tion of insanity, it is necessary to inquire whether the ordinary I constitution of females, their intellectual and moral dispositions, and, lastly, the peculiar phenomena they experience, create in them a greater predisposition to this disease than exists in males. The answer to this question cannot be doubtful, although it is not, and cannot be, supported by statistical calculations. I shall, in the first place, examine and compare the predisposing causes, and those peculiar to the sex in

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... s and in females, and pass in review the influence of temperament, of the intellectual and moral dispositions, and of puberty. I shall then study the causes which act only upon women, as the influence of menstruation, pregnancy, the puerperal state, lactation, and the critical age. This examination alone will enable us to draw any conclusion with reference to sexual influence over the production of insanity. Influence of temperament, off the moral and intellectual dispositions, and of puberty.-The more delicate and finely-strung constitution of females renders them more subject than men to all kinds of neuroses, as daily experience attests. Women, moreover, are more highly susceptible, (impressionable,) feel more acutely, and possess less power than men to resist painful emotions, and to conquer their imagination. Causes the most trifling often affect them in the most violent degree, and throw, for the time, their minds into I perturbation. In this respect it cannot be denied that insanity may be more easily produced in them from the operation of moral I causes. The temperament which has been called melancholic or atra-