and terminate in insanity or dypso-mania. M. Flourens first pointed out
the fact that certain morbific agents, when introduced into the current
of the circulation, tend to act _primarily_ and _specially_ on one
nervous centre in preference to that of another, by virtue of some
special elective affinity between such morbific agents and certain
ganglia. Thus, in the tottering gait of the tipsy man, we see the
influence of alcohol upon the functions of the _cerebellum_ in the
impairment of its power of co-ordinating the muscles.

"Certain writers on diseases of the mind make especial allusion to that
form of insanity termed DYPSOMANIA, in which a person has an
unquenchable thirst for alcoholic drinks--a tendency as decidedly
maniacal as that of _homicidal mania_; or the uncontrollable desire to
burn, termed _pyromania_; or to steal, called _kleptomania_."


HOMICIDAL MANIA.

"The different tendencies of homicidal mania in different individuals
are often only nursed into action when the current of the blood has been
poisoned with alcohol. I had a case of a person who, whenever his brain
was so excited, told me that he experienced a most uncontrollable desire
to kill or injure some one; so much so, that he could at times hardly
restrain himself from the action, and was obliged to refrain from all
stimulants, lest, in an unlucky moment, he might commit himself.
Townley, who murdered the young lady of his affections, for which he was
sentenced to be imprisoned in a lunatic asylum for life, _poisoned his
brain with brandy_ and soda-water before he committed the rash act. The
brandy stimulated into action certain portions of the brain, which
acquired such a power as to subjugate his will, and hurry him to the