatural action. All these morbid manifestations of the brain and senses have ever been viewed with aston ་ ishment and awe by the ignorant; and previous to modern improvement in physiological science, were subjects of wonder and wild speculation with the learned. Knaves and impostors have not failed to render them available sources from whence to derive facts, not only in support of their pretended demoniacal arts and sciences, but such disordered subjects have too frequently been exhibited to the credulous as objects miraculously endowed, with the view to confirm their faith in religious creeds, the intrinsic demerits of which required extraneous support of this character. But it is to be hoped, that the era of popular traffic in such delusions is receding before the extending light of a more reasoning age; and that the period is not distant, when these affections of the nervous system shall be divested of their marvels, by having their rank assigned, as tangible realities, in the catalogue of bodily derangements requiring, no less than other diseases, the attentive care of the physician. SECTION V. Ecstasy, Trance, &c.* Of a character similar to that of dreams, are modern visions, ecstacy, and trance. The mutual phenomena presented in these, admit of a like explanation; with the exception, however, that the former is characterized by fanciful combinations of ideas during a state of sleep; the latter by extravagant exaltations of mental action, accompanied by like illusions, exhibited during a state of wakefulness. In these conditions, such mental abstraction from sense are effected by means of the preponder * Ecstacy and trance have, by some nosologists, been eonsidered as distinct species of a genus of the general class embracing all nervous diseases. This is doubtless most expedient in a description having reference to medical treatment; but as it is designed to notice them only as milder and more temporary affections, occurring in similarly constituted subjects, dependent upon an analagous state of the nervous system, and originating from the same, or like causes, it is deemed preferable and proper to notice them as varying forms of the same affections, presenting in their different aspects, but degrees or varieties of symptoms, exhibited in variously constituted subjects, and modified mainly by the diverse application of the causes from whence they originate. Many of the common phenomena of ecstacy are manifested in several nervous affections; ance of spiritual conceptions, that the realities of both sense and reason cease to control combinations of thought. The active imagination in this condition being uncontroled, personifies beings, or depicts scenes, as realities which had previously been made the subject of intense meditation, or the objects of ardent hopes or fears. In extasy and trances, as in some forms of dreams, the corporeal organs sympathetically partaking of the excited mental state, either exhibit gesticulations, or other action corresponding in extravagance with the passing hallucinations; or being deprived of their ordinary mental stimulus, yield to entire torpor and quiescence. Although imposture and deception may occasionally assume the condition represented in visions, ecstacy, and trance, yet there can be no doubt that their manifestations are mainly involuntary actions induced by existing im trance in some others, but their forms here considered, essentially differ from these; and as they possess the relationship alluded to, and as they are rarely the objects of medical treatment, it is deemed far preferable to discuss their character in the mode here adopted. Somnambulism and catalepsy, although dependent upon similar constitutional peculiarities, but originating from causes of a different nature, have been noticed with the view only to exhibit them as possessing a character of relationship with the above named affections, |