The enumeration of the moral causes which occasion hallucinations has sufficiently proved that exclusive ideas, strong passions, and great preoccupations, may lead to this result. To record other cases would be a needless repetition. We will proceed to examine the physical causes which have most frequently given rise to hallucinations. They may be classed in five sections. To the first belong hallucinations derived from the influence of particular physiques, such as inheritance, the sexes, climate, etc.; to the second, those occasioned by mechanical causes, by alcoholic drinks, and narcotic substances; to the third, those in connection with insanity; to the fourth, those which combine with nervous diseases (alienation excepted); and lastly, to the fifth, hallucinations produced by acute or chronic inflammatory or other diseases. Several of these points having been already treated on in this work, we content ourselves with a general description.

* Vie de Tasse, par Manso. La Theorie des Songes, par L'Abbe" Richard, 1766, p. 234. Hoole's Life of Tasso, p. 48. The Friend, by S. T. Coleridge, vol. xi. p. 236. Boil's Fieberlehre, Halle, 1802.

First Section. - In this catalogue, we shall have to seek for the influence exercised on the production of hallucinations by inheritance, the sexes, age, temperament, professions, physiological causes, seasons, climate, and situation; but of these causes there are some which afford us none, and others but slight information. We must not lose sight of the fact that hallucination is frequently but a complication, a symptom; in which case its isolated study presents extreme difficulties. We cannot establish, by statistics, the power of inheritance on hallucinations, because they almost always exist with insanity. Inheritance but slightly affected the epidemic hallucinations and illusions of the Middle Ages. M. Soudan has not described the action of this cause on the epidemic ecstasy which he had observed in Sweden.

In order to understand this influence fully, it should be studied in individuals who have but simple hallucinations, and in those monomaniac hallucinists who have a very decided form of insanity. It is undeniable that they often occur in the sons of those who have experienced this double condition, but as, in this case, they are usually but a symptom of a principal disease, this knowledge is but of slight importance.

We have had the opportunity of noticing two cases of hereditary hallucination, and it may easily be understood that this nervous disease may like others be transmitted.

The father of Jerome Carden was subject to see apparitions; his son equally so.*

* De la Subtilite, traduction de le Blanc, 1441, liv. xix. p. 462, et seq.

Catherine de Medicis had an hallucination respecting Pierre de l'Estoile; and her son, Charles IX., had one on the very night of Saint Bartholomew.

We have not noticed anything special in hallucinations, as regards sexes; out of 136 individuals admitted into our establishment, 63 were males, 73 females.

It is not so, when we examine the sexes relatively to the nature of hallucinations. On glancing through history, we shall recognize at every page the predominance of erotic ideas in women.

Incubes, those infernal beings, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, whose amorous assaults have been so vividly described by Bodin, Boquet, and Delroi, are everywhere established. Among the Jews, they were named Asmodeus, Haza, and Lilith; with the Greeks, syrens, nymphs, orcades, dryads, nereids, satyrs, and sylvans. Since the discovery of America, there was a much-dreaded incubus, the god Cocota. Bodin relates that in the space of one year at Rome 82 persons were possessed by the incubes.*

Coelius Aurelianus relates, after Silimachus, the partisan of the doctrines of Hippocrates, that the incubes prevailed in so contagious a form at Borne, that many persons died of it.† M. Ma-caire has shown that this hallucination was not uncommon in the provinces and religious districts, and that the neglect of modern authors on this point arose from the fact of their own observations being chiefly made in large cities.

Hallucinations induced by erotic ideas still exist, but they are connected with the style of education, with ideas and situation. Their greater rarity amongst men is owing to the greater facilities they possess for gratifying their passions.

Age. - Hallucinations being most frequently produced by moral causes, and being often combined with alienation, they appear in accordance with the mode in which that affection is developed; and also exhibit themselves at that period of life which it affects. There are numerous exceptions to this rule, since science points out many examples of hallucinations occurring in very young children.

* Bodin, Angevin, 1 vol. large 8vo. Paris, 1587, liv. ii. chap. 7. † Coelius Aurelianus, chron. morb. liv. i. chap. iii., de incubone, Lyon, 1667.