The Practice of Surgery in Connection with the Treatment of Lunacy.

Pursuing the consideration of those mechanical and surgical difficulties which beset the path of the practitioner in his treatment of insanity, I will again more particularly allude to those which result from the voracity, or unnatural appetites of classes of the insane, impelling them to swallow substances absolutely indigestible, or large portions of unmasticated food; and from paralysis of the nerves supplying the muscles of deglutition. A portion of this subject belongs equally to the sane world, as the remains of corroded knives, and other metallic substances in the museums of Guy's and other hospitals, and the works of authors on morbid appetite, sufficiently testify.