Returning sanity is another point of doubtful distinction; nor do we see that it is possible to lay down any rules, except the absence of the pathognomonics of the disease. Yet we have often witnessed the return of persons from the appropriate receptacles, with a wildness of the eyes, a quickness of utterance, rapid unsteady motions, which showed corporeal disease, though the mind was calm. Such persons should not be pronounced secure; and, though confinement may not be necessary, the most pointed caution should be continued.

Dissembled insanity might more properly belong to another head, morbi simulali; but we may more easily speak of it in this place. An experienced practitioner will soon detect the absurdities which assume the form of insanity; for, though incoherence's, wildness, and obscenity, may be imitated, the hurried look, the rapid pulse, the dry tongue, and the sleepless nights, cannot be assumed. Above all, the cowardice, the apprehension of punishment, the influence of threats, are seldom to be discovered. A French author details the symptoms of madness, for the purpose of this distinction, so elegantly as to induce us to copy the picture.

"Thus to neglect what most deserves attention, and to value what is least deserving of it; to rejoice or weep without an adequate reason; to despise what is terrible, and to fear what is ridiculous; to admire trifles, and to reject what is excellent; to love the objects of hate, and to hate those of love; to hope without an object, and to despair while in security; to be pleased with things which excite no agreeable sensations in others, and to fly from what every one would anxiously seek; to be timid with those who demand no deference, and bold to those whom they ought to respect; such are the infallible marks of a wandering mind."

In either of these cases, an excellent criterion maybe found by inducing the supposed lunatic or the pretended convalescent to write. If engaged in a correspondence particularly respecting his own affairs, he will soon betray insanity, should it remain. In the servile war, the slaves who opposed the spears of their former masters yielded, when they saw them armed with whips; so the most furious maniac will often submit on presenting him a pair of hand cuffs, which will only irritate the counterfeit.

Morbi simllati. Dissembled diseases sometimes claim attention in a court of justice, but perhaps more frequently in an infirmary. The latter is, as usual, the school. Insanity, of which we have already treated, is the most frequent, and, next to it, are the different nervous and spasmodic complaints. We must not, however, always accuse the patient. The timid girl will have the catchings and the gesticulations of chorea more frequent on the access of a stranger; and the disease, to the attendants apparently cured, will appear to return. On the contrary, these and some other diseases will occasionally seem to lessen on the approach of the physician. The wanderings of delirium will cease, and the wildness of the eye be converted to an expression of meaning. These are circumstances which must be-kept in view, as tending to explain the opposite course. The diseases counterfeited are catalepsy (commonly styled ecstacy) and convulsions. Some patients possess even a command of the features, and others, it is said, of the pulse; but, in general, an unchanged expression of countenance and an unaltered pulse will explain the deceit. Boerhaave is reported to have cured real fits by threatening, ea qua. pollebat gravitate, to burn the next patient seized, with a hot iron. To heat a poker with the same gravity has cured pretended ones, especially if they felt the heat approaching. Plunging the suspected patient in cold water is still more effectual, and it will not injure if the disease be real. Dashing cold water in the face, unsuspectedly, will succeed; but, as the bathing requires preparation, it will not be necessary, in case of deception, to proceed to extremities.

Pains in the limbs, which sometimes happen without fever, is a fertile source of deception, and blisters will often have little effect in detecting the fallacy. We have not, however, found patients of sufficient constancy to endure a few smart electrical shocks; and the galvanic, if the skin is punctured, will be probably still more effectual. In cases where fever must necessarily attend, the detection is easy. No one can counterfeit the febrile symptoms enumerated under Febris; though by topical stimulants inflammation and fever may be brought on.

In the time of Galen, tumours were produced in the knee by the semen thapsi; and Zacchaeus, in his numerous quartos, has copied many talcs of this kind. We have seen abecsses produced by inserting splinters under the skin, continued ulcers by stimulating dressings, and even haemoptoe occasionally returning by artificially exciting cough. Yet while we awaken suspicion, we would not silence the feelings of humanity. We have seen cases where no deception could exist, where no motive could be found for fallacy, that appeared at the first sight fictitious. We have known the urine retained six weeks without any remarkable vicarious discharge: we have known a nail of no inconsiderable size, such an one as fastens the hoops of small barrels, retained in the throat till it formed an abscess: yet in each case no deception could exist.

The mendicant with his ulcers counterfeits both deafness and dumbness; but these deceptions are best detected by the beadle, or by a little address."how long have you been dumb, my good friend? "says a passenger, with the most insidious humanity. -"Three weeks, sir," replied the incautious deceiver.

Impotentia. This disease rarely requires the interposition of a physician in a court of justice. The complainants, who are commonly females, can relate their grievances in terms sufficiently guarded and clear. The causes and cure we have already considered, and wc see but one circumstance in which it requires our attention in this place. The extirpation of the testicles is an operation obviously designed to prevent generation. But in the human species, as we have seen, they are originally seated in the abdomen, and fall through the rings of the muscles into the scrotum. If they do not appear in the scrotum it is no evidence of their absence, and it has been said that their influence on the genital powers are more conspicuous while they remain in their original seat. It is at least certain that this influence is not less, so fallacious is the logical maxim, when applied to medicine, De non apparenti-bus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. If they did not exist, or were not evolved, the beard, the graver tone of voice, and every mark of virility would be absent. If they had been extirpated, the cicatrix would remain. It has been said that one, three, and even four, testes have been discovered. One has certainly been lest by accident, has decayed, or been extirpated, without injuring the generative power: sometimes the other has enlarged, but more often continued of the same size, with little apparent diminution of the powers. The stories of three and four testes we cannot disprove; but there is much reason to suppose that many of these have arisen from an enlargement of one or each epidydimis. They at least furnish no grounds for a legal process.