HABIT. • The following case, from Dr Percival's Dissertations, affords an example of that kind of association to which the name of habit is commonly given : " Several years ago," says our author, " the countess of — fell in to an apoplexy about seven o'clock in the morning. Amongst other stimulating applications, I directed a feather dipped in hartshorn to be frequently introduced into her nostrils. Her ladyship, when in health, was much addicted to the taking of snuff; and the present irritation of the olfactory nerves produced a junction of the fore finger and thumb of the right hand ; • the eleva tion of them to the nose ; and the action of snuffing in the nostrils. When the snuffing ceased, the hand and arm dropped down in a torpid state. A fresh application of the stimulus renewed those successive efforts ; and I was witness to their repetition, till the hartshorn lost its power of irritation, probably by destroying the sensi bility of the olfactory nerves. The countess recovered from the fit, about six o'clock in the evening ; but though it was neither long nor severe, her memory never after wards furnished the least trace of consciousness, ing its continuance." Another fact of the same kind, and furnished by the same author, is as follows : " Mr W— had been long confined to his chamber by a palsy, and other ailments. Every evening about six o'clock he played at cards with some of the family. He was seized in June, 1780, at
three o'clock in the afternoon, with a fit, which termi nated in decipiency. At the stated hour of card play ing, he fancied himself to he engaged in his usual game ; talked of cards, as if they were in his hand ; and was very angry at his daughter, when she endeavoured to rectify his mistaken imagination. His fatuity was of short continuance ; but, when recovered from it, he ex pressed no recollection of what had passed." The story related by Dr Willis, in his essay De Aram. Brut. pars i. c. 16. is still more remarkable. it is of an ideot, who, residing within the sound of a clock, regu larly amused himself with counting aloud the hours of the day, whenever the hammer of that instrument struck : but being afterwards removed to a situation where there was no clock, lie still retained the former impressions so strongly, that he continued to distinguish the ordinary divisions of time, repeating at the end of every hour the precise number of strokes which the clock would have struck at that period. • Mr Addison has quoted this fact, in one of the Spectators, not from the original, but from Dr Plott's History of Stafford shire, and has deduced from it many important moral re flections. (2n)