"A sleep of sorrow."
Formerly, as before observed, many were pronounced mad who were
perfectly sane, but madness itself was scarcely ever recognised until by
violent actions or incoherent words the patient had excited fear in
others. Numbers, afflicted with incipient madness, might have been
easily cured had its presence been detected; but they were allowed to
inflict great injury upon their neighbours. This they did the more
effectually as their madness was not even suspected until the symptoms
of the malady became too glaring to be disregarded.
I will relate to you a case which presented some remarkable features. A
little girl about four years old fell down some stone steps, and
received a violent blow across the nose, which swelled enormously. She
probably was otherwise injured, but the injury on the nose was the only
one then observed. After some time the effects of the accident were to
all appearance completely cured.
As the girl grew in years, she gave signs of marvellous talent. But
apparently unable to apply herself to any particular pursuit, she became
wearied of one thing after another, and continually thirsted for
novelty. This incessant love of change extended to everything, to
friendship, love, dress, amusements; to the most serious and most
trifling matters. She was happy and melancholy at intervals, and always
in excess; nay, in her fits of extreme despondency she would even
meditate suicide.
Though disliked by some for her wayward and capricious disposition, she
was a great favourite with others. I should add that she was extremely
beautiful, indeed lovely, very witty, highly gifted, and withal so
fascinating that she never failed to charm every one at the first
interview, the novelty of the excitement, and a natural desire to please
giving impulse to her will. Although possessing so many gifts, she was
very jealous and envious of others.
Many were the offers of marriage which she accepted in succession,
abandoning one suitor after the other without any adequate reason or any
feeling of compunction. At length she unexpectedly accepted a man of
whom she had scarcely any previous knowledge.
The marriage, made at her request in a headstrong fit of impatience,
took place a few days after the proposal had been made. A child was
born, but long before its birth she had become tired of her husband. The
child she loved passionately at first, but soon became weary even of
this object of her tenderest affection, and looked upon it with
indifference! All these events had taken place during the reign of my
predecessor. Under my laws such a marriage would have been impossible.
At the age of twenty-six a frightful accident happened to this lady--she
fell into a vat of scalding liquor--a beverage prepared with honey. We
have a very effective remedy for scalds, and, though severely burnt, she
was eventually cured, but the fright had sadly shocked her nerves; a
violent fever seized the blood, she fell into a trance, her eyes were
fixed and glassy, and she gave no signs of movement except by swallowing
the little nourishment that was offered her in a liquid form.
This trance lasted some days. On awakening, the patient asked with the
tone and manner of a child, how old she was? She was extremely calm, and
a remarkable change had come over her. On the doctor's asking why she
inquired about her age, she replied that during her sleep she had been
in what seemed a long, sad, and changeful dream! She then related some
details of the injury she received when at four years old she fell down
the stone steps. Those around her at first thought that her mind was
wandering, but this notion was soon dispelled. She spoke of incidents of
her life extending over many years, as though they passed in a dream;
one incident of this dream being that she had given birth to a child,
and suffered acute pain. At one moment she saw herself in a family of
strangers who were very kind, but she knew them not,--then she saw her
family in great grief.
One of the impressions that this seeming sad dream made upon her was,
that swarms of insects had followed and enveloped her on all sides,
stinging and causing her excruciating suffering, which had extended over
a series of years of more than lifelong duration.
Sometimes in moments of despondency she saw the beautiful form of an
angel radiant with light, who spoke to her in soothing tones, and
entreated her to be patient, assuring her that her sufferings were
ordained for a good end, and that by patience and the sweetness of her
nature, she would attain the power of casting from her the torments she
endured, and that after doing much good during her mortal career she
would, when her time came to quit the world, be placed high amongst
myriads of angels. She said that whenever urged by despair to relieve
herself from her pains by a desperate course, this bright and beautiful
angel would stand before her and pour words of consolation and hope into
her ear.
In relating the incidents of her supposed dream, her whole manner was so
different from the former state of excitement, to which her friends had
been accustomed, that all saw she was perfectly rational, although
relating as a dream what had occurred during twenty-two years of her
actual life. It seemed as though all the time that had elapsed since she
was four years of age belonged as it were to another and differently
constituted brain; and that she had now resumed the thread of her life
from the time when she was four years old, the period of the first
accident.
When the husband and child were brought to her she knew them not, though
she had some vague notion of having seen them in her dream. The husband
prayed her to return to him: she said she was not his wife, and could
not accept him as a husband; that she felt no love for the child, and
could not even like it as a playmate. She recollected her parents when
they were twenty-two years of age, and could not understand how they
could be so much changed.
In all her occupations and amusements she acted as a young child, but
she gradually increased in understanding, and in sixteen years after her
recovery she became a most accomplished person, without, however,
possessing the varied talent of former times. She lived seventy-two
years after the trance (in all ninety-eight years) now a short life with
us; but never, till the day of her death, could she understand that she
had lived during the twenty-two years which filled up the space between
the first and second accidents. Strange to say, during that interval, no
one had suspected that her brain was affected. Nearly the whole period
had elapsed before the commencement of my rule, or the evil would have
been detected and remedied, not by confining the patient and driving her
into madness, but by gentle means.
The medical officers had no doubt of her complete re-establishment:
besides, shortly after her return to calmness they applied the tests
recently discovered, and the result furnished conclusive evidence that
the malady had been eradicated. On an examination after death there was
indeed, as the doctors thought, an unhealthy absence of certain
microscopic animalcula, the effects of whose continued presence in
excess in one portion of the brain to the detriment of others, lead to
madness. The substance of the brain was poor and watery, and it seemed
as though at other times there had been more brain than was then found;
the lining of the brain was coated with a substance in outward
appearance not unlike the fur which sometimes accumulates on the tongue
in a fever. The doctors had reason to believe that this fur was composed
of the remains of the insects which, probably, had been killed at the
time of the second accident, either by the shock or the fumes of the
boiling liquid, and it was to this accidental circumstance that they
were inclined to attribute the recovery of those parts of the brain
which had remained, as it were, slumbering since the first accident.