near Cologne was similarly brought to an abrupt end. The Government
sent an inspector. He found that the boys had visions of Christ, the
Virgin, and departed saints. He threatened to close the school if
these visions continued, and thus to exclude the students from all the
prospects which their studies afforded them. 'The effect was as magical
as the red-hot iron remedy--the revivals ceased as if by magic.'
The following singular cases are related in Zimmermann's _Solitude_:--A
nun, in a very large convent in France, began to mew like a cat. At
last all the nuns began to mew together every day at a certain time,
and continued mewing for several hours together. This daily cat-concert
continued, until the nuns were informed that a company of soldiers
was placed by the police before the entrance to the convent, and that
the soldiers were provided with rods with which they would whip the
nuns until they promised not to mew any more,' ... 'In the fifteenth
century, a nun in a German convent fell to biting her companions. In
the course of a short time all the nuns of this convent began biting
each other. The news of this infatuation among the nuns soon spread,
and excited the same elsewhere; the biting mania passing from convent
to convent through a great part of Germany. It afterwards visited the
nunneries of Holland, and even spread as far as Rome.' No suggestion
of bodily disease is made in either case. But anyone who considers
how utterly unnatural is the manner of life in monastic communities
will not need the evidence derived from the spread of such preposterous
habits to be assured that in convents the perfectly sane mind in a
perfectly healthy body must be the exception rather than the rule.
The dancing mania, which spread through a large part of Europe in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although it eventually attacked
persons who were seemingly in robust health, yet had its origin in
disease. Dr. Hecker, who has given the most complete account we have
of this strange mania, in his _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, says
that when the disease was completely developed the attack commenced
with epileptic convulsions. 'Those affected fell to the ground
senseless, panting and labouring for breath. They foamed at the
mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amidst strange
contortions. They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing to have
lost all control over their senses continued dancing, regardless of the
bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they
fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of
extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until
they were swathed in clothes bound tightly round their waists; upon
which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until
the next attack.... While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being
insensible to external impressions through the senses; but they were
haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names
they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt
as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them
to leap so high. Others during the paroxysm saw the heavens open,
and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the
religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected
in their imaginations.' The epidemic attacked people of all stations,
but especially those who led a sedentary life, such as shoemakers and
tailors; yet even the most robust peasants finally yielded to it. They
'abandoned their labours in the fields as if they were possessed by
evil spirits, and those affected were seen assembling indiscriminately
from time to time, at certain appointed places, and unless prevented
by the lookers-on, continued to dance without intermission, until
their very last breath was expended. Their fury and extravagance of
demeanour so completely deprived them of their senses, that many
of them dashed their brains out against the walls and corners of
buildings, or rushed headlong in rapid rivers, where they found a
watery grave. Roaring and foaming as they were, the bystanders could
only succeed in restraining them by placing benches and chairs in their
way, so that by the high leaps they were thus tempted to take, their
strength might be exhausted. As soon as this was the case they fell,
as it were, lifeless to the ground, and by very slow degrees recovered
their strength. Many there were who even with all this exertion had not
expended the violence of the tempest which raged within them; but awoke
with newly revived powers, and again and again mixed with the crowd of
dancers; until at length the violent excitement of their disordered
nerves was allayed by the great involuntary exertion of their limbs,
and the mental disorder was calmed by the exhaustion of the body. The
cure effected by these stormy attacks was in many cases so perfect,
that some patients returned to the factory or plough, as if nothing
had happened. Others, on the contrary, paid the penalty of their folly
by so total a loss of power, that they could not regain their former
health, even by the employment of the most strengthening remedies.'
It may be doubted, perhaps, by some whether such instances as these
illustrate so much the state to which the mind is reduced when the body
is diseased, as the state to which the body is reduced when the mind
is diseased, though, as we have seen, the dancing mania when fully
developed followed always on bodily illness. In the cases we now have
to deal with, the diseased condition of the body was unmistakable.
Mrs. Hemans on her deathbed said that it was impossible for imagination
to picture or pen to describe the delightful visions which passed
before her mind. They made her waking hours more delightful than those
passed in sleep. It is evident that these visions had their origin
in the processes of change affecting the substance of the brain as
the disease of the body progressed. But it does not follow that the
substance of the brain was undergoing changes necessarily tending
to its ultimate decay and dissolution. Quite possibly the changes
were such as might occur under the influence of suitable medicinal
or stimulant substances, and without any subsequent ill effects.
Dr. Richardson, in an interesting article on ether-drinking and
extra-alcoholic intoxication (_Gentleman's Magazine_ for October),
makes a remark which suggests that the medical men of our day look
forward to the discovery of means for obtaining some such influence
over the action of the brain. After describing the action of methylic
and ethylic ethers in his own case, he says: 'They who have felt
this condition, who have lived as it were in another life, however
transitorily, are easily led to declare with Davy that "nothing
exists but thoughts! the universe is composed of impressions, ideas,
pleasures, and pains!" I believe it is so, and that we might by
scientific art, and there is such an art, learn to live altogether in
a new sphere of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.' But stay,'
he adds, as if he had said too much, 'I am anticipating, unconsciously,
something else that is in my mind. The rest is silence; I must return
to the world in which we now live, and which all know.'
Mr. Butterworth mentions the case of the Rev. William Tennent, of
Freehold, New Jersey, as illustrative of strange mental faculties
possessed during disease. Tennent was supposed to be far gone in
consumption. At last, after a protracted illness, he seemingly died,
and preparations were made for his funeral. Not only were his friends
deceived, but he was deceived himself, for he thought he was dead, and
that his spirit had entered Paradise. 'His soul, as he thought, was
borne aloft to celestial altitudes, and was enraptured by visions of
God and all the hosts of Heaven. He seemed to dwell in an enchanted
region of limitless light and inconceivable splendour. At last an
angel came to him and told him that he must go back. Darkness, like an
overawing shadow, shut out the celestial glories; and, full of sudden
horror, he uttered a deep groan. This dismal utterance was heard by
those around him, and prevented him from being buried alive, after all
the preparations had been made for the removal of the body.'
We must not fall into the mistake of supposing, however, as many seem
to do, that the visions seen under such conditions, or by ecstatics,
really present truths of which the usual mental faculties could not
become cognisant. We have heard such cases as the deathbed visions of
Mrs. Hemans, and the trance visions of Tennent, urged as evidence in
favour of special forms of doctrine. We have no thought of attacking
these, but assuredly they derive no support from evidence of this
sort. The dying Hindoo has visions which the Christian would certainly
not regard as heaven-born. The Mahomedan sees the plains of Paradise,
peopled by the houris of his heaven, but we do not on that account
accept the Koran as the sole guide to religious truth. The fact is,
that the visions pictured by the mind during the disease of the body,
or in the ecstatic condition, have their birth in the mind itself,
and take their form from the teachings with which that mind has been
imbued. They may, indeed, seem utterly unlike those we should expect
from the known character of the visionary, just as the thoughts of a
dying man may be, and often are, very far removed from the objects
which had occupied all his attention during the later years of his
life. But if the history of the childhood and youth of an ecstatic
could be fully known, or if (which is exceedingly unlikely) we could
obtain a strictly truthful account of such matters from himself, we
should find nearly every circumstance of his visions explained, or at
least an explanation suggested. For, after all, much which would be
necessary to exactly show the origin of all he saw, would be lost,
since the brain retains impressions of many things of which the
conscious memory has entirely passed away.
The vivid picturing of forgotten events of life is a familiar
experience of the opium-eater. Thus De Quincey says: 'The minutest
incidents of childhood or forgotten scenes of later years, were often
revived. I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had been told
of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as
part of my past experience. But placed as they were before me in dreams
like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and
accompanying feelings, I recognised them instantaneously.' A similar
return of long-forgotten scenes and incidents to the mind may be
noticed, though not to the same degree, when wine has been taken in
moderate quantity after a long fast.
The effects of hachisch are specially interesting in this connection,
because, unless a very powerful dose has been taken, the hachischin
does not wholly lose the power of introspection, so that he is able
afterwards to recall what has passed through his mind when he was under
the influence of the drug. Now Moreau, in his interesting _Etudes
Psychologiques_ (_Du Hachich et d'Aliénation Mentale_), says that the
first result of a dose sufficient to produce the _hachisch fantasia_
is a feeling of intense happiness. 'It is really _happiness_ which is
produced by the hachisch; and by this simply an enjoyment entirely
moral, and by no means sensual as we might be induced to suppose. This
is surely a very curious circumstance; and some remarkable inferences
might be drawn from it; this, for instance, among others--that every
feeling of joy and gladness, even when the cause of it is exclusively
moral--that those enjoyments which are least connected with material
objects, the most spiritual, the most ideal, may be nothing else than
sensations purely physical, developed in the interior of the system,
as are those procured by hachisch. At least so far as relates to that
of which we are internally conscious, there is no distinction between
these two orders of sensations, in spite of the diversity in the
causes to which they are due; for the hachisch-eater is happy, not like
the gourmand or the famished man when satisfying his appetite, or the
voluptuary in gratifying his amative desires, but like him who hears
tidings which fill him with joy, like the miser counting his treasures,
the gambler who is successful at play, or the ambitious man who is
intoxicated with success.'
My special object, however, in noting the effects of opium and
hachisch, is rather to note how the mental processes or faculties
observed during certain states of disease may be produced artificially,
than to enter into the considerations discussed by Dr. Moreau. It is
singular that while the Mohamedan order of Hachischin (or Assassins)
bring about by the use of their favourite drug such visions as
accompany the progress of certain forms of disease, the Hindoo devotees
called the Yogi are able to produce artificially the state of mind and
body recognised in cataleptic patients. The less-advanced Yogi can
only enter the state of abstraction called reverie; but the higher
orders can simulate absolute inanition, the heart apparently ceasing
to beat, the lungs to act, and the nerves to convey impressions to
the brain, even though the body be subjected to processes which would
cause extreme torture under ordinary conditions. 'When in this state,'
says Carpenter, 'the Yogi are supposed to be completely possessed by
Brahma, "the supreme soul," and to be incapable of sin in thought,
word, or deed.' It has been supposed that this was the state into which
those entered who in old times were resorted to as oracles. But it has
happened that in certain stages of disease the power of assuming the
death-like state has been possessed for a time. Thus Colonel Townsend,
who died in 1797, we read, had in his last sickness the extraordinary
power of apparently dying and returning to life again at will. 'I found
his pulse sink gradually,' says Dr. Cheyne, who attended him, 'so that
I could not feel it by the most exact or nice touch. Dr. Raymond could
not detect the least motion of the heart, nor Dr. Skrine the least soil
of the breath upon the bright mirror held to the mouth. We began to
fear he was actually dead. He then began to breathe softly.' Colonel
Townsend repeated the experiment several times during his illness, and
could always render himself insensible at will.
Lastly, I may mention a case, which, however, though illustrating
in some degree the influence of bodily illness on the mind, shows
still more strikingly how the mind may influence the body--that of
Louise Lateau, the Belgian peasant. This girl had been prostrated by
a long and exhausting illness, from which she recovered rapidly after
receiving the sacrament. This circumstance made a strong impression
on her mind. Her thoughts dwelt constantly on the circumstances
attending the death of Christ. At length she noticed that, on every
Friday, blood came from a spot in her left side. 'In the course of a
few months similar bleeding spots established themselves on the front
and back of each hand, and on the upper surface of each foot, while
a circle of small spots formed in the forehead, and the hæmorrhage
from these recurred every Friday, sometimes to a considerable amount.
About the same time, fits of ecstasy began to occur, commencing every
Friday between eight and nine in the morning, and ending about six
in the evening; interrupting her in conversation, in prayer, or in
manual occupations. This state,' says Dr. Carpenter, 'appears to have
been intermediate between that of the biologised and that of the
hypnotised subject; for whilst as unconscious as the latter of all
sense-impressions, she retained, like the former, a recollection of
all that had passed through her mind during the ecstasy. She described
herself as suddenly plunged into a vast flood of bright light, from
which more or less distinct forms began to evolve themselves; and she
then witnessed the several scenes of the Passion successively passing
before her. She minutely described the cross and the vestments, the
wounds, the crown of thorns about the head of the Saviour, and gave
various details regarding the persons about the cross, the disciples,
holy women, Jews and Roman soldiers. And the progress of her vision
might be traced by the succession of actions she performed at various
stages of it: most of these movements were expressive of her own
emotions, whilst regularly about three in the afternoon she extended
her limbs in the form of a cross. The fit terminated with a state of
extreme physical prostration; the pulse being scarcely perceptible, the
breathing slow and feeble, and the whole surface bedewed with a cold
perspiration. After this state had continued for about ten minutes, a
return to the normal condition rapidly took place.'
There seems no reason for supposing that there was any deceit on the
part of Louise Lateau herself, though that she was self-deceived no
one can reasonably doubt. Of course many in Belgium, especially the
more ignorant and superstitious (including large numbers of the clergy
and of religious orders of men and women), believed that her ecstasies
were miraculous, and no doubt she believed so herself. But none of the
circumstances observed in her case, or related by her, were such as
the physiologist would find any difficulty in accepting or explaining.
Her visions were such as might have been expected in a person of her
peculiar nervous organisation, weakened as her body had been by long
illness, and her mind affected by what she regarded as her miraculous
recovery. As to the transudation of blood from the skin, Dr. Tuke, in
his 'Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health
and Disease' (p. 267), shows the phenomenon to be explicable naturally.
It is a well-authenticated fact, that under strong emotional excitement
blood escapes through the perspiratory ducts, apparently through the
rupture of the walls of the capillary passages of the skin.
We see, then, in Louise Lateau's case, how the mind affected by disease
may acquire faculties not possessed during health, and how in turn the
mind thus affected may influence the body so strangely as to suggest to
ignorant or foolish persons the operation of supernatural agencies.
The general conclusion to which we seem led by the observed
peculiarities in the mental faculties during disease is, that the
mind depends greatly on the state of the body for the co-ordination
of its various powers. In health, these are related in what may be
called the normal manner. Faculties capable of great development
under other conditions exist in moderate degree only, while probably,
either consciously or unconsciously, certain faculties are held in
control by others. But during illness, faculties not ordinarily used
suddenly or very rapidly acquire undue predominance, and controlling
faculties usually effective are greatly weakened. Then for a while
the mental capacity seems entirely changed. Powers supposed not to
exist at all (for of mental faculties, as of certain other qualities,
_de non existentibus et de non apparentibus eadem est ratio_) seem
suddenly created, as if by a miracle. Faculties ordinarily so strong
as to be considered characteristic seem suddenly destroyed, since they
no longer produce any perceptible effect. Or, as Brown-Sequard says,
summing up the results of a number of illustrative cases described in
a course of lectures delivered in Boston: 'It would seem that the mind
is largely dependent on physical conditions for the exercise of its
faculties, and that its strength and most remarkable powers, as well as
its apparent weakness, are often most clearly shown and recognised by
some inequality of action in periods of disturbed and greatly impaired
health.'
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 20: Since the above was written I have noticed a passage in
Dr. Carpenter's _Mental Physiology_, p. 719, bearing on the matter I
have been dealing with:--'The following statement recently made to me
by a gentleman of high intelligence, the editor of a most important
provincial newspaper, would be almost incredible, if cases somewhat
similar were not already familiar to us:--'I was formerly,' he said,
'a reporter in the House of Commons; and it several times happened
to me that, having fallen asleep from sheer fatigue towards the
end of a debate, I had found, on awaking after a short interval of
entire unconsciousness, that I had continued to note down correctly
the speaker's words.' 'I believe,' he added, 'that this is not an
uncommon experience among Parliamentary reporters.' The reading aloud
with correct emphasis and intonation, or the performance of a piece
of music, or (as in the case of Albert Smith) the recitation of a
frequently repeated composition, whilst the conscious mind is _entirely
engrossed_ in its own thoughts and feelings, may be thus accounted
for without the supposition that the mind is actively engaged in two
different operations at the same moment, which would seem tantamount to
saying that there are two egos in the same organism.' An instance in
my own experience seems even more remarkable than the reporter's work
during sleep, for he had but to continue a mechanical process, whereas
in my case there must have been thought. Late one evening at Cambridge
I began a game of chess with a fellow-student (now a clergyman, and
well known in chess circles). I was tired after a long day's rowing,
but continued the game to the best of my ability, until at a certain
stage I fell asleep, or rather fell into a waking dream. At any rate
all remembrance of what passed after that part of the game had entirely
escaped me when I awoke or returned to consciousness about three in
the morning. The chessboard was there, but the men were not as when
the last conscious move was made. The opponent's king was checkmated.
I supposed my opponent had set the men in this position either as a
joke or in trying over some end game. But I was assured that the game
had continued to the end, and that I had won, apparently playing as if
fully conscious! Of course I cannot certify this of my own knowledge.]
_DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS._