conduct, manner, or ideas, which not only merely add to their notoriety,
but often make them either the laughing-stocks of their fellow-men or
objects of fear or disgust to all who are brought into contact with
them.

IDIOSYNCRASY.--By idiosyncrasy we understand a peculiarity of
constitution by which an individual is affected by external agents in a
manner different from mankind in general. Thus, some persons cannot eat
strawberries without a kind of urticaria appearing over the body; others
are similarly affected by eating the striped bass; others, again, faint
at the odor of certain flowers, or at the sight of blood; and some are
attacked with cholera-morbus after eating shellfish--as crabs, lobsters,
clams, or mussels. Many other instances might be advanced, some of
them of a very curious character. These several conditions are called
idiosyncrasies.

Begin,[1] who defines idiosyncrasy as the predominance of an organ, a
viscus, or a system of organs, has hardly, I think, fairly grasped the
subject, though his definition has influenced many French writers on
the question. It is something more than this--something inherent in the
organization of the individual, of which we only see the manifestation
when the proper cause is set in action. We cannot attempt to explain why
one person should be severely mercurialized by one grain of blue mass,
and another take daily ten times that quantity for a week without the
least sign of the peculiar action of mercury being produced. We only
know that such is the fact; and were we to search for the reason, with
all the appliances which modern science could bring to our aid, we
should be entirely unsuccessful. According to Begin's idea, we should
expect to see some remarkable development of the absorbent system in the
one case, with slight development in the other; but, even were such the