The most obvious remark suggested by this case is, that, like many old
cases, when once an irritable habit is established in any part of the
mind, how easily the mere association of old existing causes will
overturn the balance and introduce a relapse into the same state: no
exciting causes can have more power to do this, than the constant painful
state of mind which ill-assorted and unhappy marriages produce; and
therefore, the next most obvious remark suggested by this case, is the
evil which arises from the whole mind being ultimately disagreeably
affected by the contraction of hasty, mistaken, and ill-assorted
matrimonial connexions. As the sublime principle of rightly-constituted
and spiritual or mental marriage is involved in the consideration of such
cases; and as, from the want of a proper understanding of this principle
being duly impressed upon mankind, the evils and miseries which the
parties bring upon themselves and entail upon their offspring in the
world, are so numerous and so frightful, and so frequently the cause of
the most terrible forms of insanity, I shall, in an after part of this
work, endeavour to embody in an essay expressly on this subject, all the
arguments which I can bring forth, for the purpose of enforcing this
first, this inmost, this greatest, grandest principle involving the
happiness and well-being of the world.
_No._ 31.—_Admitted_ 1808.—_Aged_ 30.
He is a surgeon, and was formerly in great repute as a successful
practitioner, as well as a lecturer on anatomy, surgery, and the practice
of physic.
[Picture: No. 31 page 203]
He was very studious, and chiefly during the night, though his sleep was
already sufficiently broken by his professional labour. As a young
student he was ambitious to excel, as he would often say, “I employed my
time well, that it might serve me in after life; and it did so.”
His mind is naturally one of much greater activity than power, hence his
harassing day and night practice and preparation for lecturing induced a
morbid state of mind, in which condition a fever in his family occurred.
Rapidly and unexpectedly, four male children, a niece, and a
maid-servant, were the victims, and this completed the wreck of his
overworked, active, and feeling mind.
His present state is most interesting and singular, and very difficult to
describe. His activity of mind, prodigious command of words, and most
animated and graceful manner, excite the greatest surprise; and even in
his present deranged and deluded condition, with his varied stores of
information, these exhibitions are mistaken for the remnants of
versatility of genius; yet, as I have already said, it is most true that
his mind was not naturally one of so much power as it was of amazing
ambition and activity.
He will suddenly rush into some of his anatomical, surgical, and medical
lectures, going through different parts of the human body, operations,
and practice. His lectures on the circulation of the blood, seem to have
been most strongly impressed upon his memory. At other times, his
eloquence is displayed in imitations of various celebrated characters.
If they are ancients, and he be asked, how can this be? since they lived
two thousand years ago, he says: “Yes, but I died and rose again in the
world.” And thus, he imagines himself every character he personifies,
and that at that time he was alive, and afterwards died, again
reappearing in such another character. In this way having passed through
numberless transmigrations, he was Adam, Abel, or Melchisadeck, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Goliah, David, and Solomon.
Solomon had great attractions: frequently describing, with great
animation, his state of grandeur and enjoyment. In the same way he was
Aristotle, Pythagoras, Confucius, Plato, Zoroaster, Pliny, Ptolemy,
Cicero, Demosthenes, and particularly Homer, Mahomet, and even our
Saviour, &c. All these he will still personate, and make speeches
differing in manner and matter, and suitable in some measure to each of
them.
In medicine, all the list of celebrated men are claimed as the same
transmigration of his soul. He lifted up the serpent. He was
Hypocrates, Celsus, Galen, Paracelsus, Stahl, Van Helmont, Boerhave,
Cullen. In anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and natural philosophy, it was
the same. The whole list of celebrated medical men is monopolized by
this mania of transmigration.
He always addressed strangers as contemporaries, saying, “Good God! you
were alive at such a time: I knew you well; you were with me when I
conquered at the plains of Marathon! or, you met me at such a place when
I was singing the Iliad, as old Homer,” and so on. All this with such a
fascination of look, manner, and address, that he arrests and amuses
every one, especially strangers. He frequently talks with imaginary, and
especially angelic beings, which he does with a manner and expression
that prove he believes he beholds their actual presence.
He had a peculiarly bright and glistening eye, indicative of the secret
and destructive habit so dreadfully fatal to the insane.
It appeared to me, since amidst all this strange confusion and delusion,
his intellectual powers were still in existence, that if his
understanding could be constantly occupied, this confused condition might
in time be corrected, and his mind restored to a right state: for this
purpose I undertook to make him translate a French work, while I wrote
from his dictation, at the same time checking and controlling his wild
starts into all these vagaries. In this manner we nearly finished an
important medical work together, and he was evidently much improved by
the exercise; the task was however so amazingly arduous, that in the
midst of my other duties I was obliged to discontinue it, and he then
relapsed into his former state.
The effect, however, was sufficiently decided to prove a fact of very
great importance, and many such facts having since occurred, which
further tend to confirm that many cases which are generally given over as
incurable, may be cured by a well-directed exercise of the understanding,
by which it is at once strengthened, and the mind drawn and excluded from
the exercise of its insane feelings and hallucinations. In some cases I
have made them translate a work on the nature and effects of _their
secret vice_, and it has silently checked this habit, and at last
restored them.
* * * * *
Here I close my description of these old cases, conceiving I have given a
sufficient number for the purpose I had in view, that of exhibiting a
fair average picture of the state and character of the old insane. After
one general abstract observation on the whole essay, I shall afterwards,
and following this last case, make my next essay on the origin and nature
of disease in general, and of insanity in particular: and which I shall
do as preliminary to the more intimate and direct investigation of the
causes and nature of insanity; and especially the direct consideration of
the cause to which I have alluded in this case, because it is one of the
most general and most fatal causes of insanity, and a cause, which if not
removed, inevitably renders them incurable. Such was the habit of the
person whose case obliged me very reluctantly to assume a defensive
attitude, and refute falsehood by a statement of the truth, or otherwise
I should have continued silently to proceed in the path of duty, without
obtruding our own secret exertions on the notice of the public, as it may
appear that I have done in this essay, as well as in those which are to
follow, written, as they will be, in some measure on the same principle,
for the truth should not suffer from diffidence, any more than it ought
to be brought into disrepute by vain ostentation; still, I am quite
certain, that I am actuated by no feelings incompatible with charity and
justice.