I am glad to have the opportunity of publishing, in a medium so widely
read by the medical profession, the MS. of the widow of the late
Professor Blair.
Her mind undoubtedly became unhinged through grief at her husband’s
death; the medical man who attended him in his last illness grew
alarmed at her condition, and had her watched. She tried (fruitlessly)
to purchase dynamite at several shops, but on her going to the
laboratory of her late husband, and attempting to manufacture Chloride
of Nitrogen, obviously for the purpose of suicide, she was seized,
certified insane, and placed in my care.
The case is most unusual in several respects.
(1) I have never known her inaccurate in any statement of
verifiable fact.
(2) She can undoubtedly read thoughts in an astonishing manner. In
particular, she is actually useful to me by her ability to foretell
attacks of acute insanity in my patients. Some hours before they
occur she can predict them to a minute. On an early occasion my
disbelief in her power led to the dangerous wounding of one of my
attendants.
(3) She combines a fixed determination of suicide (in the
extraordinary manner described by her) with an intense fear of
death. She smokes uninterruptedly, and I am obliged to allow her
to fumigate her room at night with the same drug.
(4) She is certainly only twenty-four years old, and any competent
judge would with equal certainty declare her sixty.
(5) Professor von Buehle, to whom the note-books were sent,
addressed to me a long and urgent telegram, begging her release on
condition that she would promise not to commit suicide, but go to
work with him in Bonn. I have yet to learn, however, that German
professors, however eminent, have any voice in the management of
a private asylum in England, and I am certain that the Lunacy
Commissioners will uphold me in my refusal to consider the question.
It will then be clearly understood that this document is published with
all reserve as the lucubration of a very peculiar, perhaps unique, type
of insanity.