Excerpt from the Preface: "This treatise had its origin in the following circumstance: -A few months ago, the author had the honour of reading before the Westminster Medical Society, a paper on "Suicide Medically considered," which giving rise to an animated discussion, and evolving an expression of the opinions of several eminent professional men, excited at the time much interest. It was the author's object in his paper to establish a fact, he believes, of primary importance, -that the disposition to commit self-destruction is, to a great extent, amenable to those principles which regulate our treatment of ordinary disease; and that, to a degree more than is generally supposed, it originates in derangement of the brain and abdominal viscera