196  APPENDIX  OF  CASES.

that  “  lie  does  not  remember  to  have  performed  the  dissection ­
  of  one  lunatic  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  without ­
  finding  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  phenomena
observed  during  life,”  If  we  glance  back  to  the  year  1831,
when  Dr.  Andrew  Combe  published  his  work  on  mental
derangement,  we  find  this  principle  laid  down:—“  Every
derangement  of  function  is  accompanied  by  disorder  either
in  the  structure  or  mode  of  action  of  the  organ  which  performs ­
  it,  and  without  the  removal  or  cure  of  which  the
function  cannot  be  restored  to  its  healthy  state.”  The  same
author  observes:—“  Sight  is  never  impaired  or  hearing  destroyed ­
  unless  the  organs  which  execute  these  functions
are  diseased,  and  in  like  manner  thought  and  feeling  are
never  deranged  unless  the  cerebral  organs  by  which  they
are  manifested  have  undergone  some  morbid  change.”  The
latest  expression  of  authoritative  opinion  upon  this  subject
is  by  Dr.  Maudesly,  in  his  Gulstonian  lectures,  “on  the
relations  between  body  and  mind,”  delivered  this  year  at
the  Royal  College  of  Physicians.  That  gentleman  thus
speaks:—-“I  have  given  a  survey  of  the  physiology  of
our  mental  functions,  showing  how  indissolubly  they
are  bound  up  with  the  bodily  functions,  and  how  barren
must  of  necessity  bo  a  study  of  mind  apart  from  body.  I
now  propose  to  show  that  the  phenomena  of  mental
derangement  bear  out  fully  this  view  of  its  nature,  that  we
have  not  to  deal  with  disease  of  a  metaphysical  entity
which  the  method  of  inductive  inquiry  cannot  reach,  or
the  resources  of  medical  art  touch,  but  with  disease  of
the  nervous  system  disclosing  itself  by  physical  and
mental  symptoms.”  It  seems  then  that  the  question  in  this
case  is  concluded  both  by  reasoning  and  medical  testimony,
and  it  appears  to  me  that  insanity  is  just  as  much  bodily
disease  as  paralysis  and  apoplexy,  which  are  notoriously
affections  of  the  brain,  and  therefore  admitted  to  be  bodily
disease.  It  has  been  suggested,  I  see,  in  the  Lancet  that  in
cases  of  insanity  the  right  of  relief  out  of  the  sick  fund
ought,  on  account  of  the  usually  chronic  character  of  the
malady,  to  be  made  subject  to  a  special  limit  in  point  of
time.  *  That  matter  I  leave  to  others  to  whom  its  decision
properly  belongs.  All  that  remains  for  me  to  do  is  to  give
effect  to  the  conclusion  to  which,  after  much  consideration,
I  have  come,  and  to  direct  that  a  verdict  be  entered  for  the
plaintiff  for  the  sum  claimed”  («).

(a)  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Mr.  W.  U.  Whitney,  surgeon,
for  kindly  revising  the  report  of  this  decision,  which  originallyappeared
  in  the  Liverpool  Mercury  for  12th  July,  1870.