forgotten those whose relations to him have kept them within the sphere of his daily observation and made them the objects of his thoughts. An old servant or tenant whose countenance may not have been seen for weeks, or months, is not to be compared in this respect, with the near relative who is frequently in his company, and always regarded with feelings of interest and affection. However certain it may be that he has lost all sense of the ordinary proprieties of life, it needs farther evidence to prove that the persons and interests, which have been always nearest to his heart and connected with the great purposes of his life, have utterly faded from his mind. The evidence of those, therefore, who are qualified both by their habits of intimacy with the person whose mental capacity is in question, and by their intelligence and education, to appreciate the changes his mind may have undergone, is far more to be relied on than that of people of a different description, who make up their opinion hastily from a few casual and perhaps trivial circumstances. The great point to be determined is, not whether he was apt to forget the names of people in whom he felt no particular interest, nor the dates of events which concerned him little, but whether in conversation about his affairs, his friends and relatives, he evinced sufficient knowledge of both, to be able to dispose of the former with a sound and untrammeled judgment. It is a fact that many of those old men who appear so stupid, and who astonish the stranger by the singularities of their conduct, need only to have their attention fairly fixed on their property, their business, or their family, to understand them perfectly well, and to display their sagacity in the remarks they make. In the case of Kindleside v. Harrison,1 which we shall briefly notice in illustration of these remarks, the reader may obtain a better idea than can otherwise be conveyed, of the kind of evidence generally produced in cases of senile dementia, and derive instruction and high intellectual gratification from the clearness and ability with which it is sifted and stamped with its proper value, in the judgment of the court, Sir John Nicholl.

§ 211. The points contested in this case were four codicils to the will of an old gentleman, on the ground that at the time of making them, he was incapable, by reason of mental decay, of understanding their nature and effect. It was testified by some of the servants of his brother, who lived at a little distance from him, and by those of the lady with whom he, the deceased, resided, that during the two or three years within which the codicils were made, he frequently did not know people with whom he had previously been well acquainted, without being told who they were; that he would go about the house and garden looking around, and appearing not to know what he was about. On one occasion, he not only did not recognise a certain person, but could not be made to understand who he was, and it was testified by a very different kind of witness, that the deceased asked him how old was witness's father (though he had been dead sixteen years and had been his partner in business), and soon after, he

inquired of the witness after his health, as if he were addressing another person. Several other similar lapses of memory and various appearances of childishness in his conduct, were also revealed by the evidence, amply sufficient, no doubt, to induce superficial observers to believe that he was mentally incapacitated from disposing of property. It appeared however that he was in the habit of giving, in favor of his brother's butler, drafts accurately signed and filled up ; that at christmas-time, he gave the servants christmas boxes and the usual amount of money, and entered the sums in his account-book; that he received a farmer's bills for corn and paid them with drafts on his banker which he wrote himself, going through the whole business correctly, and that he docketed the bills and receipts on the back with the name of the person to whom paid, and the amount of the bill, making corresponding entries also in his private account-book; that he signed twenty drafts at least one morning for payment of his brother's debts, without instruction or assistance, subscribing his own name as executor of his brother: that he would detect errors in the casting up of other people's accounts; that he discharged his physician's bills correctly; and in short that he managed his affairs, and that prudently and correctly, to the last. It was also testified that it was his practice to read aloud to the family the psalms and lessons of the day; that he was fond of a little fun and played at whist remarkably well. That a person might have done all this and yet been unsound in mind, is certainly not impossible; but it was far beyond the power of a taind so broken up by old age and the

invasion of disease as to be incapable of altering testamentary dispositions previously made. This consideration, and the fact that the circumstances of the case furnished abundant reasons for the alteration, induced the court to decide in favor of the capacity of the testator.

CHAPTER XI.

FEBRILE DELIRIUM.

§ 212. Cerebral affection of some kind or other, we have considered as essential to the existence of insanity—as constituting in fact the whole disease; but there is another form of mental derangement of very common occurrence; in which the cerebral affection is only an accidental symptom of acute disease in the brain or some other organ. The functions of the brain are disturbed in each, but they differ so widely in their causes, progress, and termination, that the propriety of distinguishing them from each other for medico-legal, as well as therapeutical purposes, is universally recognised. Few diseases terminate in death without presenting at some period or other of their progress, but more particularly towards their close, more or less disturbance of the mental faculties; organic diseases of the brain, especially acute intlammation of its membranes and its periphery, are frequently accompanied with delirium; and it is sometimes a symptom of acute disease in other organs, in consequence of the cerebral irritation which they sympathetically produce. It is seldom entirely absent in fevers of any severity, and is readily determined by inflammations of the mucous and serous membranes, particularly of the alimentary canal. In inflammation of the lungs,