heart is strong and quick, the pulse frequent and full, the functions conducted with energy and effect. The mind is ardent and aspiring, impressions are easily effaced and made, promises are more willingly entered into than performed, the taste is capricious, the fancy wayward. The judgment is not as sound as the imagination is active, the memory is more ready than retentive, perception is quick, love ardent but easily cooled, anger excited by trifles and by trifles laid. Sensibility is acute, irritability is great, fortune is enjoyed in her sweetest smiles, and adversity is suffered in her cruellest pangs. The solids are lax and the fluids copious. Suscepti bility to disease is very considerable, and the diseases most readily induced are those of excitement. Inflammations of every degree, fevers of every type, hæmorrhagies of every organ. This form of constitution is general in youth and prevalent in manhood; but it rarely sweetens the vale of life, for experience is its deadliest enemy. Our knowledge of the past, while it makes the present less faithless, renders the future less promising. As the drama of human life hastens to a close, the scenery becomes less and less fascinating, things appear more as nature made them, the flame of hope sinks in the socket of disappointment, and ere the curtain falls the spell is broken. The sanguine temperament has been called by Prichard constitutio Germanica from its prevalency among the Germans, in the French and Irish it is very common, and some have maintained that it is less frequent in females than in males.

As the melancholic is the temperament of age, the sanguine is that of youth; but between these two constitutional extremes there are many points of difference, and many varieties of temperament have been formed to account for them. We have the choleric and the phlegmatic, the acrid and the bilious, the moist and the nervous. It must, however, be admitted that any intermediate varieties which exist are rather compounds than simples. The chief distinction between the sanguine and the dry is that the muscular system is more developed in the former; and the moist differs from the cold in having a greater stock of fluids. If the solids be denser and the nervous system more irritable than in the sanguine, then we have the choleric; and if we find less irritability and greater strength the phlegmatic habit is produced. We deem it, therefore, unnecessary to go into any description of what are mere combinations. The simples being once well known such compounds as may result from them it will not be difficult to understand, and although the phlegmatic and the choleric have been hitherto regarded primitive, they appear to us to be secondary formations. The phlegmatic agrees with the sanguine in having abundance of fluids, and with the melancholic in having little irritability; it is, therefore, the product of a certain mixture of properties pertaining to these two elementary habits; while the choleric to the irritability of the sanguine adds the pertinacity of the melancholic temperament, thus shewing that in the sanguine and melancholic exist all those general properties out of which subordinate peculiarities originate. The sanguine would be choleric if he were less fickle, the choleric would be sanguine if he were less pertinacious; the sanguine would be phlegmatic were he more passive, the phlegmatic would be sanguine were he more irritable. So far, then, as the formation of these four forms of temperament is concerned, two series of principles variously proportioned are

sufficient; and as these proportions can be varied ad infinitum, the variety of secondary habits may be infinite.

As to the nervous temperament, it is merely the product of excess and luxury. Such a constitutional character is seldom found in rural and simple life. As the appetites are gratified desire increases, demands are made upon the expenditure of the system which it is impossible to grant without sustaining injury, and the nervous system being the most sensible to disorder is the first to betray manifestations of disease. While we oppose, therefore, the opinion of Darwin, who maintains that "by temperament (in general) should be meant a permanent predisposition to certain classes of disease," it is evident that, in as far as the nervous habit is concerned, its definition may be couched in still stronger terms, and it may be said that by the ner vous temperament should be meant the first stage of constitutional decline. Certain it is that this habit is becoming every day more common. The list of diseases which Dr. Trotter enumerates as pertaining to it is truly formidable, and were some of the hints attended to which that very able writer has made upon the effects of dissipated life, nervous head-aches and hysterics would be much less fashionable and much less frequent. At present it is deemed vulgar to look healthy; the pale and sickly are alone interesting; and if our youth wish to be considered handsome or genteel, the bloom of health must be got rid of, head-ache must be frequent, and the turning of a leaf, or the tread of an insect must never fail to be followed by an evening's set of fits, or a day's indisposition! However profitable this fashion may be to one class of the community, and however enviable it may be held to have our lady's health hourly enquired after by fifteen or twenty visitors, it is devoutly to be wished that the present rage after fine figures and genteel faces, after morning head-aches and evening vapours, may not increase much further; otherwise every family will require its resident physician, or stand in hourly danger of being thrown into confusion through violent attacks and sudden illnesses. The wealthy and the noble, it is true, being alone competent to struggle with such a tax upon their constitution, are tolerably sure, as long as it is paid, that neither the pauper nor the tradesman can in this instance annoy them by treading on their heels; but if sickness be necessary to the acquirement of distinction, we may hazard the charge of vulgarity by thinking so, but we do think that the distinction is too dearly purchased. There is at least one consideration which should be of some weight with those who advocate present fashionable life. It has been asserted by a very competent judge, that fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, and although the privilege of making our constitutions as degenerate and contemptible as we choose may be insisted on, there is neither law, right, nor reason for inflicting upon posterity miseries, the danger and extent of which are to us equally unknown. Family likenesses are frequent and familiar, slight hereditary deformities are not uncommon. While Dr. Gregory was visiting in a distant part of Scotland, he met several people remarkable for a peculiar form of the nose, resembling that of the Grand Chancellor of Scotland in the reign of Charles the First; and upon making enquiry they were found to be the descendants of that nobleman. The family of the Le Comptes were hereditarily subject to blindness. Before the age of sixteen their sight was tolerable, but after that period it gradually declined. Now, if temperament be something No. XXV. FASCIC. I.

C

like a tendency to disease, and if disease be hereditary, unless a parent have been denied by nature a parent's feelings, he surely cannot be told with indifference, that while he is by rioting and wantonness destroying his own system, he is also infusing into the stamina of his future progeny debility and disease. Some families are victims of the same maladies from generation to generation. One is preyed on by consumption and another by scrofula; one is subject to madness and another to epilepsy; gout is the scourge of this, hydrocephalus of that family. Frequently, no doubt, the circulation of such currency is beyond our control. The stream may be contaminated ere it reach us, or the hereditary affection may be such as defies exertion. In such cases our only duty is submission, for nothing is expected where nothing can be done; but when we have at our own disposal whether our children shall be useful or a burthen to society, whether they shall be a curse or a comfort to themselves, reason, religion, affection, interest and duty are a sample of the motives which should influence our choice.

In the sanguine diseases of strength and activity are prevalent; in the melancholy visceral and vascular obstructions; and in the nervous affections of excitement and debility. These propensities depend upon two sets of causes. The metaphysical composition of the melancholic is more remarkable for steadiness than activity, for perseverance in pursuing an object than for love of enterprize. So is it with his corporeal mechanism. His nerve is less sensible than firm, and his fibre more disposed to continue than commence disease. When an exciting cause is applied to such a system, it may either be entirely resisted, or only partially succeed, and an attack, which would have committed destructive ravages in a more susceptible habit, will by it be comparatively disregarded. When the excitement, however, has had effect, and morbid action has commenced, the same principle by which it was at first resisted now favours its continuance. Slight derangements are less common than extensive disorganizations. Symptoms are slow in progress and moderate in degree, the general system is little affected by local disease, and visceral action of most destructive type may be working its silent death of parts the most important to life, and in consequence of the few sympathies by which it is surrounded little may be suffered, and still less feared. Hence are daily met with in the bodies of such individuals enlargements, hardening, and abscesses of the liver-hypertrophy of the spleen-adhesions of the intestines-thickening of the mucous membrane of the stomach-obstructions of the mesenteric glands-consolidation of the lungs-ossification of the valves of the heart and coats of the blood-vessels. In all these and other such affections length of action compensates for energy, chronicity for acuteness, and extent of ultimate mischief for the reluctance to activity which at first was manifested.

In the sanguine all is nearly opposite. The mind is sensible and active, impressions are easily made and dissipated, pain is exquisitely felt, and pleasure enthusiastically enjoyed. In this constitution susceptibility is the leading character both of mind and body. The sensibility of the body renders prostitution of the mind more easy through temptation, and the sensibility of the mind renders disease of the body more easy through excitement. The strongest tendency to physical and moral evil is thus combined in the same system, and although there are counteracting causes which may weaken the ten

dency of the former, that of the latter is too frequently successful, having weaker guards against greater dangers. Temptations trifling in the abstract are here formidable, and causes of disease, which in the preceding temperament would have been successfully repelled, do here more certainly take effect. The slightest mental agitation inflames the blood and shakes the system, and the slightest aberration of the body from a state of health irritates the mind. As the diseases of the melancholy are chronic, those of the sanguine are acute. Inflammation once begun rapidly proceeds, fever once kindled burns with an exterminating flame, and hæmorrhage once established requires but a few minutes to destroy life. Where so much susceptibility to disease is combined with such activity, the hazard is extreme if symptoms be neglected; but nature seldom exposes to danger so imminent without furnishing means for either its prevention, or removal. The same sensibility, which assists the exciting cause to the establishment of disease and hurries that disease forward to a crisis, gives a prominency to its symptoms by which they cannot fail to be observed, and thus affords early evidence as well of its extent as of its existence. Action being acute concealment is impossible; the features being fully pronounced, the face cannot be mistaken; and although the date of danger is nearly that of the attack, the warning is given when the first blow is struck.

In the nervous temperament tendency to disorder increases with a corresponding decrease in the powers of resistance. Mind and body, as it were, are more intimately intermixed than usual, and action and re-action are, therefore, greater and more frequent. The natural susceptibility of the sanguine is in this habit morbidly accumulated, and the tone and strength of the melancholic are almost altogether lost. The imagination is wild, the judgment easily deranged, the passions strong and easily excited. There is nothing so extravagant which may not be fancied, nor so improbable which may not be believed. The Impostor Mesmer was well initiated into the mechanism of this temperament, and nervous people are very generally selected by such jugglers, as the safest whereon to practice their deceit. The fibre is lax and unresisting, the nerve is unstrung, the heart is irritable, the circulation weak but rapid. Dr. Trotter discovers in deranged sensations and inverted sympathies of the great sympathetic the source of all nervous disorders. Whether the causes be moral or physical, they are supposed to exert their influence on this portion of the nervous system,—

"Whose office directs the most important operations in the animal economy, and binds together one great circle of feeling, actions and motions both distant and opposite. Hence a concourse of symptoms of the most extraordinary kind, that invert the usual functions of so many viscera, suspend their power, or give to them new movements, by which means a train of false perceptions occupies the mind, and ideas the most monstrous and incongruous supplant for a while all rational thought. In this reciprocal action between body and mind, in whatever part of the system disease commences it is quickly communicated to all the others.—Thus, in a dyspeptic condition of stomach, such as attends nervous complaints, it is not the muscular fibre alone of that organ which is to be considered as diseased, but every gland and pore, exhalent and follicle which separates either gastric juice or mucus, and, consequently, all the fluids are poured forth in a vitiated state. The appetite will then be irregular, sometimes suppressed, sometimes voracious; the acidity will increase so as to become painful, the food will remain indigested, and uneasiness and inflation of stomach will succeed. Other viscera will by consent of nerves be also deranged in their

respective offices. The pancreas, its juice and duct are affected. The liver will excrete the bile in quantity and quality both different from its healthy state, and the ducts will be irregular in conveying it forward. The peristaltic motion of the intestines will be inverted and inconstant, and constipation or diarrhea be the consequence. Even the kidneys, more remotely connected, will discover indisposition by the urine being voided turbid or pale, in small or profuse quantity, sometimes with pain in the loins, ureters, bladder, testes, or mammæ.” The duration of nervous diseases is as different as their character. They may appear in paroxysms of a few hours length, or continue uninterruptedly for years; and wherever the nervous temperament exists in perfection, there will not only be a strong penchant to derangement, but considerable difficulty in removing such as has already formed. An opinion, which to us seems rather novel, is maintained by M. Thomas on the ratio between the physical strength of a part and its susceptibility.

"The stronger and more predominant an organ is," says he, "the more sensible it is to natural excitements; the more is it inclined to exercise. And as it is not easy for an organ, strongly disposed to action, to avoid excess in obeying its own inclination, it often becomes diseased. Thus, men, in whom the brain predominates, frequently fall victims to the excessive exercise of their passions and faculties, and become affected with melancholy and les folies variees ; the thoracic are obnoxious to carditis, pneumonia, and acute rheumatism; and the abdominal to gastric and hepatic disorders. A weak organ, although little prone, on the contrary, to action, although little sensible to excitants, is not less frequently obliged to use immoderate exercise, because a thousand varied circumstances often accumulate upon it natural stimuli. It is thus that when the thoracic viscera are small their action is easily increased, and they become exposed to thoracic congestion and various forms of phthisis. On the same principle idiots and they, whose brains have little energy, become epileptic and apoplectic by a fright, a dream, or an immoderate exercise of these organs, faculties, and passions." 214.

It seems, then, that it matters little whether an organ be strong or weak, its susceptibility remains the same. If strong, it will be weak through excess; if weak, it will be overpowered by exercise. So much time has been already spent in criticising this mensuration-system that a very little more can be devoted to it; but we cannot avoid observing that our author is here treading upon dangerous ground. If there be any one truth in pathology more evident than another, it is this-that susceptibility increases as tonicity diminishes, and it is a fundamental dogma in dynamics, that the power of resistance is weakened by weakening the power of the resisting body. Now, if a temperament be the product of the excess of one organ or set of organs above another, of course the predominating organ or organs, which constitute this temperament, should form the strongest of the whole fabric, and should, therefore, be the last to allow the inroads of disease. If a muscle be much worked it becomes large and strong, but if neglected small and weak; if the lungs be moderately but constantly exerted they increase in size and force, and so, we believe, is it with every other organ and texture of the body. But to bear out M. Thomas's theory, the strongest must be the most, and the weakest organ the least susceptible, and not only so, but the strength of an organ's tendency to disease should be in an inverse ratio to its physical strength. To preserve consistency, then, first principles must be overturned, and the rules of science must be sacrificed to the whims of theory. If an organ be very susceptible to disease because it is weak, it is quite impossible that it also can be very sus