MEDICAL OPINION 
IN THE 
PARISH WILL CASE. 
BY 
LUTHER V. BELL, M.D., LL.D., 
PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, 
(late physician and superintendent of the m'lean asylum for the insane, 
E T 0 . 
NEAR BOSTON.) 
((Bdraxteb from printer bociimenfs in the $hi 
NEW YORK 
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 377 & 379 BROADWAY. 
1857. OPINION 
OF 
ilr. skll in fbc Will (tot MEDICAL OPINION 
IN THE 
PARISH WILL CASE. 
BY 
LUTHER V. LL.D., 
PP. ESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, 
ETC. 
(late physician and superintendent of the m'lean asylum for the insane, 
NEAR BOSTON.) 
((BriiHtieif front Hjc prinfeb bocununts in iljr Cast.) 
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 377 & 379 BROADWAY. 
NEW YORK: 
1857. OPINION OF DOCTOR BELL. 
I have entered upon the consideration of the ques- 
tions involved in this case, under the best lights af- 
forded me in a professional experience of nearly thirty 
years ; two-thirds or more of which time has been 
passed in the care and treatment of those mentally 
disordered, while at the head of the oldest and one of 
the largest of the curative institutions for the insane 
in the country. During this period I have been very 
frequently called upon to appear before the courts of 
justice, and afford the aids of my experience in the so- 
lution of medico-j uridical questions touching the condi- 
tion of the mind. 
It has been my privilege to approach this inquiry 
unembarrassed by any acquaintance with the parties 
in interest, and indeed, up to a period when my judg- 
ment wTas settled and recorded, without knowing on 
which side my professional assistance had been solicited. 
There are two prominent divisions under which the 
consideration of Mr. Parish's competency to make a 
valid testamentary instrument naturally presents itself 
to my mind. 
1. The true value of the facts testified to by, and 
the opinions thereupon, of the various witnesses in fa- 
vor of and adverse to such competency, and the possi- 
bility of explaining and harmonizing differences in 
opinions so conflicting. 6 
2. The exact significance of the prominent and 
essentially undisputed fact, that Mr. Parish ever after 
his apoplectic fit, July 19, 1849, if capable of communi- 
cating the operations of his mind to others at all, did 
so in the difficult and indirect method of assenting to, 
or negativing by certain imperfect gestures, and nearly 
inarticulate sounds, such propositions as were made 
to him orally, and in one or perhaps more than one in- 
stance by something written and placed before him, as 
if for his perusal and reply. 
In endeavoring to weigh the testimony for and 
against his competency, it will not be my province 
to expose or even measure defects of credibility where 
they might be believed to exist, or to strike a balance 
between conflicting witnesses. The province of the 
medical expert is rather to select and consider such 
facts and opinions as are within a strictly professional 
purview. In doing this, it is not necessary to make a 
complete analysis of all the testimony which may have 
such a bearing. It is obvious, that if enough is selected 
to illustrate the principles on which statements appa- 
rently contradictory are reconciled, and the precise 
opinions of witnesses, based upon their observations, 
shown to be well or ill-founded, a just conclusion may 
be approximated. If, for example, it can be shown in 
one unequivocal instance, that Mr Parish's supposed 
signs for yes and no did not necessarily imply a corre- 
sponding assent of his understanding, it would not be 
of essential importance to apply the same test to every 
other instance presented in the testimony, in which the 
same signs are described and like inferences drawn from 
them. 
My intention has been to select the most promi- 
nent and pertinent facts, on both sides, and to reason 
from them, leaving out the entire testimony of many 
of the witnesses, and considerable portions of that of 7 
others, as affording nothing which could aid the medical 
witness in coming to an opinion. 
That numerically, those who regard Mr. Parish as 
of sound mind, are in the majority, is a fact which I 
have considered of little moment, in view of the cir- 
cumstance that the minority is too large, and com- 
prises too many having the best opportunities of form- 
ing opinions, to permit the suspicion that the last class 
were influenced by partiality or caprice. 
Beyond a certain point only, can the evidence either 
of one or the other side of a question like this, be 
cumulative. A hundred witnesses who thought they 
could understand Mr. Parish, and a hundred who de- 
clare that they could not understand him at all, would 
leave the uncertainty to be solved just as great and no 
greater than if there were only ten on each side. And 
any explanation which might harmonize the opinions 
expressed by the twenty satisfactorily, would apply 
with equal force to those of the hundreds. 
In weighing the character and significancy of the 
testimony in favor of or adverse to the; mental sound- 
ness of this testator, it is natural to look in the first 
instance, for that of the medical experts. The physicians 
who were in attendance on Mr. Parish during his pro- 
tracted illness, were Drs. Delafield, Wilkes, Dubois, 
Johnston, Wheaton and Markoe; of this list Dr. John- 
ston does not profess to have seen him under circum- 
stances such as would warrant the expression of an 
opinion as to his mental competency. And Dr. Whea- 
ton, a venerable army surgeon, appears to have been 
rather the friend than the medical adviser of Mr. Par- 
ish. 
It is not possible to avoid noticing the fact, that no 
one of his medical attendants appears to have been pe- 
culiarly conversant with mental diseases. Indeed, I 
think no one of them would have been received under 8 
the practice of the Massachusetts courts, as qualified to 
express opinions at all in such case as to a testator's 
mental condition, for no one of them brought himself 
in any degree within the category of a medical expert 
in mental affections. 
In view, also, of the fact that three, perhaps all 
four of these gentlemen, have a right to claim an emi- 
nent position in another professional department, i. e. 
the specialty of ophthalmic diseases, a branch most dis- 
tinctively specific and widely separated from the theory 
and practice of dealing with the mental affections, it 
may not be deemed irrelevant or disrespectful to say, 
that a body of physcians, presumptively less fitted for 
the appreciation of such a case, can scarcely be ima- 
gined. A consultation of insane hospital physicians 
in a delicate and complicated disease of the eye, would 
hardly be more incongruous. 
Considering also, that it was well understood by the 
parties in interest on one side, and, indeed, entered 
into the acts and suggestions of the counsel who drew 
the codicils, that the capacity of the testator would 
eventually come before the courts for adjudication, it 
is quite extraordinary, as well as, in my opinion, much 
to be regretted, that at no period in these many years, 
was any expert in mental diseases engaged in the eluci- 
dation of Mr. Parish's actual condition. This omission 
can hardly be explained on the supposition that it was 
overlooked, or that its importance was undervalued. 
Experts in one department of medical science are less 
likely than others to despise the peculiar skill and at- 
tainments of those trained in other specialties. One 
skilled in the nice discriminations of ophthalmic prac- 
tice, both in diagnosing and treating disease, and con- 
scious that his attainments have been the result of good 
natural gifts, persevering application and wide experi- 
ence, cannot be supposed capable of undervaluing the 9 
same order of powers, the same enthusiasm in pursuit, 
and a like enlarged experience, when applied to the 
still more delicate and complex affections of the human 
mind. 
A vulgar opinion exists to some extent, that any 
man of good common sense is as well qualified to judge 
of a patient's or a prisoner's insanity, as the most ex- 
perienced hospital director. Gentlemen of professional 
distinction, like those who had the professional manage- 
ment of Mr. Parish, never could have participated in an 
idea so absurd and untenable. The absence, then, of the 
highest attainable order of experts in mental diseases, 
in a case so long recognized as being destined for future 
litigation, and where the interests at stake were of such 
vast magnitude, ought to be explained by those in 
whose hands the patient was, or else presumptions ad- 
verse to them as fearing the fullest investigation are 
justifiable. 
How do these medical witnesses bring their skill 
to bear in elucidating the exact character of this tes- 
tator's capacity? It is to be recollected, that however 
plain and usual the case seems now to one, under the 
evidence as contained in the printed volumes, these 
gentlemen believed him to have suffered little or no men- 
tal affection, and if such was the fact, his peculiarity of 
non-communication, except in one strange, unique 
method, must have made his case one of the most ex- 
traordinary and anomalous kind-one of which they 
now scarcely pretend to give any explanation, or sug- 
gest any pathology. If unable to fathom a mystery 
so strange as this must have seemed to them, under 
their theory that Mr. Parish was a rational man, were 
they not bound, in view of its moment, to apply such 
tests as would have relieved the court from doubt as 
to its true character ? 
As oculists, we find them measuring with commend- 10 
able delicacy and careful accuracy each circumstance 
bearing upon the degree and quality of his eyesight. 
But I have been able to discover no method or system, 
in their endeavors to reach his grade of mental vision, 
no application of tests to render obvious what was 
evidently so obscure that a body of intelligent wit- 
nesses with equal, and as regards many of them, the 
best opportunities for forming a judgment, arrived at 
opinions absolutely antipodal from the same kind of 
facts ! What methods of procedure, and what appli- 
cation of tests might have presented themselves to those 
specially skilled and experienced in the treatment of 
mental diseases and infirmities may be considered here- 
after. 
It is enough at this stage of our inquiry to say, 
that in the absence of all proof or intimation that these 
gentlemen employed any other means of discrimina- 
tion than those which were common to all who were in 
a position to take notice of Mr. Parish, we must pass 
their testimony into the mass of common proof, inferi- 
or to some, as for example, that of his immediate nurses 
and personal attendants always around him, and superior 
in character only to that of mere acquaintances and 
friends calling to see him occasionally on purposes of 
business or courtesy. 
Let us commence our search for the facts bearing 
on the medical question in the case, with an analysis of 
the testimony of his immediate attendants. We have 
a succession of these from the day or two after Mr. 
Parish's illness commenced until withinless than a year 
prior to his death. The first of these was James C. 
Fisher, who commenced his services July 22d, 1849-• 
the apoplectic seizure having been on the 19th,-and 
remained until the 27th of the next December. Of 
course, if correct in his dates, he was there during the 
execution of the first codicil, August 29, 1849, and its 
re-execution on the 17th of the following December. 11 
He gives many and minute details of his manner of 
waiting upon his charge, most of which indicate that 
Mr. Parish was in a state of great physical feebleness, but 
throwing little light upon his mental condition. Fisher 
says, that within three or four weeks, Mr. Parish began 
to speak words, and make signs. When, for example, 
he wished for the chamber utensil, (II., f. 826,) he put 
his hand out of the bed; when he desired the bed-pan, 
he turned down the " spread and that he made other 
signs when he wanted more or less light, that Mrs. 
Parish should be called, <fcc. Fisher, indeed, represents 
that these signals were agreed upon conventionally 
between his patient and himself, within three days of 
his going to serve him. 
All these signs, of themselves, give the impression 
-even if there were nothing behind to lead to the 
belief that Fisher was in error in supposing that they 
understood each other-that these were nothing beyond 
the natural instinctive indications of physical wants 
in an exceedingly reduced sufferer, which an experienced 
nurse would necessarily catch, and subsequently avail 
himself of. No experienced observer of human dilapi- 
dation and extreme weakness of body and mind, can 
fail to have noticed some signs like these by which 
some want or some distress is indicated. They are in- 
voluntary signals by which the young infant, the aged 
imbecile, or the demented invalid, show forth some 
painful sensation, and in association with it an instinc- 
tive desire for relief. 
A parallel indication of indefinite distress and un- 
recognized demand for relief is shown in the testimony 
of another witness, (A,/. 1745), where Mr. Parish's 
pressing call to evacuate the bowels is manifested by 
his eating with great rapidity, " at the same time ap- 
plying his hands to the front of his pantaloons, as if he 
wished to open them." 12 
Further notice will be taken of this last symptom 
as one characteristic of extreme dementia. 
So legible are the class of movements described by 
Fisher, to the experienced and sagacious nurse, that 
they would not be overlooked even where all intelli- 
gence and all use of the senses are annihilated by injury 
of the brain from fracture of the skull, with compression 
or concussion. Some slight movement of the finder or 
of the lips, makes a language which is readily interpreted, 
and its meaning acted upon. 
A curious English surgical case is reported, or rather 
repeated, in most modern works on surgery. A sailor 
who had received an injury to the brain in the Medi- 
terranean, remained in a state of entire coma or uncon- 
sciousness for more than a year, until he was transport- 
ed to one of the London hospitals, where the operation 
of trepanning at once restored him. During this long 
period of insensibility, deeper than that which exists in 
sleep, his rude companions recognized some little move- 
ments, having no significance in themselves, but found 
tentatively that they indicated his wants. The call for 
food was shown in one slight muscular movement-that 
for drink in another, that for an evacuation of the ex- 
cretions in still another. These hints were obeyed by 
the kindly nurses of the ocean, and their shipmate was 
thereby saved. 
I have myself been called within a few years to 
consult in a case where a lad, from a fall on his head, 
had lost all consciousness, all power of movement, and 
lay like a lifeless corpse for more than a month. Yet 
an anxious mother hanging over him, day after day, 
learned by her observation that a slight sucking move- 
ment in one corner of his mouth indicated a wish for 
drink; some other equally minute sign that he would 
make an evacuation, and so on. 
Of this character, as it seems to me, were these 13 
movements of Mr. Parish, if they really occurred. I 
judge so, because his possessing intelligence sufficient 
to arrange a conventional language within five days 
after a shock of apoplexy, the sad effects of which un- 
derwent but little amelioration for over six years, is 
not verified by any other circumstances or witness. 
The incidents are explained with so much facility, and 
in conformity with so common an experience, that it is 
not necessary to presume any want of truthfulness in 
Mr. Fisher, as connected with his discrepancies from 
the quasi parallel accounts of other witnesses. Yet 
after all, Fisher could not trust implicitly to his signs, 
prearranged with his patient. In vol. II. f. 826, he 
tells us, that when Mr. Parish wished to have his wife 
called, he pointed towards her door. In vol. II. f. 
831, Fisher states that when he saw this movement, 
he inquired of Mr. Parish if he wished to see Mrs. 
Parish. 
The general tenor of Mr. Fisher's account of his pa- 
tient, and his mode of management with him from day 
to day, carefully studied, carries with it the impression, 
that his nurse regarded and talked to and administered 
to his charge much as he would have done to a young 
child, or an aged imbecile, or a demented person. He 
was taken to see the horses, the chickens, the spy-glass; 
the newspapers were handed to him, he was led out to 
see the moon, and the like; but it is difficult to trace, 
from what Mr. Parish did, any signs that he ever had 
an intelligent idea of what was said or done. 
Perhaps Mr. Fisher's wish to see his patient doing 
well, led him to misinterpret encouraging symptoms. 
At one time he sees Mr. Parish engaged in so intelli- 
gent a conversation with Mr. Kernochan, and is so sat- 
isfied that Mr. K. seemed so well " to understand Mr. 
Parish," that he did not feel it to be necessary for him 
to pay much attention. His services to aid in inter- 14 
preting were superfluous. Mr. Kernochan says lie had 
no reason to believe that Mr. Parish understood him 
at all! Compare vol. II. f. 935 with vol. I. f. 863. 
So the statement as to Mr. Parish standing before 
the clocks, on the 1st and 15th days of the month, 
when they required winding, appears not so much like 
a fact indicating clearly a recognition of time, and the 
necessity of a given act, as some movement or sign of 
recollection of having seen the clocks wound up, which 
attracted the valet's attention, as such indications of 
unfolding intelligence in the infant gratify the nurse, 
and are rehearsed by her to pleased parents. 
Such evidences of memory, thought, calculation, do 
not quadrate with the general account of the patient's 
feebleness and torpidity. To assume intelligent recol- 
lection and appreciation in this case, and in all similar 
instances adduced by this witness, is to ignore the 
manifold indications of mental imbecility presented, 
over and above the overwhelming demonstration here- 
after to be considered, of his incapacity to communicate 
one idea independently-one wish, if at all, except by 
the more or less careful and laborious cooperation of 
another mind. To assume that a person could so far 
exhibit memory and judgment as to carry into effect 
the winding up of a fourteen-day clock at its exact pe- 
riods, and to be able to compare his watch with others', 
and note the difference, or to indicate on its dial the 
precise time which his nurse was to be allowed a leave 
of absence, and yet without any symptoms of undue 
physical irritability or entire paralysis of the excreting 
organs, he should be unable to govern his own evacu- 
ations, is contrary to all human experience. The testi- 
mony proves too much altogether! 
Mr. Fisher's hopefulness of disposition or desire to 
lend encouragement to anxious friends, (no unusual or 
blameworthy trait in professional nurses,) evidently 15 
prompts him to convert every indication capable of 
such interpretation into proof of Mr. Parish's intelli- 
gence. For example, in Vol. II. f. 907, he permits this 
proclivity to generate in his mind a belief that his pa- 
tient, at an alarming period of his disease, (if, as it 
seems to have been, about October, 1849,) not only 
evinced an intelligent appreciation of the necessity and 
character of the medicinal agent prescribed, but a per- 
severing determination despite the nurse's judgment, 
that it should be used to the utmost dose, and what is 
more extraordinary, employed in his determined pur- 
pose the vocables, heard, as it is believed, by no other 
person, and at no other time, not merely yes and no, 
(about which other witnesses disagree, whether they 
were ever articulately uttered or not,) but " why, yes" 
two monosyllables involving as much difficulty in 
enunciation as any others in the English language! 
The same sanguineness of temperament is manifest- 
ed in Mr. Fisher's account of his patient, (II. f. 969,) 
writing the word " wills " on the fly-leaf of a book, as 
contrasted with Dr. Delafield's less assured account of 
the same transaction, (I. f. 3045,) and by the pregnant 
correction of both in the actual chirography itself as 
produced before the Surrogate, (see Exhibit No. 269, 
Vol. III. p. 701.) No stronger proofs, how much his 
anxiety to believe in a favorable progress of his patient, 
biased his judgment can be imagined. 
The trustworthiness of Fisher's narration as to his 
patient's symptoms has been impeached. I have not 
failed to notice this fact, but regarding him as one of 
the sanguine, encouraging, hopeful members of his pro- 
fession, I am able to see little in his testimony which 
is inconsistent or incompatible with the theory that 
J/r. Parish's real condition was that of extreme demen- 
tia, where passiveness and a limited variety of sounds 
and movements could be interpreted honestly into almost 16 
any class of manifestations already in the mind of the 
observer. 
The next personal attendant in succession was 
Simmons, who came in December 1849, and left in 
December 1850, having served, as is stated, about 
eleven months, a period of time rather more than 
twice the length of Fisher's service. 
He describes the daily routine of his patient's life 
much as it is done in his predecessor's narration, while 
the conclusion he deduces from what he saw was di- 
rectly the opposite. The prominent acts of apparent 
intelligence in Mr. Parish, described by this witness, 
(Simmons,) seem to be his pointing at certain articles 
as if he wished to have them, as articles of food, his 
spectacles, brandy and water, Ac. It was his habit to 
be carried to the provision dealers, where he would 
point at the various articles of food, "sometimes one 
thing, sometimes another." These indications per se 
hardly rise higher in their value as evidences of mental 
capacity than would the attracted attention which 
idiots of the higher degree, in the classification of these 
unfortunates, manifest in things around them, prove 
that they understood and appreciated the idea of 
wants, and providing for them. 
Any presumption of active and disposing mind, 
predicated of such incidents as those occurring in the 
provision store, is entirely negatived by the subsequent 
explanations of this witness, showing that Mr. Parish 
failed to go one step beyond mere optical looking at 
the things around him, connected perhaps with some 
dim and evanescent association-idea of pleasurable 
gratification. Simmons, with apparently equal intel- 
ligence, and more than double opportunities of obser- 
vation, as compared with Fisher, the preceding nurse, 
disclaims any ability to explain the meaning of Mr. 
Parish's gestures, and much less indeed could other 17 
parties, anxious and concerned to fathom his meaning, 
if any there were, succeed in comprehending him. 
(I. f. 1700, 1724.) 
This witness also describes the attempts made at 
different times to induce Mr. Parish to write upon a 
black-board and a slate. " A copy " was set for him, 
and he was coaxed and persuaded (I. f. 1709, 1712) 
into making marks, but nothing like a word or even a 
letter seems to have been produced. It is important 
to note that in the progress of these trials nothing was 
manifested of antipathy or reluctance-nothing of ir- 
ritability or aversion to the attempt. He was unwil- 
ling to start, (I. f. 1709,) but under coaxing did try 
several times, during some three or four days, on the 
black-board, and two or three weeks on the slate. It 
is difficult to apply any other solution to his entire 
failure on these thoroughly tried experiments, than 
that Ibis mind was in a condition of too much imbecility 
or torpidity to grasp the idea of what was required. 
Simmons also testifies (I. f. 1718) to an indication 
of a deplorable grade of demency, when not explained 
by obvious physical conditions, the incapacity of his 
charge to control his evacuations. I regard the vari- 
ous accounts of this weakness as .so characteristic of 
dementia in Mr. Parish's case, that they are worthy of 
a more specific consideration, and shall receive it in a 
subsequent stage of this opinion. 
Thomas Wingrove, the next in succession of Mr. 
Parish's personal attendants, began his services about 
June or July, 1850, and remained until September of 
the next year, a term of about fourteen months. His 
general account of his charge's condition and move- 
ments coincides with that of the preceding witnesses. 
His account of Mr. Parish's searching his wife's ward- 
robe, divested of his clothing at one time, and making 
a like search at some five or six other times, at first 18 
sight would seem to indicate an extreme of dementia, 
but may not, under all the circumstances, be deemed 
inconsistent with the idea of a man incapable of ex- 
pressing his wishes, and under a high degree of irrita- 
tion at not making himself understood, pressing for- 
ward to do that for himself which he cannot make 
another do for him. But the fact that he did not re- 
cognize the pantaloons he had just worn, when they 
were thrown in among others, after he had evinced a 
strong desire to change, is in strong analogy with the 
various marks of imbecility already presented by these 
witnesses. 
The account by Wingrove of Mr. Parish's ways at 
the provision dealer's, (I. f. 1514,) while generally 
coinciding with that of the previous witness, would 
convey the idea of a still greater mental weakness, as 
he is here represented as not even pointing to the arti- 
cles around him. The dealer brought them to him, 
and then sent them to the house, and were kept or 
returned by Mrs. Parish, in the exercise of her judg- 
ment as to their being wanted or not. It is manifest 
that neither nurse nor dealer obtained any meaning in 
these transactions, from Mr. Parish's own sounds or 
signs. 
In I. f. 1521, we have very striking manifestations 
of his inability to express an idea, if there were any 
floating in his mind, as to the direction in which he 
would be driven. The scene here depicted will bring 
vivid recollections to any mind habituated to the ways 
of the demented. They very often exhibit a strong 
degree of indefinite will, an obstinate persistence in 
pursuit of an indistinct and unascertainable something, 
after the faculties of knowing and judging are essen- 
tially extinguished. The same remark will apply to 
the account (I. f. 1523) of what occurred when Mrs. 
Parish, the guiding spirit of his shattered and appa- 19 
rently almost annihilated intellect, was accidentally 
absent from him during a brief period. So also in the 
freaky and capricious endeavor to place himself in 
positions reached with the greatest difficulty, and at- 
tended with imminent hazard, as related in I. f. 1527, 
1531, we cannot but notice indications perfectly in 
harmony with the every-day actions by those exceed- 
ingly demented. They pursue, with an amazing 
tenacity of purpose, some vague, indefinite, indistinct 
impression, scarcely clear enough to come under the 
word delusion-an impression which, from its misti- 
ness, is incapable of being conveyed to another mind, 
even though the power of using language remains 
intact. 
Here again (I. f. 1556) we have further illustration 
of that sad condition of imbecility marked by an ina- 
bility to command, or even indicate the calls of nature 
in the evacuations of the bowels and bladder. It is 
true that, in certain conditions of paraplegiac palsy, 
where sensation is destroyed below some points in the 
spinal column, the broken nervous channels may not 
convey to the sense or mind of the sufferer a notice of 
such calls, even though the mind is comparatively but 
little affected. Again, in other conditions of morbid 
sensitiveness of the pelvic organs, the calls to evacuate 
the bowels and bladder may be so sudden, and so im- 
perious, as to permit the distressed invalid no option 
but to yield to the intensity of the demand on the spot, 
wherever he may be, and how much soever he may be 
pained. But this repeatedly named difficulty with 
Mr. Parish had no symptoms which would allow it to 
be classed under either of these heads of disease. His 
disorder, so far as the palsy was concerned, was merely 
hemiplegia, where one-half of the body or the other, 
(ordinarily, as in his case, the right half,) in a vertical 
ine, is paralyzed. In these cases the organs of animal 20 
life continue their functions, and such is the distribu- 
tion of nerves that an incapacity to command the foecal 
or urinary evacuations does not exist. 
Nor in the description of this or the other witnesses 
on this point, can we find traces of morbid sensitive- 
ness of these organs. The medical opinion that such 
might be the case, seems to have been arrived at by a 
very forced supposition, as e. g. the symptom must 
have some explanation ; such palsy or such morbid irri- 
tability would explain it, and it was therefore inferred 
to exist, without any positive evidence. The defect in 
the explanation is, that such marked sensitiveness or 
paralysis is not the sole occasion of this symptom. 
Neither of these grounds existing, the only adequate 
explanation left for the sad manifestation mentioned as 
being of no infrequent occurrence by his personal at- 
tendants, is, that his mind was extinguished to a lament- 
able degree. 
The next witness in the class of nurses is Mr. Wil- 
liam Brown, who was with Mr. Parish from October 
13, 1851, to the middle of November, 1854, about 
three years and a month. The whole tone of this wit- 
ness's testimony is evidently affected from his regard- 
ing his patient as much less seriously diseased than any 
of the preceding nurses, or the medical gentlemen 
deemed him to be, both as regards his physical symp- 
toms and his mental condition. A clew to his disposi- 
tion to look at every thing in a hopeful light, is indi- 
cated in the general summing up of his opinion, viz., 
that he " considered Mr. Parish's mind strong and 
healthy, perfectly understanding all I ever said to 
him." He states that Mr. Parish's right leg was 
" slightly affected" " he just made a drag of his toe in 
walking," (II. f. 1297,) while all the other witnesses 
saw an absolute paralysis of that side, and an entire 
loss of the use of that limb. And in order to show 21 
(II. f. 1302) how little aid Mr. Parish required in 
walking, he says he did not help the lame foot, " as I 
could not do that, and have his arm linked in mine," 
giving the impression that all the aid his patient re- 
quired was slightly to support himself on the attend- 
ant's arm. Compare the degree of weakness thus 
intimated with Dr. Delafield's account of Mrs. Parish's 
remarkable knack in lifting up his foot with hers so as 
to enable him to walk. (I. f. 2079.) 
Brown's general account of Mr. Parish's visit to the 
provision dealers, agrees substantially in most of its 
features with that of the other nurses, except that in a 
most important particular he manifests the same san- 
guine temperament before alluded to. He gives the idea 
that Mr. Parish not only was equal to the duty of 
examining and selecting the various articles needed, but 
that he evinced skill in chaffering and bargain driving. 
(II. f. 1411.) The facts he states, even with his own col- 
oring of them, do not warrant his conclusion, and that 
in giving them this interpretation he went beyond the 
true significance of any signs or sounds which he wit- 
nessed on the part of his patient is rendered certain, 
not only from the testimony of the other attendants on 
the same duty, and the provision dealers themselves, 
but by the sending home of provisions of which Mrs. 
Parish thought fit to return the whole, or a portion. 
This fact demonstrates that neither she nor they re- 
garded Mr. Parish as equal to purchasing such supplies. 
In looking at and endeavoring to weigh the value 
of many little facts and incidents testified to by Mr. 
Wm. Brown, we cannot but see this bent of a sanguine 
mind, anxious to comprehend his patient's movements, 
and self-satisfied on altogether too little evidence. 
That he was successful in his hopes is clear because to 
no other witness amongst those having the same degree 
of experience with him, did the incidents convey any 22 
such degree of intelligence and meaning, as they did to 
him. Nor would it seem that any improvement in Mr. 
Parish's condition at the somewhat advanced period of 
his disease, at which Brown's services commenced, ex- 
plains his (Brown's) more favorable views. Indeed, 
on all the grounds of probability, the continued succes- 
sion of severe fits of epilepsy would necessarily involve 
the idea of diminished mental power, if he were not in 
that state of dementia from the first, which would not 
permit the measurement of descending degrees in men- 
tal capacity. 
Mr. William Brown evidently considers himself a 
complete " master of signs." Mr. Parish nods his head 
(II. f. 1314) "as if yes,"-points to certain places in 
the newspaper for witness "to read to him," going 
through more movements in selecting the paragraphs 
than would have been needed to have perused them 
himself, if capable of reading; lays aside the journal for 
Mrs. Parish-points out some interesting articles to 
her,-she would read, and "if it was. a death, he would 
make inquiry," &c. Indeed, this witness habitually 
alludes to Mr. Parish as if he had not even an infirmity 
of speech; he makes " inquiries," (II. f. 1317, bis 1333,) 
examines a book of accounts called a " tickler," to 
ascertain questions of indebtedness; notes the last en- 
tries in his book of bank deposits; and the witness 
undertakes to state that the degree of Mr. Parish's 
attention to his books of account varied with "the 
amount of business to be done at certain dates," and " in 
the morning would layout a certain amount of business 
to be done the next day," &c. In Vol. II. f. 1357, we 
find Mr. Parish making a sound " in a solemn manner," 
w'hen he wished to see a clergyman; in Vol. II. f. 
1358 he gives " all attention," presumptively an intel- 
ligent attention, in Brown's opinion, to Mr. Kernochan, 
whose utter inability to understand him, or to know 23 
if he were comprehended, has before been spoken of. In 
Vol. II. f. 1369, we find Mr. Parish examining the plans 
of a tomb, and (II. f. 1371) gives orders for his panta- 
loons to be made "roomy and nice." This witness 
also finds in Mr. Parish an ability to utter words to a 
far greater extent than any of the nurses who were in 
attendance upon him at an earlier period of his illness 
-or indeed than any other person at any time. He not 
only says yes and no, but, " Why, yes, with a smile," 
and " Oh, dear ! " or, " Oh, thear I" " Oh ! Got, Got, 
Got! " Even Mr. Parish's habitual expression of coun- 
tenance, which is proven by many witnesses to have 
been uniformly sad and melancholy, Mr. Brown found 
always (II. f. 1296) "pleasing and healthy." 
It is not necessary to follow this witness through 
the entire detail of his experiences; the most promi- 
nent and significant points have been presented, without 
making, on the presumption of untruth, any deductions 
from the coideur de rose tint with which he invests his 
charge's mental condition; and it is easy to see that his 
mode of interpretation brought him to a result such as 
no other witness reached. 
If this witness's inferences from his facts are war- 
rantable, then is his opinion as to the perfect soundness 
and understanding of Mr. Parish legitimate. But the 
theory of absolute and perfect integrity of mind such 
as Mr. William Brown and several other leading friends 
adopt, augments and thickens the darkness and mystery 
which envelope our second division of inquiry : why 
did not Mr. Parish communicate in some better way 
than that suggested as his ? A man with some mental 
change, some monomaniac caprices, could readily be 
thought to refuse to do any single thing; while the 
question might be an open one, as to the soundness of 
his other intellectual operations. But to assume com- 
plete integrity of mind with so striking a peculiarity to 24 
be harmonized is no easy task. Hereafter this topic 
will be brought under consideration. It is enough now 
to say that the judgment of Mr. Brown, and the other 
witnesses of his way of thinking, prove altogether too 
much to allow Mr. Parish's great peculiarity-his anom- 
alous symptom to be brought within the class of minor 
mental defects, or eccentricities or sensibilities which 
might exist, and still leave him, in a condition of capa- 
city, adequate to making an unimpeachable testament. 
The next witness of the class of personal servants 
is James Clarke, whose term of personal service was 
about a year and four months, beginning in December, 
1854, and terminating the latter part of April, 1855. 
His duties were essentially the same as those of the 
previous attendants, and we have the same sad narra- 
tive of his patient's extreme feebleness of body, and 
the same uncertainties as to his ability and degree of 
comprehension. We note in this witness's examination 
the same indications that Mr. Parish was treated essen- 
tially as a child or an imbecile, by those around him. 
The coachman is sent for; he appears, and announces that 
"the horses are well;" "that there is plenty of feed," 
&c. (I. f. 1728.) When carried to his store, this wit- 
ness calls down Mr. Parish's friends, as if he had sent for 
them, without any pretence of such direction from him. 
In Vol. I. f. 1732, we see that when Mr. Parish was taken 
to the door to see the moon and stars, his wife entirely 
fails in her efforts to attract his attention, and at various 
places in Clarke's testimony, we see that Mr. Parish 
pushed his wife rudely away, and this without the 
slightest indication of a cause. (I. f. 1730, 1733, 1736.) 
This act is entirely inexplicable. Extreme irritability 
might account for even a high-minded gentleman-■ 
constitutionally as is proved of perfectly controllable 
temper-so far losing himself as to be guilty of such an 
act, but under this supposition the occasion of offence 25 
would be apparent even if the act was most unreasona- 
ble. Dicl not these rude pushes originate in the same 
general class of angry, obstinate, misty impressions, too 
dreamy and indefinite to be worthy the designation of 
delusions, which were controlling him when he insisted 
that his carriage should be directed in some unintelligi- 
ble way, or when, during his wife's absence at the da- 
guerreotypist's, he evinced such a frightful degree of 
anger as to invoke a curious mob about him ? 
In vol. I. fol. 1738 of this witness's evidence, we have 
rather an amusing comment on Mr. William Brown's 
account of his patient's care in having the newspaper 
read, selecting paragraphs for his wife, &c. James 
Clarke speaks of Mr. Parish's habit being that of sleep- 
ing or looking out of the ivindow when the newspaper 
was being read! 
In vol. I. fol. 1744, '45 we again have this witness's 
testimony to what is probably an unquestionable fact, 
that Mr. Parish had lost the power of appreciating the 
calls of nature. The cumulative testimony touching 
this symptom, is very important, as demonstrating that 
it was no single or rare occurrence, and that it did not 
occur merely at some rare periods of local disease. 
Each witness, except perhaps Brown, of his immediate 
nurses, as well as some of his medical attendants refer 
to this infirmity. Yet it does not seem to have been 
uniform, but only occasional. Now if it was due to 
morbid irritability it would have been existent at one 
or more periods when the local disease was most urgent. 
If from palsy of the sphincters, it would have been 
uniform and constant. But it happened occasionally, 
now and then, just as it does in the demented patients 
of every insane hospital. If the attendant is vigilant; 
if he watches the little accidental signs, such as his pa- 
tient's wandering around as if in search of some place to 
relieve himself, perhaps passing again and again before 26 
the door of the very water-closet where he has eased 
himself for years, without recognizing it as the place 
wanted, or such as his patient's fumbling at the open- 
ing of his pantaloons-or some petty movement still 
less connected with the want-and recognizes them in 
time, such an accident as his patient, while continuing 
in usual health, defiling himself, may not occur once in 
half a year. But if he is inexperienced in such duties, 
if he is deficient in tact or in vigilance under the occur- 
rence of accidental looseness in his patient's bowels, 
this disagreeable accident might occur at any time, and 
at any number of times in each year. 
The recognition of this accident as occasional-not 
very frequent, nor yet very rare, is the best proof that 
its causation was in the mind, and did not depend on 
local weakness or palsy. This is, I am aware, a painful 
and disagreeable topic to be introduced so often or at 
all. Yet it seems to me so important in its meanings, 
so pathognomonic in deciding the probable condition of 
Mr. Parish's mind, that I should not have expressed 
my full views, had any sentiments of false delicacy per- 
mitted me to slide over it. 
In I. f. 1752, '9, of this witness's examination we 
note an approximation towards a test, where a question 
is twice put, and a negative and an affirmative response 
successively given. It is on many accounts to be re- 
gretted that this test could not have been more fully 
put into practice by investigators of a more competent 
and cultivated class. The result in this instance is one 
among the many corroborative indications that Mr. 
Parish's ability to show assent and negation was ex- 
tremely questionable. 
This witness (I. f. 1752) enters his final judgment 
that Mr. Parish's " mind was not right." He does not 
attempt a confident precision of statement like the pre- 
ceding witness, William Brown. His facts manifestly 27 
warrant this extent of assertion. He has nothing of 
the positiveness of many witnesses, whose facts are less 
pregnant, but few persons can read his plain matter of 
fact statements without the feeling that they are ob- 
taining the exact facts. I may say, that they are facts 
which tell to the experienced observer the story of a 
most common every-day type of dementia. 
I do not perceive that the succession of nurses is 
continued in the testimony after Clarke, i. e. from 
April, 1855, to the death of Mr. Parish, March 5, 
1856. From the accounts given by his medical at- 
tendants of his progress to the close of his life, it seems 
probable that there were few marked incidents to vary 
the sad spectacle thus far traced. 
We now come to the testimony, of the medical gen- 
tlemen in attendance upon Mr. Parish. It is to be re- 
garded as next in importance, as they had the next best 
opportunities of observation. The first in order of 
time is his brother-in-law, Dr. Delafield. His acquaint- 
ance with his patient's case commencing long anterior 
to the fatal stroke of apoplexy, and continuing until 
his eyes were closed in death, naturally prolongs the 
narrative of events through many pages, from which I 
shall endeavor to abstract the facts, which bear upon 
the question of mental condition. 
The first facts throwing light upon this are at vol. I. 
fol.. 2085, '6, where Dr. Delafield explains what he re- 
garded as Mr. Parish's sounds of affirmation and nega- 
tion, his inquiring looks and his gestures, but none of 
these as described would necessarily carry the same 
convictions to a disinterested, unconcerned observer. 
The same explanation of the possibility and probability 
that all these signs and sounds were misapprehended- 
that there was actually no meaning behind them which 
has been before suggested, may be thought to detract 
much from their value as proofs. They were brought 28 
to nothing like a test; the apparent accordance some- 
times noticed between his signs and acts, might be 
nothing but accidental coincidences. 
At vol. I. fol. 2087, Dr. Delafield assumes 'without 
one particle of evidence, and contrary to the whole 
tenor of the facts, as I interpret them, that the impor- 
tant symptom of Mr. Parish's losing the command of 
his evacuations, was of doubtful causation. He says it 
might be from morbid irritability of the bladder and 
rectum, or from a loss of power, that is palsy, of their 
sphincters. The doctor does not allude to a cause, 
(that before in this paper named,) which must sponta- 
neously suggest itself to every one experienced in men- 
tal affections as much more in consonance with the 
whole series of symptoms in this case, viz. :-that this 
inability to regulate the fcecal and urinary evacuations 
resulted from no local disorder, either of excessive or 
annihilated sensibility, but because the mind to which 
such calls are addressed was wanting. 
Dr. Delafield belittles the gravity of this symptom 
when, at Vol. I. f. 2087, he says that " the sphincter 
muscles and the bladder and rectum were to a certain 
degree affected, so as to impair somewhat their func- 
tions," and this is represented to have been a symptom 
of the latter part of Mr. Parish's life. Now, Simmons, 
whose term of service was in 1849 and 1850, testifies 
to its existence in his time. Wingrove, the nurse .for 
the next fourteen months, testifies to its continuance 
in his, (I. f. 1556,) and James Clarke, in a service of 
sixteen months from December, 1854, gives a still 
more minute account of the same still continuing af- 
fliction, (I. f. 1744, '5.) and his account closes almost a 
year before the death. If this symptom really were 
more prominent during the latter part of life, as Dr. 
Delafield says, it doubtless is explained on the ground 
of still more extreme demency than had before ex- 
isted. 29 
To conclude my views touching this symptom, which 
I regard, occurring as it did, as quite pathognomonic or 
characteristic of mental, rather than physical imbecility; 
I would suggest that this might have occurred from 
morbid irritability of the mucous surfaces, or from ab- 
solute paralysis, and yet have left the mental faculties 
unimpaired. But if it did not occur from either of 
these conditions, there is only one other recognizable 
cause, that is, dementia, a state, and this symptom of it 
always present in abundant examples in any consider- 
able hospital for the insane. And such dementia is a 
natural, legitimate, usual sequel of apoplexy, or of se- 
vere epilepsy, or, as in Mr. Parish's case, of both these 
diseases in continued action. 
Morbid irritability of the rectum is a condition re- 
sulting from inflammation of its lining membrane, as 
in dysentery. The bowel is sensitive to the touch of 
any foreign matter or of its own secretions, or even 
without any thing in contact it may evince tenesmus 
from mere congestion and inflammation. It is not a 
disease that could possibly be overlooked or mistaken 
by the medical attendant, or even by the common 
nurse. If it even be chronic in its nature, it is but 
too palpable, and so pressing as to give its victim 
scarcely any relief from painful and disagreeable symp- 
toms. Palsy of the sphincter is still less capable of 
being misunderstood; it is one of the saddest of those 
calamities which make life insupportable. It is a 
chronic and permanent affection ; ordinarily the patient 
can have no intermissions of governing and then losing 
the control of his evacuations; the power which nature, 
by one of the most wonderful of her many curious 
contrivances, employs to close these passages when at 
rest, so that they are released by the will in order to 
exercise their functions, is destroyed. The extremity 
of the bowel or bladder becomes nothing but an open 30 
tube, which permits any thing which is present to es- 
cape as from an inanimate opening. 
Fortunately we are not often called upon to ascer- 
tain the existence of, or advise in such cases as present 
the forms of disease last described. They are not the 
concomitants of ordinary apoplectic paralysis, which is 
of so common occurrence from lesions within the brain. 
The cause in most cases is from injury to the spine; most 
frequently from a short doubling or curvature from 
falling from a hay-cart, or some similar circumstance. 
The bladder itself, in such cases, may be so affected as 
to confine its excretion while the sphincter ani is abso- 
lutely released and open. Death usually supervenes 
in a few weeks under this form of injury. No prac- 
titioner can have failed to meet it. 
Now, from the accounts of all the witnesses, neither 
the one nor the other of these two specified conditions 
can be presumed to have existed in the case of Air. 
Parish. 
It is evident that his trouble in evacuating uncon- 
o 
sciously was one which came on occasionally, at irregu- 
lar intervals, during several years. The solution of its 
so presenting itself was, doubtless, in the circumstance 
that a vigilant observation of Mr. Parish's indications 
was sometimes neglected, or some error of diet or effect 
of atmospheric changes deranged for a time the functions 
of the bowels and the character of their contents as re- 
gards acridity or fluidity, so that the usual impression 
conveyed to the sensorium was lost. Let us assume 
for a moment that Mr. Parish was in the full possession 
of his faculties, as so many of these witnesses believe. 
Is it to be supposed that with a morbid irritability of 
the rectum, or a palsy of its sphincter, as Dr. Delafield 
hints, a gentleman would have ventured to do what 
Mr. Parish did every day of his life for some years, 
ride out, receive company, dine with the invited guests, 
and the like ? 31 
The existence of this inability in demented patients, 
their habitual manifestation of some indefinite idea of 
a call, such as Mr. Parish evinced, leave no doubt that 
this was the true explanation of his infirmity. No 
other circumstances suggested by the evidence will 
explain it, nor can I conceive of any. Dementia does 
account for it fully, naturally, and, as I believe, cer- 
tainly. 
Dr. Delafield continues throughout his testimony, 
frequently to express an opinion that Mr. Parish was 
capable of understanding what was said and done, but 
it is not easy to perceive how his facts warrant this 
belief. His natural and honorable anxiety to see his 
friend and patient relieved, prompts him habitually 
to look upon every encouraging indication with too 
sanguine and flattering impressions. In Vol. I. f. 3045, 
he says that certain characters made on the fly-leaf of 
a book with a pencil, " and always the same," were 
construed to mean the word, " Wills," and that Mrs. Pa- 
rish, on seeing them, suddenly exclaimed, " Wills! " with 
a good deal of emotion, as if it were an unexpected, 
startling thing to her. Now, any person looking at 
the marks, so construed, in the original or in the printed 
cannot but appreciate the tendency to mis- 
color testimony, (without any implication as to entire 
good faith,) which obtains, where the feelings are 
deeply involved. 
Dr. Delafield's account (I. f. 3051) of the faithful 
and persevering efforts made to induce Mr. Parish to 
use his left hand in writing, demonstrates their failure, 
beyond a supposed writing of his name. The fact of 
success, even to this moderate degree, might be of mo- 
ment in entirely removing his case from an alleged 
class of patients, where the connection between thought 
and its symbol of expression, that is, language, is dislo- 
cated and lost. More will be said hereafter of this 32 
pretended symptom of tlie phrenologists. It may be 
further observed, that Dr. Delafield (I. f. 3265) alludes 
to the attempts which were made to secure this object 
of writing, by placing a copy of his name before him, 
" to see whether, by fixing his eye steadily upon the 
name, properly written, it would aid him. It did no 
good." This experiment approached somewhat to the 
idea of a test, although not so close as could be desired. 
IFZty did it do no good? His eye was equal to the 
task; so also was his left hand. What else induced 
its failure, unless it was the absence of the powers of 
mind which connect and guide such movements as were 
sought for ? 
I have already referred to the fatal absence of any 
system of tests calculated to determine the precise 
grade of Mi*. Parish's capacity. Dr. Delafield testified 
(I. f. 3294) to his being aware, that Mr. Parish's 
" soundness of mind and mental capacity were likely to 
become a question of judicial inquiry, and that his sis- 
ter was interested therein," and in Vol. I. f. 3304, he 
expressly declares, that he " never made any examina- 
tion of Mr. Parish, or applied any test to him, for the 
exclusive purpose of ascertaining the state of his mind." 
When cross-examined, the doctor avers that he con- 
siders each visit to his patient to have been " a test." 
The expert in mental diseases might suggest that a 
professional visit to a patient, with a delicate, protract- 
ed, ophthalmic disease, without any critical examina- 
tion, by a physician skilled in mental phenomena, 
would equally well deserve to be called " a test." 
Many exceptions might be taken without hyper- 
criticism to Dr. Delafield's views of cerebral lesions, and 
their effect upon the mental state of the patient. There 
is, however, no necessity of entering into any such 
field. 
The value, too, of an examination, post-mortem, of a 33 
patient's brain, in establishing a presumptive integrity 
of the mind by an absence of all abnormal signs; or 
confirming the probability of mental aberration or im- 
becility, by the discovery of organic changes within 
the cranium, it is safe to say, would be quite differently 
estimated by those whose professional studies had been 
in a different specialty from his. But when we have 
as in this case an abundant supply of facts, carrying 
with them an indisputable interpretation, it is not ne- 
cessary to enter the fields of pathological controversy. 
The next medical witness is Dr. Dubois. His testi- 
mony may be dismissed with a very few remarks, as 
he declares, (II. f. 210,) that he never had a suspicion 
that he would be called upon as a witness in relation 
to Mr. Parish's condition of mind. He visited him ex- 
clusively for his disease of the eyes, and made neither 
examination of, gave reflection to, or tried any tests 
touching Mr. Parish's mental capacity. He waited upon 
him as an ophthalmic surgeon, and as such manifestly 
discharged his whole duty with sagacity and fidelity. 
He asked the necessary questions on the subject-matter 
of his specific duties, and when he received certain 
sounds and gestures, as indicating affirmation and nega- 
tion, he accepted them as such without doubt, hesita- 
tion, or inquiry. Mr. P. nodded his head with a sound 
for the one, and shook it with a sound for the other. 
Dr. Dubois, intent on reaching the exact character of 
the eye disease, would not naturally doubt that he 
was understood and properly responded to. Plow 
easily a reliance upon simple expressions of yes and no 
would mislead, even if the patient's own story were of 
vastly more moment than it usually is in ophthalmic 
diseases, where the oculist judges more by what he 
sees than what he hears, will be considered as we pass 
along. 
Dr. Dubois, (II. f. 191,) in giving his opinion, mod 34 
estly, and as if suspicious that it was not based on the 
carefully and thoroughly tested substratum of facts, 
which unquestionably would have underlaid any of his 
ophthalmic judgments, qualifies that opinion by saying 
that Mr. Parish's "mind appeared to be clear and 
sound"-an opinion natural enough in view of his 
methods of examination. 
Dr. Wilkes, the next medical witness, and an emi- 
nent ophthalmic surgeon, when questioned as to his 
visits to Mr. Parish, states that he saw him in 1852, 
"and for an affection of the eyes," and so far as appears, 
without any reference to the mental condition of his 
patient; a condition which incidentally, it may be re- 
marked, was a very ordinary, commonplace one, view- 
ed from one standpoint, namely, as demency; but 
certainly of a most interesting, anomalous, and rare 
character, if regarded as that of a person perfectly 
sound, yet incapable of making any external manifesta- 
tion of such mental integrity-a case so extraordinary 
among the rare cases of medical science, that one med- 
ical man could hardly avoid gratifying a friend by in- 
troducing it to him, as one of the wonderful examples 
of psychology. 
Dr. Wilkes made his patient seven or eight visits, 
and evidently made a thorough investigation of his 
case, as an oculist. We note that he tried his visual 
powers with type of different sizes, pictures, vases, dif- 
ferent degrees of light, <fcc. He thinks, (II. f. 218,) 
that he was very happy in obtaining Mr. Parish's 
meaning. " If I presupposed any symptom which did 
not exist, he would immediately object to it, by shak- 
ing his head, and a marked expression of manner that 
that was not the symptom." How did Dr. Wilkes 
know that the symptom did not exist ? Did he ask for 
symptoms, where his own observation would correct or 
confirm his inquiry ? Did he ask Mr. Parish whether 35 
he could trace ordinary print with his disorganized eye, 
and receive a positive yes, or no? Were any such 
tests as this applied, which would have determined 
whether he were understood or not, and that the re- 
plies were not made hap-hazard? We see no account 
of any. 
The responses, yes or no, might on the doctrine of 
mathematical chances fit, if uttered alternately, one- 
half of all indiscriminate interrogations, capable of be- 
ing answered by simple affirmation and negation. Dr. 
Wilkes states, that on the occasion of his visits, Dr. 
Delafield " would ask him (Mr. Parish) questions, and 
Mrs. Parish would state about his diet." We can well 
conceive with the natural impressions thus derived, ab 
extra, one topic, the condition of the sufferer's eyes being 
alone prominent, that Dr. Wilkes might arrive at the 
unhesitating opinion, that Mr. Parish's " mind was clear, 
and capable of transacting the ordinary avocations of 
life." 
Dr. Wilkes, in his anxiety to determine the precise 
accuracy of the optical apparatus of his patient, appears 
to have overlooked the consideration of that more 
subtle interior condition to which all the mere ma- 
chinery of lenses, humors, retinal expansion, and so 
forth, are secondary. 
When after various abortive attempts to fit himself 
with a pair of spectacles, the Hibernian was asked by 
the anxious vender whether he could read at all, he 
replied, " Do you think if I could read I would be 
such a fool as to buy spectacles ? " The dialogue is 
recorded as a proof of the Irishman's folly; but it is 
no greater error than that of the oculist per se, who 
overlooks the office of the brain, while anxious about 
the integrity of the mechanical appliances, which only 
transmit to it the materials for appreciation. 
Dr. Wilkes evidently has no very clear explanation 36 
to give of the great difficulty of the proponent in this 
case, i. e. how Mr. Parish, if sound in mind, should re- 
fuse to communicate in the usual way of such patients. 
In vol. II. fol. 282, he seems disposed to consider this 
repugnance or refusal to write as a monomania, and 
would explain the difficulties of a supposed analogous 
case, by the idea of the patient's mind being sound on 
other subjects' of course diseased quoad hoc, or mono- 
maniac. At vol. II. fol. 284, he is disposed to consider 
the refusal to write as wilful, or to use his own words: 
"It appears as if there were a perversion of his mind 
upon that subject." At vol. II. fol. 285, he puts the 
refusal neither on the ground of delusion nor perver- 
sion, but of mere irritability. Paralysis, he reasons, 
makes its victims irritable; the use of the left hand re- 
quires more than ordinary exertion, therefore the pa- 
tient, finding his efforts to fail on trying, refuses abso- 
lutely to continue his endeavor, yet all his mental 
faculties are in perfect integrity. 
At vol. II. fol. 309, Dr. Wilkes illustrates another 
view of Mr. Parish's case, still differently, by a refer- 
ence to the case of a Dr. Grayson, who was unable, 
pending an apoplectic attack, to write the final syllable 
of his name. Dr. Grayson's seems to have been one of 
those not infrequent forms of apoplectic disease or 
symptoms, where the power of connecting certain 
words with their ideas may be lost; some Christian 
name is not capable of being justly applied to its own- 
er, or some wrong word will insist on taking the place 
of the one which should come in. In cases like Dr. 
Grayson's, the current of thought may be quite normal, 
notwithstanding this difficulty of a few words being 
unmanageable, while in Mr. Parish's case, the fact of 
any mental activity is only obtained by inference. Dr. 
Grayson's power of articulating intelligibly was scarce- 
ly affected at all. Mr. Parish's power of articulation 
was extinct, almost, if not quite, in toto. 37 
Dr. Wilkes's other case, (vol. II. fol. 300,) of a 
hypochondriac who kept his room and yet did business 
for a long period, is interesting as a curious example 
of hypochondriasis, but not elucidatory or instructive 
in our inquiry, as there is no evidence of Mr. Parish's 
having been in any sense a hypochondriac. 
Dr. Wilkes seems to have omitted all consideration 
of the possibility of a condition,-that of dementia,- 
which would meet adequately all the indications pre- 
sented. 
The remaining medical gentleman in attendance on 
Mr. Parish, Dr. Markoe, the business partner of Dr. 
Delafield, saw him soon after his fit of apoplexy, and 
through his entire illness to his death. The first facts 
in his testimony which throw any light upon Mr. 
Parish's mental condition, are presented in vol. II. fol. 
1997, where the doctor describes his manner of investi- 
gating his case. Pie asks such questions as would per- 
mit an affirmation or a negative response, " and received 
from him always readily and promptly, what I con- 
ceived to be an affirmative or negative answer to my 
questions." At vol. II. fol. 202, Dr. Markoe further 
explains what meaning he attached to Mr. Parish's ges- 
ticulations or motions. 
I have been unable to perceive any thing in the 
facts or opinions recorded in Dr. Markoe's testimony in 
the application of the signs or sounds, which he inter- 
preted as yes or no, which necessarily fixes them as 
having been accompanied by intelligence; and the re- 
marks hitherto made, and hereafter to be made, upon 
the strong probability of these supposed expressions of 
assent and dissent being entirely hap-hazard and with- 
out intelligence, will apply alike to the opinions of this 
witness as of the others who declare like opinions. 
Dr. Markoe gives a reason why a post mortem ex- 
amination was not made:-an inquiry which doubtless 38 
every medical man. has made, after he has reached the 
slightest acquaintance with the case. It was that " he 
was informed by Dr. Delafield that the feeling of the 
family was strongly opposed to it, and I said no more." 
It is truly remarkable that an eminent physician, who 
had the rare fortune to be the witness of what he be- 
lieved to have been an actual separation and dejection 
of a portion of bowels, and that followed by recovery, 
and carrying on the functions of life subsequently, could 
have rested so easy, under a first and not apparently 
insuperable refusal to admit an autopsy I One of the 
previous medical witfiesses suggests a ground for not 
having an examination, that it is not usual in paralytic 
subjects "in private practice." A case of paralysis, 
involved with so extraordinary an organic lesion as to 
be almost beyond belief, certainly would have justified 
a more pressing application than seems to have been 
made, independently of any light which might have 
been thrown upon the great medico-juridical question 
now sub judice, by proof of the presence or absence of 
marks of extensive cerebral disease. The medical gen- 
tlemen, and especially Dr. Delafield, who had in the 
rights of his sister an interest more than merely pro- 
fessional, could not have failed to consider the value of 
the medical fact, if it existed, that Mr. Parish's brain 
was found free from other relics of diseased action than 
the ordinary, expected marks of apoplexy, such as a 
clot, a cyst, or a cicatrix, as the processes of recupera- 
tion had been more or less completed. Confident as 
they were of his mental soundness, they could have no 
grounds for expecting any thing except the specific 
apoplectic damages. They knew how strong the evi- 
dence would be in support of their opinion of his men- 
tal soundness, were his brain sound, with the exception 
referred to. Is it to be supposed that Mrs. Parish, the 
only party whose wishes were to be deemed imperative 39 
on such a subject, in view of the magnitude of the 
stake, could have resisted an application, based on such 
grounds ? What then is the weight of the inference 
from the fact that no such solicitation was urged, and 
no such examination made ? 
Passing now to the third order of witnesses, the 
business and social friends of the testator, it is not pro- 
posed to look at the testimony of each individual. For 
there is running through the whole of the details given 
by these, as by the previously mentioned witnesses, a 
generally concurrent account of Mr. Parish's habitual 
condition. The disagreement is more in the conclu- 
sions which are drawn than in the facts themselves. 
Prominent among these, both from his opportuni- 
ties and the full detail of occurrences, is Major K. Dela- 
field, a brother of Mrs. Parish. As is most natural, his 
mind was unavoidably biased throughout the course of 
Mr. Parish's long illness towards the least painful aspect 
of his friend's infirmity, and we notice a consequent rea- 
diness in him to speak with entire confidence as to Mr. 
Parish's ability to understand and to make himself 
comprehended-a confidence at great variance with the 
inability of various others, nurses and old friends, to 
recognize the slightest intelligence in Mr. Parish. 
We find (IL, f. 1747) Mr. Parish "agreeing " to the 
selection of a lot at Greenwood, " assents " clearly and 
distinctly by an affirmative "yes" <fcc. 
Major Delafield, in conclusion, (IL, f. 1810,) re- 
gards Mr. Parish " as perfectly capable of understand- 
ing and comprehending any subject addressed to him, 
that he could, have comprehended or understood before 
his attack." 
The basis for such an opinion is not afforded to us. 
Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how such a sweeping 
conclusion could be predicated of a person whose only 
communication was yea and nay. Not a single test, 40 
involving even those, the only elements on which such 
a judgment could have been founded, is here detailed, 
or even hinted at. 
I have before this suggested how easily one might 
be deceived in deciding upon the intelligence of an in- 
dividual, who could only say yes and no-the uncer- 
tainty which must attach to any communications where 
the interrogations were made by one party, and merely 
yes or no sounded or motioned by the other. If the 
questions were about common matters, put in the entire 
trust on the part of the interrogator, of the capacity of 
the party to answer affirmatively or negatively, and if 
the questioner believed in an irritable, testy state of 
feeling in his friend, how difficult would it be to fix 
assuredly upon their applicability or intelligent respon- 
siveness ? 
Let a case be assumed in illustration. M. Maelzel, 
the ingenious Swiss mechanician, succeeded in construct- 
ing little automata, with certain vocal powers. They 
could utter the words papa, maman, with true accent 
and distinct articulation. Let us suppose that an arti- 
ficial voice was limited to the mere words yes and no, 
and that these were uttered not alternately or regularly 
but accidentally, hap-hazard, as the turning of the 
wheels might open the reeds making one or the other 
sound. Let us imagine how the answers might fall to 
the kind of questions which would naturally and ordi- 
narily be put to a person in Mr. Parish's condition, 
where all direct exchange of thoughts was restricted, 
and where a belief in his irascible temper was present, 
prompting at the slightest warning to a speedy change 
of subject. 
Q. Mr. Parish, will you look over the plans for the 
proposed tomb at Greenwood ? A. Yes. 
Q. Here they are. You put your hand upon the 
very one I was anxious to show you. This is Upjohn's; 
does it suit you ? A. Yes. 41 
Q. Its cost will be $10,000. Isn't it too large- 
too magnifique ? A. Yes (or No). 
Q. Would you carejx) go to such a cost? A. Yes 
(or No.) 
Q, Well, I thought that would be your opinion. 
Tell me, as I hold them up, which you will examine; 
Mr. Arnot's, Mr. Inigo Jones's, Mr. Charles Barry's ? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Ah! Barry's? Well that is a fine facade. 
Rather too ornate, isn't it ? A. Yes (or No). 
Q. What should you think of having the lower 
portion of granite or brown freestone, instead of white 
marble-; wouldn't it give the idea of greater solidity, 
and improve the general character ? 
A. No (or Yes.) 
Q. Well, perhaps your idea is the true one. And 
so on, in extenso. By following out any probable line 
of parlor or even business conversation, where yes or 
no is to be the only response, one may appreciate how 
easily he may be misled, by mere mechanical expres- 
sions of assent or dissent, into a firm belief that an 
intelligent interchange of views has been had. 
Some ten or- more years since, what were called 
clairvoyant experiments were in much vogue in some 
parts of the country. A person was " put in commu- 
nication" with one of those gifted with the mesmeric 
power, and they started off on supposed tours to see 
various places and objects. The Clairvoyant noted the 
scenes about them, and the other party expressed assent 
or dissent to their agreement with what he had in his 
own imagination. Where there was a prepossession in 
favor of the new science, it was curious to note how 
the agreements of sentiment were sure to be prominent, 
while the want of any concordance was belittled and 
scarcely recognized. Indeed, in conformity with this 
principle of believing what is pleasant to us, it was 42 
found that a person assuming to be a Clairvoyant, 
without seriously believing that he possessed any such 
gift, could carry the willing neophyte, with wonderful 
success, through scenes which left not a doubt in the 
mind of the latter that the Clairvoyant was going 
with him every step of the fancied route. 
It is evident that the anxious friends of Mr. Parish 
were not insensible to the common experience of be- 
lieving what it was pleasant to believe, and scarcely 
stopped to put tests to a friend whose yeas and nays 
half the time came in harmony with their own prefer- 
ences, especially as, when they did not, the discrepancy 
could readily be passed over and deemed the result of 
impatience or irritability. 
How different is the weight due to the testimony 
of a witness who, like Mr. Kernochan, carefully scru- 
tinized the subject. He had known the testator, and 
that most thoroughly, from his youth to his final dis- 
ease, and through it. 
When actual and important interests required him 
to form a judgment, he left the pleasant conversation 
with which he hoped to give a momentary satisfaction 
to his old friend, if perchance he could comprehend a 
glimpse of its meaning, and soberly and carefully ap- 
plied himself to the grave question which he was com- 
pelled to decide, i. e. whether he should receive a 
power of attorney under Mr. Parish's hand. He de- 
viated from the natural and pleasant order of dealing 
with an afflicted man, subjected him to the simplest of 
all tests-that of putting the same question twice over 
-and was thereby assured that his friend had not 
mind sufficient to act for himself in any important 
business. 
The testimony of Mr. Thomas Tileston strikes me 
as quite illustrative of the probable form of self-decep- 
tion running through the opinions of most of the wit- 43 
nesses, who give accounts of occasional interviews with 
Mr. Parish, and pronounce thereon judgments in favor 
of his entire mental soundness. I mean those who 
infer such a condition from Mr. Parish's supposed just 
application of the signs and sounds of assent or nega- 
tion. 
In accordance with a note previously sent, Mr. 
Tileston calls upon his old friend, to see if he can 
induce him to loan the Phenix Bank $200,000 of 
United States scrip, to be deposited with the State as 
a basis of its banking operations. Mr. Tileston opens 
the business of his interview, and "from the expres- 
sion of his countenance and the interpretation given 
by Mrs. Parish, who sat directly by him," con- 
cludes that he was disposed for a negotiation. Mr. 
Tileston may have naturally enough mistaken the 
cheerful expression of his old friend's face, incidental 
to the associations which the last remnant of conscious- 
ness might leave unextinguished, for the less senti- 
mental gratification connected with the idea of making 
a good bargain with the best of security. If the 
invalid's wife, the. person presumptively most familiar 
with the interpretation of his pantomime and sounds, 
thus explained his meaning, it was most natural that 
Mr. Tileston should receive it without hesitancy, and, 
indeed, without reflection. 
Mr. Parish raises two fingers, a gesture again and 
again described, throughout these volumes, as the most 
frequent and spontaneous of his movements. (I. f. 960, 
967, 97o, 982, 983, 991, et passim?) Mr. Tileston did 
not catch its meaning. He asks if Mr. Parish assents 
to the loan. Mr. Parish nods, the next of his most 
frequent and instinctive movements. Mrs. Parish sug- 
gests that he means that he will loan the scrip for a 
bonus of $2,000 per annum. Mr. Parish looks pleased, 
and nods again. " When he held up his two fingers," 44 
continues Mr. Tileston, " I then asked him if he meant 
the $2,000, to which he gave assent, by nodding his 
head in the affirmative." 
Now, Mr. Tileston saw in these, which were the 
habitual, involuntary motions of this invalid, made 
over and over again, on all occasions, in the mere 
course of habit, as described by most of the witnesses 
who saw him, precise, intelligent responses to his ques- 
tions, just the replies which a man of business, intent 
on driving a good bargain, would have made, and just 
such as a man of business on such an errand would 
have desired, and therefore anticipated. 
Mr. Tileston, of course, received them without one 
doubt of their genuineness or authenticity. But his 
duty is not yet brought to a conclusion exactly to his 
mind, as he might naturally have anticipated from 
their perfect accordance at first. Mr. Parish seems 
uneasy, excited, dissatisfied; his temper rises, he puts 
his hand on Mr. Tileston, who is entirely at fault as to 
his meaning. Mrs. Parish, with all her skill and ex- 
perience in detecting his wishes, does not at all com- 
prehend what agitates and distresses him. She gets a 
slate and writes Mr. Tileston's proposition in full. As 
Mr. Parish's hearing is acute, it is difficult to see why 
he could better understand the offer thus presented. 
He shakes his head, and utters inarticulate sounds. 
Mr. Tileston is clear that Mr. Parish wants something 
other than what is offered. The writing on the slate 
is changed some five or six times, which certainly seems 
to give the man a very full opportunity of seeing the 
proposition under various shapes. (II. f. 569.) Mr. 
Parish evinces at each time the same unmeaning agita- 
tion ; (II. f. 570;) and Mr. Tileston, giving up in de- 
spair, takes his leave. 
What condition of the human mind, other than 
dementia, with the faintest traces of some delusion-- 45 
too indefinite and indistinct to be appreciated except 
as belonging to the general head of suspicion, or fear, 
or anger-will meet and satisfy such a collection of 
indications as this ? 
On a subsequent visit, Mr. Tileston is informed that 
the mystery had been solved in his absence. That 
Mr. Parish's meaning had been fully reached. He 
only wants " assurance doubly sure "-twice as sure as 
he deemed necessary in his days of unquestioned health 
of body and of mind. He demands the personal guar- 
anty of each individual member of the Board of Di- 
rectors ! Mr. Tileston, who himself knows, and also 
imagines that Mr. Parish knows, the security offered 
for the loan to be as perfect as is attainable in any 
financial operation-that practically it is equal to a 
deposit of plate or bullion-is amazed at the demand! 
Naturally thinking that Mr. Parish might get some 
clearer insight into the affair by seeing it in writing, 
as Mrs. Parish had previously adopted that method, 
and failing to advert to the fact that Mr. Parish is 
dumb, not deaf, and can hear much better than he 
can see, he deliberately writes down his proposition. 
Mr. Parish manifests what Mr. Tileston considers a re- 
fusal ; the " nin, nin, nin, was going all the time nearly," 
says the somewhat chagrined solicitor, as he leaves the 
invalid with a conviction (assuredly as he says so) 
that Mr. Parish understood him, and, no doubt, think- 
ing that his long illness had made him sharper and 
more cautious in a bargain. 
On the strength of these signs and gestures, Mr. 
Tileston arrives at the confident opinion that Mr. Parish 
"understood himself perfectly." 
It is easy for those of us who have the entire 
record of Mr. Parish's condition, as presented in these 
volumes of testimony, and of which Mr. Tileston had 
but a small idea, to understand how, with really so 46 
few and such insignificant grounds for forming any 
opinion at all, he should have arrived at the confident 
one which he declares. To those of us behind scenes, 
as those who have read the printed testimony now are, 
how transparent are alike the errors of Mr. Tileston's 
judgment and the fallacious substructure on which he 
has placed it I Mr. Parish's pleasant aspect at the sight 
of an old friend whose face carried some glimpses of 
former days with it; his evident non-comprehension of 
all that was passing before him; his irritability in see- 
ing the glimpse of some happy vision, however obscure, 
connected with an old friend's face driven from him 
by a slate thrust before his eyes, some half dozen 
times; his subsequent excitement; his seizing hold of 
Mr. Tileston in kindness, or in anger, or in fear; his 
angry look when Mr. Young appeared at the door, all 
present a congeries of symptoms admitting only of one 
explanation, one hypothesis. This poor sufferer, under 
two of the saddest forms of human disease, apoplexy 
and epilepsy, and their sequel of demency or mental 
dilapidation, had of all this scene before him no intel- 
ligent comprehension at all ! 
Another example of strong conclusions drawn from 
extremely limited observation, is shown in the testi- 
mony of Mr. Gibson-conclusions which pass into 
nothingness when viewed from another position. He 
calls on Mr. Parish, (II. f. 1865,) and presents the 
charitable claims of an asylum. Mr. Parish is soon 
noticed to be making the old spontaneous sign, a mo- 
tion of holding up his two fingers. He gradually ex- 
pands his hand from the two digits, which were con- 
sidered as indicating a contribution of $200, until all 
five are lifted, indicating of course $500, which is ac- 
cordingly subscribed, but which, for some unexplained 
reason, does not appear to have been paid. 
Mr. Gibson, doubtless well pleased with so success- 47 
ful a visit, noticed nothing peculiar about Mr. Parish's 
eyes, prominent as their diseased aspect was; thinks 
that it was his left hand which was raised; did not 
notice that any thing was the matter of either of his 
hands, (IL f. 1871 ;) but " from his observation of 
Mr. Parish and intercourse at that time," witness 
thought " his mental faculties were bright enough to 
understand the nature of my visit." No doubt he so 
thought. The contribution to his favorite object went 
up from two fingers to five, from $200 to $500. A 
man could scarcely question the mental soundness of a 
contributor, where his persuasive powers had " in 
fifteen minutes," raised a new subscriber from 0 to 
$200, and successively to $300, $400, and $500 ! 
It does not seem to me necessary to analyze any 
more of the testimony of those who regard Mr. Parish 
as a sound man. In examining the minutes of the tes- 
timony of each in succession, I find no facts of a differ- 
ent type from those already considered; nothing which 
is substantiated by any tests; nothing where his signs 
of assent and negation would not fall under the same 
principles of explanation offered in relation to the 
statements of Major Delafield, Mr. Tileston, and the 
others named; nothing which offers any hint to recon- 
cile the entire competency of mind which they deduce 
from the mere application of yes and no by him, with 
the great fact of his utter inability to express one 
idea in the manner used by all sane paralytic men in 
all times and places. 
The testimony of the other class of witnesses who re- 
garded Mr. Parish as essentially void of comprehension, 
requires no analysis, because theirs is not so much the 
expression of an opinion, where we are to see whether 
its basis of facts warrant it or not, as the statement of a 
fact, viz., that they could not understand him, or as far 
as was perceptible to them make themselves comprehended 48 
by him. Many of this class of witnesses had a strong 
interest in recognizing his true condition. The testi- 
mony of his old partner, Mr. Kernochan, before alluded 
to, and his confidential clerk, Mr. Folsom, carry with 
them an element of great importance in this regard. 
Each was placed under circumstances requiring him to 
decide in reference to momentous acts involving pecu- 
niary risk, and very probably involving reputation, 
whether he was, or was not, sound and competent to 
do business. They declined to act, because to their 
minds the evidence was adverse to his soundness. Mr. 
Kernochan, in his anxiety to decide correctly, instituted 
the simple test before alluded to, almost the only one 
referred to in the case, and refused to receive a power 
of attorney from one whom he believed to be no longer 
himself. And Mr. Folsom, abandoned as it were to 
his sole unaided judgment in a most embarrassing and 
responsible position, where those to whom he seemed 
to look at first for relief, refused eveti to advise in so 
delicate a matter-that of deciding whether he should 
deliver up the valuable papers of Mr. Parish, including 
his will-cannot bring himself to an affirmative belief 
in his soundness. How much must judgments arrived 
at under the pressure of such circumstances as sur- 
rounded these witnesses, overbalance the mere impres- 
sions or notions adopted without test or examination, 
by the great body of those who have spoken confi- 
dently of his perfect mental integrity! 
The practical decisions of such men as the provi- 
sion dealers, Case and Austin, have in them an element 
of earnest attention to Mr. Parish's manifestations, su- 
perior to the off-hand impressions of casual visitors, or 
of those who thought they transacted business with him, 
when some one claiming and exercising full authority, 
was at hand to decide and promptly to declare a reason- 
able import for every inarticulate response he made. 49 
When, for example, Mr. Parish appeared to be trans- 
acting business to an extent of thousands of dollars, 
instead of that appertaining to the purchase of a few 
chickens, vegetables, or oysters, it must not be forgot- 
ten that Mrs. Parish was at his side, and that her ex- 
plications of his decisions were naturally, and as a mat- 
ter of course, accepted as his exact wishes. If Mr. 
Parish had visited Mr. Ward accompanied only by a 
nurse, would the notes and securities which he was 
examining, have been delivered on the mere strength 
of his imperfect sounds and gesticulations ? Is 
it to be presumed that a person who cannot make a 
tradesman comprehend how many and which of his 
stock of fowls or oysters he would order, is equal to 
the purchase of securities in the stock market ? 
I have alluded at various times to the consequential 
fact, that tests might have been applied to substantiate 
impressions or to disperse them. I may be asked of 
what tests, what methods of verification would I have 
availed myself? This is very easily answered; many 
tests would at once occur to any earnest investigator. 
I will suppose one. At a suitable time and in a proper 
manner, some one of those who believed, as many of 
the witnesses profess to have done, that his mind was 
perfectly sound and intact, should have approached 
him with language essentially of this import: " Mr. 
Parish, I wish to have a full, frank conversation with 
you on a subject, which it may not be pleasant to you 
to have broached, as certainly it is painful for me to 
present, but feeling that you ought not to have any 
thing of moment in your affairs concealed from you, 
especially as I and your immediate friends are aware 
that you perfectly understand every thing, although 
you cannot speak to us; I will tell you frankly and 
fully what we all think you ought to be informed of; 
you know that you have directed several codicils to be 50 
prepared and have executed them, which entirely 
change the purport of your will, while you have re- 
fused, and doubtless for good and sufficient reasons, to 
have the original will abrogated. You know that the 
first of these codicils, having been executed when you 
were very ill, was, by the advice of Mr. Lord, re-exe- 
cuted some months afterwards to avert danger of 
doubt or question respecting your capacity to. execute 
it in the first instance. The subsequent codicils effect 
most essential changes, and as the whole matter is a 
good deal more involved by your giving to your wife 
large sums as gifts, which Mr. Lord says are of ques- 
tionable validity; therefore, as things now stand, it 
is certain that your testamentary dispositions and these 
gifts to your wife will be contested by those who will 
think, from the tenor of your original will, which you 
prefer to stand uncancelled, that they have a better 
right to a part of your estate than she has to the whole. 
" That will may be considered by some to be a 
natural disposition of your estate, and, consequently, 
there may be an endeavor to sustain it and give the 
go-by to the codicils. The event of lawsuits is prover- 
bially uncertain, and of course you would be distressed 
to feel that it were a possible thing to dispossess your 
wife of the liberal provision which you have finally 
and maturely decided to give her. Now, to put all 
this beyond question, it is absolutely necessary for you 
to make a brief effort to counteract any chances of 
dispute. 
" To do this, you must give us at this time, when 
your pressing illness is over, a more clear and definite 
expression of your wishes than we can reach in your 
ordinary way of merely assenting to or negativing 
what we offer, not, of course, for the satisfaction of 
your friends, who understand you well enough, but to 
demonstrate to all who care to inquire, that there is 51 
not the slightest ground for disputing your will. It is 
very easy for you to do this; it is not necessary for 
you to go through the tiresome processes of endeavor- 
ing to write with your left hand on slate, paper, or 
blackboard, as persons who have had a shock of palsy 
often do, but to which we know you have a great 
aversion, still, if you would consent to practise two 
or three days, and thus write, it would be a conclusive 
thing. 
" There is, however, an easier way. I will simply 
turn to an alphabet, which we can find in any primer, 
grammar, or dictionary, and point along to each letter 
until I come to the one which you need to make the 
first letter of the first word of what you would say. 
When I reach the one you want, raise your finger or 
touch my arm, and I will write it down. In an hour, 
yes, in half an hour, you will have dictated a commu- 
nication which will leave nobody in doubt about your 
having clear ideas of all that has been done in relation 
to your estate. Just spell out some sentence to the 
effect that you desire these codicils to be regarded as 
the expression of your precise wishes concerning the 
disposition of your property. Any other views or 
wishes you may have, especially any which will explain 
your singular reluctance as to communicating with us 
otherwise than by saying ' yes ' and 4 no ' tq our ques- 
tions, would render c assurance doubly sure ' as to your 
mental competency. Or, my dear friend, if you cannot 
follow my pointing to these letters of the alphabet, I 
will slowly call them over by their names, and when I 
reach the one wanted to make the word you would 
express, just press my hand and I will write it down. 
You see there cannot be much trouble in this, and how 
perfectly it will cut off the objections of any who think 
that you have not the full possession of your mind, and 
that you cannot make a valid will." 52 
What man in his senses thus addressed, seeing be- 
fore him, as he could not fail to do, a foreshadowing 
of what we are now engaged in, his beloved wTife and 
his friends exposed to sore troubles from the question 
of competency, just as fully expected to be the inevi- 
table subject of litigation in 1849, as it is known to be 
this moment, and realizing that his own infirmities 
would necessarily be dragged out before the world, 
could have resisted a call so reasonable, so just, so 
much a demand of honor and of duty I To comprehend 
the emergency of the future and to refuse meeting and 
counteracting it, where the effect would require so 
little power, mental or physical,-indeed, vastly less 
than he was exerting daily, as those who believe him 
sound aver, in buying notes, settling accounts, &c.,-- 
would be contrary to the course of sane men as exhib- 
ited by universal experience. His failure to compre- 
hend the appeal or to respond to it, would present an 
anomaly. It could only be explained on the idea that 
some huge delusion overshadowed his mind in relation 
to the disposition of his property, and that he preferred 
that all his plans and arrangements should " go by the 
board," rather than lift his hand to secure their accom- 
plishment. If Mr. Parish were so keen and exacting 
as to demand from Mr. Tileston an order of securities 
more extortionate (using the word in no disrespectful 
sense) than any financial practice would justify, to 
protect a portion of his property, is it possible to be- 
lieve that he would run the hazard of his whole estate 
being lost to his wishes, from an unwillingness to make 
a much slighter effort ? The idea is preposterous. 
It may be objected to the application of such a test 
as we have suggested, that there was an irritability 
about Mr. Parish, which would not permit a ready ap- 
proach to him, on so delicate a topic. Perhaps so; and 
to meet such a difficulty, was just one of the purposes 53 
for which the aid of an expert in mental disorders 
should have been invoked. The same order of skill 
which enables the oculist to get a clear view of a sensi- 
tive eye, which the ordinary practitioner cannot even 
open, would have been the means of a free access to 
Mr. Parish's mind in the manner suggested. If Mr. 
Parish were a rational man, it is absurd to suppose that 
during the six long years of his indisposition, no oppor- 
tunity would have been afforded for a free interchange 
of views. No known condition of irritability, and few, 
very few forms of hypochondria have a continuous ex- 
istence, without periods of relief or mitigation, and 
there is no evidence that Mr. Parish was habitually 
under any appearances either of irritability or hypo- 
chondria. lie had occasionally fits of indefinite anger ; 
he had paroxysms of weeping and sadness; but we 
more frequently see him externally placid, sometimes 
cheerful in expression. 
Indeed, a grade of hypochondria which would pro- 
duce all the strange effects referred to, would have en- 
tered into the domains of insanity. 
These three volumes of testimony give us no account 
or hint, that any of the persons around Mr. Parish, 
from his attack in July, 1849, to his death, ever ap- 
proached him to counsel him or confer with him on 
those subjects so momentous to him and to them. He 
never was once addressed, as it would seem these per- 
sons ought to have addressed a sound, rational, compe- 
tent man, on the subject of his questionable testamen- 
tary dispositions. Yet there was not one amongst those 
around him who did not fully appreciate that a litiga- 
tion was inevitable, unless avoided by some distinct 
proof of capacity being presented by Mr. Parish him- 
self. 
Under all these imperious demands for some such 
action, he was allowed to go down to his grave without 54 
the suspicion ever being presented to him that his will 
would be contested ; he was suffered to die--yet make 
no sign. Is not this fact pregnant with the conviction, 
that he was not looked upon by those around him as a 
sound, rational man ? 
There are still other tests, which might have been 
applied every day, without the possibility of giving 
offence, or the formality of any serious address, such 
as we have just supposed. For example, when Mr.Tile- 
ston was dumb with amazement that his whole Board 
of Bank Directors had been asked to give an individual 
guaranty in addition to the already abundant security 
proffered, had some one in the interest of those who 
doubted Mr. Parish's sanity been present and resorted 
to the experiment of asking Mr. Parish whether he also 
expected a deposit of bullion as collateral; what would 
have been the response ? Who can say ? Perhaps it 
would have been a nod, and in that event what would 
have been Mr. Tileston's view of Mr. Parish's sound- 
ness and capacity ? 
How many methods of verifying Mr. Parish's re- 
sponses as intelligent and applicable, could have been 
devised! An absurd or amusing question to bring 
forth a smile and an unmistakable gesture-a question 
involving in its proper response both assent and dissent, 
and of course not be answered with either a nod or a 
shake ; a reiteration of the same question with an in- 
terval, an interrogation in different phraseology, but 
carrying the same meaning, all would have helped to 
demonstrate whether the yes and the no were rationally 
applied. 
Unfortunately, except in the trifling experiments of 
Messrs. Kernochan and Folsom, we have nothing which 
looks like bringing to a test the mere impressions of 
mental soundness received by many of those around 
him 55 
In view of the eminent intelligence of many of 
those interested in Mr. Parish, and of those domiciliated 
with him, it is difficult to understand the reason for not 
subjecting him to such tests, if not for their own satis- 
faction, still to meet what they could not but foresee 
would be the first demand of those who subse- 
quently to his decease would require to be satisfied of 
the exact truth. The omission, especially under the 
six years' opportunity for considering every thing con- 
nected with so great a contest as was impending, like 
the failure to call in a single expert in mental disorders, 
is to be explained by those in whose power it was to 
employ any method of investigation which the case 
might require. The inference is irresistible that such 
forms of proof were pretermitted because it was felt 
that their application would operate adversely to those 
who wished to uphold his acts, as those of a sound, 
responsible agent. 
We have now arrived at a point in this inquiry, 
where we may lay aside all concern with the mere in- 
ferences and opinions of others, as well as with all the 
experiences and observations which are not in perfect 
harmony, and judge of Mr. Parish's condition in the 
light of conceded and virtually agreed facts. It is true 
that touching the material facts of his case, what his 
sounds and movements and looks, habits and infirmities 
were, there is as general an accordance of testimony as 
could be expected from witnesses at different stand- 
points. We can, therefore, bring him and the scenes 
of his daily life almost as clearly before us as if we had 
been present -ourselves, and almost disassociated from 
any impressions traceable to this or that witness. To be 
sure, a witness may represent his expression to have 
been uniformly pleasant and cheerful, while others 
recollect him only as sad and melancholy; some never 
could perceive any thing like an articulate sound, capa- 56 
ble of being expressed in words or letters in his vocal 
attempts; others recognized yes and no, and nothing 
more; some heard other short phrases, to the extent 
of two or three, in distinct articulation. Yet after 
reading over the great mass of testimony of so many 
persons, very many of them having had fair opportuni- 
ties of observation, it is not likely that there will be 
any great degree of discordance in opinion as to his ac- 
tual situation, among dispassionate and disinterested 
judges. The evidence will leave about the same gene- 
ral impression as to the facts. 
Mr. Parish heard with readiness; his eyesight, so 
far as one eye was concerned, is represented by those 
around him to have been good; one side, in its muscu- 
lar powers, had been unaffected by the shock which 
had annihilated all power in the other. 
Those who regarded him as mentally sound, of course 
believed that he had a full and clear comprehension of 
all that he saw or heard. They are satisfied that there 
was not merely an abstract power of intelligence, but 
an active exercise of every function of the perceptions, 
the volition, and the judgment. He was equal in their 
opinion to the high responsibility of negotiating for 
the great sum of $200,000 in one mass, passing out of 
his hands; he was equal to trading for a house, decid- 
ing upon the repairs of his roof, and attending to the 
daily marketing of his household. 
Yet with all this completeness of capacity, this in- 
tegrity of intellectual powers, believed to exist by these 
witnesses, they all without exception agree that his 
power of communicating his thoughts to others, was 
singularly, nay, to an unprecedented and anomalous 
degree, limited and restricted. lie could not articulate 
to any degree-he could not write with his affected 
hand. There was nothing peculiar or unusual in these 
defects among the victims of apoplectic disease. But 57 
he could not indicate his wishes in any of many ways 
which are common to paralytics from apoplexy. lie 
did not write with his left hand. He did not search 
out the words he wanted to indicate his meaning, in the 
dictionary. He did not place block-letters in the collo- 
cation required to express his wants, nor point to the 
letters of the alphabet. He did not raise his finger to 
or press the hand of a friend, who might call off the 
letters, when that one was reached which would make 
part of the word and the sentence required-a method 
so much in vogue of late years in certain mesmeric or 
spiritualistic experiments, that its facility and effective- 
ness are recognized all over the country. Unlike the 
great body of paralytics from apoplectic lesion of the 
brain, deprived of the use of the vocal organs and the 
right hand, Mr. Parish only communicated, assuming 
that he did communicate at all, by assenting or dissent- 
ing when propositions were made to him orally, or per- 
haps in a few cases presented to him in writing. Such 
assent or dissent was expressed in sounds and signs, in- 
terpreted by his friends then about him, all deeply in- 
terested in establishing his sanity. Such an indirect 
method was indeed of the most clumsy and uncertain 
nature, and it is without surprise that we read of the 
long, persevering, yet fruitless endeavors, to catch his 
meaning through it. At times, indeed, this was im- 
practicable, and the attempt was, under the trials of 
those who held themselves out as interpreters of this 
strange language, necessarily adjourned to be resumed 
another day, or was abandoned in despair. 
As before stated, a method so crude, imperfect, and 
unsatisfactory, was not acquiesced in without some 
struggles for a better. Abundant trials were made to 
induce him to write with his left hand, a process inva- 
riably, in my experience of many cases, performed 
with exceeding ease. This capacity is attainable with 58 
so much readiness, in fact, that I confess myself sur- 
prised at the presentation of facsimiles and testimony 
on this point to the Surrogate. Paper, slate, and the 
black board were brought into use; copies were set of 
his name to fix his attention, but all in vain. It is 
stated that he sometimes went as far as " H. Par.," and 
that his name was more than once written by him. But 
though " coaxed " and " persuaded," this was the extent 
of his post-apoplectic success in chirography. 
I perceive among the facsimiles various of his al- 
leged signatures, made after the attack, differing con- 
siderably from each other, and greatly differing from 
his veritable sign manual. I am at a loss to explain 
them in the light of his proven incapacity to go so far. 
But as we find in the account of his most important 
signatures, /. e. his mark to one of the codicils, his counsel 
aided him by placing one of his hands on Mr. Parish's 
forearm and the other on his hand-positions in which 
a stuffed image could have been guided into some form 
of chirography-it is possible that all these dissimilar 
facsimiles resulted from such auxiliary manipulation, 
to meet his fancied wishes. We at least need more di- 
rect testimony and precise explanations, as to the modus 
in quo these signatures were made, before they can be 
received as palpable exceptions to the admitted fact, 
that for some reason or other he did not use his left or 
sound hand, as ordinary paralytics do. The utter ob- 
scurity of his early3 effort at chirography, received by 
his wife with so much emotion as being the word 
Wills, when it carries no such significance, indeed no 
significance at all to any unprejudiced observer, seems 
to warrant a demand for information more definite than 
can be found in the evidence, as to some of these very 
legible, if not characteristically individual specimens of 
his alleged autograph attached to various important 
documents. 59 
I pass over these trifling attempts at handwriting, 
as of little moment in any scale of proofs touching ca- 
pacity to use the pen-a capacity in fact stopping far 
short of the power daily exhibited by a vast majority 
of those almost vegetative forms of dementia, found 
dozing around any large receptacle of incurables under 
mental disease, and inquire how it could be, assuming 
his mental integrity, that his powers of communication 
should have been circumscribed and restricted to the 
narrow limit of signifying assent or dissent to some pro- 
position presented to him, by some accepted sound and 
movement. 
We can imagine no other than the following possi- 
ble explanations why a sound, intelligent man, accident- 
ally deprived of the use of his voice, and his right hand, 
should not take advantage of the methods commonly 
used by persons so afflicted, except the following:-■ 
1. The possession of an irritable, impatient temper, 
contrary to his natural disposition, as proved through- 
out in this case, and ascribable to disease, which in- 
duced him to set himself against any attempts to write 
or communicate by letters or words, and refuse simply 
'because he would not, without reasons, and disregardful 
of consequences present or future. ITe would not be 
pestered, and plagued, and teased into writing copies, 
or picking out children's play-things in the shape of 
block-letters,'-he did not please to point or have others 
point to the letters of the alphabet or to words of the 
dictionary, nor, in fact, to resort to any other process, 
except that of saying yes or no to questions put to him 
by diligent guesses as to his possible desires. 
The reply to any such explanation has already been 
suggested in part. There is proof that Mr. Parish mani- 
fested at times a vague, unexplained irritability, occa- 
sionally rising into a state of wild fury, as where he 
gathered a mob about him, when his wife was absent 60 
a short time at the daguerreotypist's, and leading to 
repeated attempts to push and strike her, actions abso- 
lutely incompatible with the whole tenor of the man's 
life and being, as delineated by all wrho had known him 
from his youth to the fatal nineteenth of July, '49. 
But if the views of his friends concerning his state 
of temper after his attack, are correct, as doubtless 
they are, there was no such habitual condition as to 
make him recoil from any thing in the way of common 
every-day duties. He evinced, taking their account 
for the reality, no disposition to avoid a thousand 
duties, far less in importance, while equally as difficult, 
as certifying to his wishes respecting his estate, either 
in the manner intimated, or in some other method, 
so clearly as to leave no doubt as to his inten- 
tions or capacity. As before suggested, nothing but 
a continuous and unbroken series of monomaniacal 
ebullitions of temper in the one sole direction of making 
known his wishes, (wrhich would of course include his 
testamentary dispositions,) can be conceived of to ex- 
plain such incapacity to communicate. Such a mono- 
mania may be conceived of, but there is no evidence 
whatever of its presence in Mr. Parish's case. If it did 
exist, when these codicils received their cross-mark of 
authentication, they should of course be rejected. 
2. That Mr. Parish was suffering under a peculiar, 
specific condition of mind, of which some few alleged 
specimens are found on record in the books, where it is 
assumed that the intellect is clear and normal, but 
where the connection between the thought and the 
oral or written symbol, through which it is conveyed to 
another mind, viz., spoken or written language, is brok- 
en off and lost. In such cases as described, the power 
of receiving ideas from others by language is not anni- 
hilated, but the capacity to originate speech in reply- 
the calling up the symbols and presenting them to 
others-is extinguished. 61 
The first objection to this explanation of Mr. Par- 
ish's case is, that the alleged instances of loss of power 
to communicate by language, while capability of re- 
ceiving through it continues, are not satisfactorily sub- 
stantiated. The assumed cases are among the rarest 
of the rare in the described phenomena of psychology, 
and these few described or reported cases come in a 
very questionable shape. They are confined mostly, if 
not wholly, to the writers on phrenology, who are nat- 
urally anxious to bolster up their imaginative science 
by any 'thing which looks like proof that there is a 
specific organ of language, and that a portion of its 
functions might be obliterated, without influencing the 
remaining organs. It never has been my fortune to 
witness any approach to such a condition. I never 
have known any one who has seen any thing nearer to 
it than the inability to connect here and there a word 
or a name with the thing signified, an occasional sequel 
of lesion of the brain from apoplexy. 
The second objection obtains in the certainty that 
Mr. Parish's mind was not intact and natural in all the 
rest of its operations. No person, it seems to me, can 
read over the whole detail of his actions and bring him- 
self to the belief that there were not wide divergen- 
cies from soundness, irrespective of this one point of 
not communicating. His random searchings, in doors 
and out, his eating rapidly when an evacuation was im- 
pending, with no intelligent way of protecting himself, 
his wild and indefinite wrath at various times, his push- 
ing his wife, &c., will all occur as proofs, at least of 
some mental infirmity in other directions, while the 
theory of this incapacity to originate language is, that 
it co-exists with entire mental integrity. 
The third objection to this theory is, that if the 
witnesses who think him sound are to be believed, he 
did originate language. Dr. Delafield testifies to his 62 
originating his signature "more than once," and such a 
signature is several times repeated in the facsimiles; 
he originated the word, a most important one, too, in 
its connection, " wills." 
If such were the facts, the theory does not meet 
the case. 
So far as I have examined these unproven and, 
(even as dubiously reported,) most rare cases of the 
cas rare of medical science, the incapacity to avail one's 
self of language, extends also to the non-use of its writ- 
ten or printed forms. These cases, it should' be re- 
marked, do not appear at all in the authoritative trea- 
tises, monographs, or systems of medical science. 
They are buried in the almost forgotten pages of peri- 
odicals devoted to phrenology, and in works devoted 
to the possible eccentricities of cerebral action. 
If these patients are assumed to be capable of re- 
ceiving written language, and their gist is in non-ability 
to originate alone, it is obvious that Mr. Parish did not 
fall at all within the description. If there be proof 
that there was any degree of comprehension at all- 
that his faculties were not under a complete dementia, 
there is evidence that he did comprehend something 
at least, of what was written and printed. The selec- 
tion and reading of paragraphs in the newspapers, of 
the matter respecting the loan to Mr. Tileston, on the 
slate, and five or six times varied, of the broker's list 
of notes, of the footings in his bank deposit book, are 
all cases in point. 
While I am ready to show that if such a condition 
as that referred to, is a reality at all, it did not accord 
with Mr. Parish's symptoms, and while I am willing 
to give respectful hearing to the rarest narratives of 
professional experience, I cannot, even by a possible 
implication from my silence, permit it to be sup- 
posed that I have a personal belief in any such state 63 
of mind as that under consideration. I can scarcely 
conceive of a state in which the images of things should 
be brought distinctly to the invalid's mind, by means 
of words used by another, and yet he, the recipient, 
should have no capacity to conceive of the language by 
which the same or similar images could be depicted in 
return. Independently of its innate impossibility, it 
seems to me that the cases supposed to prove its ex- 
istence are too few in number, and too closely connect- 
ed with a fanciful theory, to be accepted as at all de- 
monstrative of it. 
3. As Mr. Parish was an aged, afflicted invalid, 
with trials and ailments enough to be spared any thing 
which was painful to him, it may be urged that so long 
as those around him had no doubt of his mental com- 
petency, it was not worth their while, nor consistent 
with due tenderness, to plague and harass him with 
attempts to make him express his mind in any manner 
other than that which he saw fit to adopt. If the 
reason was mere inertia, or prejudice, or indifference, it 
was kinder to indulge him, than to unduly urge him 
to exertions in learning to write, &c. 
To this I reply : the importance of his giving bet- 
ter evidence of his competency was felt and shown in 
the re-execution of his first codicil; repeated attempts 
were made, and that sometimes under what was evi- 
dently considerable irritation, with slate, paper, black- 
board and block letters, to induce him to express him- 
self; he was "coaxed" and "persuaded," again and 
again, but it was all in vain. 
It is certain, that neither of these three suggestions 
gives us the clue to the cause of the non-communicability 
of his supposed wishes, through any one of the many con- 
venient and certain conduits which were within his 
reach. It becomes necessary to consider what recog' 
nized condition of mental change will meet and cor' 64 
respond with the indications which Mr. Parish present- 
ed, during the long and dreary history of his affliction 
and infirmity. 
We think we see clearly a progressive tendency of 
disease in the brain, commencing with vertigo (and 
which might have been connected with hereditary pre- 
disposition) manifesting itself in the slighter attacks in 
Europe, and coming to a climax in the overwhelming 
stroke of apoplexy, in July, 1849. That there were 
other and more extensive pathological changes in the 
brain than such as pure, uncomplicated apoplexy would 
occasion, appears highly probable. Indeed, this is nearly 
certain, for he had from an early period in his disease, 
very frequent and severe paroxysms of epilepsy. These 
were so well marked, so perfectly in accordance with 
the universally recognized manifestations of this not 
uncommon malady, that one is entirely at a loss to un- 
derstand why any question is made as to their charac- 
ter, or why the fits should be called " spasms," " spas- 
modic," or " epileptiform." They were plain, every- 
day epilepsy, nothing more, nothing less. 
There is no evidence that he was subject to epilepsy 
prior to the decisive apoplectic fit. There is no reason 
to believe that the specific cerebral lesion, which ac- 
counts for apoplexy, and its consequent palsy, is ever 
the cause of or connected with epilepsy. The two 
diseases co-existing, it is highly probable that an aug- 
menting cerebral disease, after inducing apoplexy, per- 
haps by increasing the circulation within the cranium, 
or weakening the strength of the vessels, or other inci- 
dental cause, went on to produce these epileptic fits. 
I consider that epilepsy occurring as a sequence of 
apoplexy, would be a most probable ground of belief 
that extensive disease existed within the brain. And 
it is hardly necessary to observe, that while some occa- 
sional examples of lesion, especially of one hemisphere 65 
of the brain, with no mental impairment, are reported, 
the general law is the reverse. organic train 
disease exists, the functions of the organs are impeded ; 
the intellect is perverted or weakened. 
Even the 'continuance of epilepsy for a few years in 
its mildest and most uncomplicated forms, as most 
general experience amply shows, is not compatible with 
soundness of mind. The powers of observing, reflect- 
ing, comparing, judging, are enfeebled and lost, consti- 
tuting progressively the various stages of dementia or 
imbecility-a form of mental impairment running 
through a wide scale of gradations, until it terminates 
in almost vegetative fatuity. 
It is worthy of observation, as an important ground 
to infer the existence of extensive brain disease in Mr. 
Parish from a very early period, that the constant 
recurrence of these intense epileptic seizures did not 
seem, from the evidence of those who looked upon him 
as intelligent, to have aflected his intelligence. He is 
represented as just the same from the first to the last. 
If, as is most probable, his mind was reduced to a 
deep grade of dementia, ever after his first attack in 
July, 1849, and that the belief in his having mind was 
due to a misinterpretation of his sounds and motions, 
and a self-deception in thinking they meant something, 
this uniform dead level, this absence of change, under 
fits, sometimes as frequent as every ten days for many 
years, is accounted for. But on the assumption that 
he was perfectly himself, as several of the witnesses 
believe, from within a few weeks after the apoplexy to 
within a brief period of his death-undergoing in all 
that time no deterioration, certainly his case is anoma- 
lous and contrary to all ordinary experience. 
To fix upon the degree of imbecility which existed, 
becomes an important element in deciding upon his 
competency to execute a valid testamentary instru- 66 
ment. As lie could neither speak, nor write, nor com- 
municate, except in a method which, as we have shown, 
it was extremely difficult to say carried light from the 
mind within, and was most liable to induce mistake, it 
is scarcely practicable to say from what he actually 
did, how low the grade of mental power was. A pa- 
tient who writes disconnected, incoherent jargon, indi- 
cates his mental change at once ; one who has a power 
of ready muscular movement, may indicate his demen- 
tia by the absurdity and grotesqueness of his gesticula- 
tion, or he may show, by placing himself in positions 
of danger, that he is reduced below the point at which 
the instinct of self-preservation remains. To witness 
an intoxicated man dancing on a railway while the 
train was approaching, would leave no place for doubt 
as to his mental incapacity. But when an invalid is 
too much physically diseased to walk, when every 
effort at muscular motion is avoided, when, from some 
cause, he can neither speak, write, or communicate in 
any of the usual ways of such invalids, we must look 
at all we have-the mere passive indications, and see 
what they suggest or prove. As an expert in mental 
disorders, I am ready to stake any reputation I may 
have, in saying that I regard the circumstances con- 
nected with Mr. Parish's involuntary, disregarded 
evacuations, as pathognomonic of his condition. I say 
that the symptoms alone of a man eating his dinner 
with augmented rapidity, and fumbling at the same 
time at the opening of his pantaloons when an invol- 
untary fecal evacuation was about to occur, are pre- 
cisely such as extremely demented persons constantly 
exhibit, and such as no others than such demented 
subjects ever would manifest. Were I a priori to lay 
down the most significant characteristic symptom of 
such dementedness in cases otherwise in doubt, I could 
devise nothing more graphic, or more certainly de- 
noting that condition. 67 
If demented, there can be no more sure proof that 
it w*as of that ''extreme grade which would allow little 
further deterioration. As there seems scarcely any 
evidence of change from first to last, it necessarily fol- 
lows that, if demented, it was continuous and uninter- 
rupted, as well as complete. 
Such is my full belief. And under the whole evi- 
dence in the case, in my opinion he never had any 
comprehension, clear or obscure, sound or perverted, 
of what he was doing when these codicils were exe- 
cuted, and that they do not in any sense represent 
any rational act of his own. 
LUTHER V. BELL. 
Monument Square, Charlestown, Mass., Sept. 5, 1857. 
P. S.-Since writing the above, I have been desired 
to look over an article in the September number of the 
New York Journal of Medicine, upon " the Intellectual 
Faculties in Cases of Apoplexy and Hemiplegia," avow- 
edly addressed to the present suit, and to express my 
opinion as to its bearing and importance. 
I have done so, with as much care and thorough- 
ness as was in my power. Arriving at the conclusion 
that there is nothing in its facts or reasonings to dis- 
turb the views which I had reached, under the direct 
evidence as to Mr. Parish's mental condition, I have 
not thought it necessary or desirable to encumber 
these already extended commentaries by analyzing 
the foundations on which its conclusions are grounded. 
In fact, I see no reason to differ from the writer in 
the conclusion to which he arrives, after a pains-taking 
exhumation of the multitudinous relics of European 
hospitals, that there are occasional examples where, 
after decided apoplexy, and sometimes with epilepsy 68 
superadded, the patient may exhibit a good degree of 
mental power. 
I should, however, dissent from the suggestion that 
a careful inquisition into the mental condition of such 
sufferers would generally develope a less degree of im- 
pairment, than at first view of the external indica- 
tions might have been anticipated. On the contrary, 
I think that the physician is often amazed to find how 
deep and extensive is the dilapidation of the faculties, 
where the external manner, the effect of routinal habits 
and the self-deception of friends, had betrayed him 
into the feeling that his patient was escaping the com- 
mon doom ! But the spontaneous response to all the 
reasonings and illustrations of this paper, as to apo- 
plectic patients having more intellectual power than 
has been generally supposed, is, that whether the fact 
be so or not, whether the world and the profession be 
mistaken or not on this head, it has no possible bear- 
ing on the case of Mr. Parish. For he failed through- 
out, under any form of ingenious intonation of the 
same sound, of sign-making or pantomime, of acting 
under the request of others, and the like methods em- 
ployed by the various subjects of these cases as proofs 
of their intelligence, just as much as he did in the 
greater methods of speech, of writing, and of arranging 
the elementary letters, when offered in separate blocks, 
or pointing at them when in order before him. He is 
brought into no resemblance to or parallelism with 
these examples. 
A second and a much more important point is most 
amply demonstrated in the cases adduced in this paper, 
and especially in the last sixteen, furnished in the recent 
experience of this vicinity. This is the fact, that how- 
ever much the ordinary methods of communicating 
with others are cut off, the individual never fails, if 
he has ideas to convey, to transmit them in an intelli- 69 
gent and satisfactory manner. He may be deprived 
of the use of speech, of the use of hands, so far as 
writing is concerned, and yet leave no doubt on the 
minds of those communicating with him that there is 
a perfect exchange of ideas. 
The celebrated cases of Laura Bridgman and the 
Caswell boy, both, a while since, pupils of the Blind 
Asylum at Boston, both deaf-mutes and totally blind, 
illustrate very fully to how great a degree the ma- 
chinery of intercommunication may be destroyed, and 
yet a perfect substitution be found, so far at least as 
the proofs of interchange of ideas are concerned. 
It being then admitted, as this paper demonstrates, 
that if there be mind, it will not fail to give its outer 
manifestation, the converse of the proposition stands 
on the same basis. If there be no external exhibit of 
mind, there can be no reason to believe that the fac- 
ulties are other than in a state of absolute dilapidation 
or are absent. 
Bringing the case of Mr. Parish to this standard, is 
it not but too apparent that any power of expressing 
his ideas is not shown in all this seven years' history 
of his life, or rather of his existence ? Can any other 
deduction be justified than the painful one that he 
gave no signs of mind within, because there was no 
mind ? L. V. B. 
October, 1857<