“My eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses.”
MACBETH.
ASTR. I marvel not, lady, that those pencilled brows do frown upon the
ruthless scholar, who thus dares to dismantle the fair realm of poesy,
and bind the poppy, and the cypress, and the deadly nightshade, with the
myrtle and the laurel.
We shall have, ere long, a statute of lunacy against the poet and the
seer; or hapless, he will imprison thee, fair creature, within a cloven
pine: and like Prospero, I must break my wand and bury it certain
fathoms in the earth; and, deeper than ever plummet sounded, drown my
books. The pages of Ptolemy, and Haly, and Agrippa, and Lily, will be
but bygone fables: and the metaphysics of the mighty mind will be
controverted by the slicing of the brain and marrow with the knife of
these anatomists. Nay, we must devoutly believe what they so learnedly
give out, that frontal headaches in the locality of _form_, _colour_,
and _number_, and forsooth in the _organ of wonder_ too, often accompany
spectral illusions, and that white or grey ghosts result from excited
form and deficient colour!!
Martin Luther, who was a believer in special influence, quarrelled with
the physician, who referred its mystic signs to natural causes. I am not
so uncourteous, yet express my wonder, Evelyn, at the confidence with
which you presume to the discovery of a _material_ reason and a cause,
for all the phenomena of our mysterious intellect.
EV. And why should I not, dear Astrophel, if I search for and discover
it in the studies of that sublime science, the meditation on which
inspired Galen with this pious sentiment: “Compono hic profecto canticum
in Creatoris nostri laudem.”
Is it more profane to think that the Deity should speak to us through
the medium of our senses, than by the agency of a spirit? Recollect, I
have presumed neither to enter deeply into metaphysical reasoning, nor
to describe, minutely, the condition of the brain; and I have alluded
but slightly to the supposed function of its varied structures. Lord
Bacon has observed: “He who would philosophize in a due and proper
manner must _dissect_ nature, but not _abstract_ her, as they are
obliged to do who will not dissect her.” Dissection, however, in its
_anatomical_ sense, has not, perhaps cannot, elucidate the coincidence
of symptom and pathology in cases which so seldom prove fatal, and the
causes of which may be so evanescent. Still, it is only by a combination
of metaphysical argument and anatomical research, with the essential aid
of _analogy_, that the phenomena and disease of mind can be fairly
investigated.
In the important question of insanity, there is an error among the mere
metaphysicians that is fraught with extreme danger—the abstract notion
of _moral_ causes being the chief excitement of mania. This error has
led to that melancholy abuse of the coercive treatment and excitement of
fear in a maniac; as if a savage keeper possessed the wondrous power of
frightening him _into_ his wits. Hear what the magniloquent Reil writes
on this point: “The reception of a lunatic should be amid the thunder of
cannon; he should be introduced by night, over a drawbridge, be laid
hold of by Moors, thrust into a subterranean dungeon, and put into a
bath with eels and other beasts!”
And Lichtenberg, another _moral_ philanthropist, sanctioned by the
divine axiom—“the rod helps God,” urges the employment of coercion and
cruelty for this sublime psychological reason: that under the infliction
of the lash and the cane, “the soul is forced to knit itself once more
to that world, from which the _cudgels_ come!” Think ye that these
moralists, if not hood-winked by false metaphysics, would have so
closely copied the malevolence of an inquisitor or a devil?
We must believe that each illusive representation is marked by _some_
change in some certain portion of the brain, the function of which bears
a reference to the subject or nature of the illusion: it may be so
minute as not to be recognized by our vision. Indeed, if the bodily
sensations of every human passion be faithfully analyzed, it will be
proved that there is an _unusual feeling_ in some part, when even a
thought passes through the mind, under these definitions:—_a thrill_,
_a creeping_, _a glow_, _a flush_, _a chill_, _a tremor_,—nay, even
fainting, convulsion, death.
Now the brain feels, and thinks, and wills; but the blood is also
essential to these faculties. If part of the brain is changed, or its
circulation deranged, in that instant an _effect unlike health_ is
produced: and such is the illusion of the ghost-seer. Or if the
substance of the organ of sense, as the eye, be altered, its function is
deranged, and an illusive spectrum appears to float before it. Nay, we
are assured by Tiedeman and Gall, (opinions of high value,) that they
have known patients who (smile as you please) were mad only on _one
side_ of the brain, and perceived their madness with _the other_; and
_I_ may assure you, too, that there have been persons who really thought
with half the brain only.
I will again claim the courtesy of these fair dames, while I offer
another glimpse of the dull cold region of physiology.
Recollect the illustrations I have adduced in allusion to those classes,
on whose privacy the ghost has the privilege of intrusion. I will now
offer illustrations of those _remote influences_ which work these
seeming mysteries in the sensitive or diseased brain.
A patient of Dr. Gregory, at the hour of six, _one hour after dinner_,
was daily visited by a hag, or incubus, which confronted him, and
appeared to strike him with a crutch. Immediately on this he would fall
from his chair in a swoon. This gentleman was relieved by bleeding and
abstinence.
The Abbé Pilori, in Florence, invariably saw the phantom of scorpions
around him, after he had partaken of luncheon.
There was a gentleman in Edinburgh, learned in fourteen languages, of
the age of seventy-six. In 1819, he began to see strange faces, in old
dresses, like paintings, and his own face changing from young to old;
and these phantoms came at his call. Wine drinking increased especially
these spectres, during the twelve years that the illusion continued; yet
his mental faculties were not much impaired. When eighty years old, he
came to London to dine with the Knights of the Bath, and went back at
the rate of a hundred miles a-day. His language latterly was a _patois_
of fourteen. One night he saw his dead wife’s shadow, and jumped after
her out of the window, and ran after her through the conservatory; yet
he remembered, when told that his wife was dead, and was then quiet.
Disordered digestion aggravated his case extremely. Mr. Gragg’s opinion
was, that “his thinking was correct, but the _expression_ of thought
wrong.” On examination, the _dura mater_ was found adherent to the
skull: in parts there was a thick effusion and vascularity over the
brain, and the _carotids_ were partially ossified.
In a mind excited or exhausted, the natural sympathy between the _brain_
and the _stomach_ is wrought up to an extreme. And in the two most
interesting cases of spectral illusion on record, this instance is
beautifully illustrated. The bookseller of Berlin, Nicolai (whose
phantasms are become so hackneyed a tale in the records of Psychology),
had been thus mentally excited. It were long to repeat the
circumstantial and scientific detail of his waking visions: of his
ghosts of departed friends, and of strangers to him, and of the groups
of shadowy figures which glided through his chamber at these spectral
levees; and how his philosophic mind distinguished the intrusion of the
spectre at the door and the real friend to whom its opening gave
admittance; and how they disappeared when he shut his eyes, and came
again as he opened his lids; or how he was at last amused by his
analysis of all these illusive spectra. But the sympathy to which I have
alluded will be efficiently proved by one quotation from the Prussian’s
recital. During the time leeches were applied to his temples, his
chamber was crowded with phantoms. “This continued uninterruptedly till
about half-past four o’clock, when my digestion commenced. I then
fancied that they began to move more slowly: soon after, their colour
began to fade, and at seven o’clock they were entirely white: then they
seemed to dissolve in the air, while fragments of some of them continued
visible a considerable time.” On other occasions, they attempted to
re-appear, and changed to white, more and more faintly as his health
improved.
There is equal interest, both for science and curiosity, in the illusion
of Mrs. A. (as told by Brewster, in his “Natural Magic”), and which
sprung from the like causes. The sympathetic sensitiveness of this lady
was so acute, that an expression of pain in another produced it in the
_corresponding_ part of herself. And she, too, was intruded on by
spectres of men and women, and cats and carriages, and by corpses in
shrouds peering over her shoulder at her toilet-glass, and ghastly
likenesses of gentlemen in grave-clothes, sitting unceremoniously in arm
chairs in her drawing-room. And yet the perfect restoration of the
lady’s health was coincident with her _complete_ freedom from these
spectral visitations.
You will read in the Anatomie of Melancholy, that “Eremites and
anchorites have frequently such absurd visions and revelations, by
reason of much fasting.” In exhaustion, too, or on the approach of
vertigo, if we shut our eyes, we seem as if turning round ourselves, and
if we open them, then this whimsical movement is referred to the chairs
and tables in our chamber.
These, then, are the remote sympathies with the organs of digestion; and
this chiefly by the derangement of the circulation of the blood, between
the brain and the heart.
In the case of an enlarged heart, Dr. Kelly discovered that a dark
spectrum was perceived _synchronous_ with the _systole_, or contraction
of _its ventricles_; so that the patient could count his pulse merely by
watching the motion of this illusive shade on the white ceiling of his
room.
The study of these false perceptions, which result from derangement or
disease of the eye, are replete with interest. You are aware that the
function of a nerve of sensation is so deranged by disease, that in some
cases of paralysis cold bodies will appear heated. So, by analogy, is
the function of a nerve of _sense_ deranged, if its _fibrillæ_ be
disordered.
We have _Myopia_, or short sight; _Presbyopia_, or long sight;
_Chrupsia_, or coloured vision. We have night-blindness, or dim vision,
and day-blindness, or intolerance of light,—as in the albino, or owl. I
had, and I have now, a second relative, whose vision is insensible to
certain colours; and the chemist, Dalton, we know, could not distinguish
blue from pink.
In a Glasgow Medical Journal, I read this statement by a patient:—“No
colour contrasts to me so forcibly with black as azure blue, and as you
know that the shadows of all objects are composed of black, the forms or
objects which have acquired more or less of this blue hue, from being
distant, become defined and marked by the possession of shadows, which
are invisible to me in the high-coloured objects in a foreground, and
which are thus left comparatively confined and shapeless masses of
colour.”
The eye may be curtailed of half its object. Mr. Abernethy and Dr.
Wollaston were both often in this dilemma of a sense, so that only
one-half of a person or a name, on which they were looking, was visible
to them. Mr. Abernethy, in his facetious way, referring to his own name,
told us he could see as far as the _ne_, but could not see a bit of the
_thy_. This illusion is at once explained by anatomy. The optic nerve,
at one point, interlaces some, and crosses other of its fibres: thus
_one_ nerve chiefly supplies _one-half of both eyes_. Disease of nerve
may thus paralyse _one-half_ of each _retina_: the _other_ half only
perceiving half the object or word.
In many cases of disordered sensibility of the retina, it is influenced
by the minute _villi_ or vessels in the _tunics_ of the eye. In the case
of exhausted energy of this retina, usually accompanied by
night-blindness, where there is no vision but in a strong light,
floating specks termed _muscæ volitantes_ often become so numerous, as
to impart a notion of films floating in the watery humour of the eye, or
before the _cornea_. It is a curious question, in what portion of the
retina the _spectra_ of _muscæ volitantes_ are excited. They appear in
or near the axis of vision; but as they do not interrupt the _visual
rays_ from _material objects_, it is possible they may arise on that
spot considered to be destitute of vision, with regard to _external_
impression. Or they may be produced by detached parts only of the
objects, which impinge on the retina, reaching the brain. If the
integrity of certain of its fibres, which by converging form the optic
nerve, be destroyed, distorted or imperfect objects will be presented.
This speck may be a _musca volitans_.
ASTR. The original impressions in all cases are, I presume, from
_without_: how is the _internally_ excited idea presented as a prominent
image _before_ the eye?
EV. That form of disordered vision to which I allude, occurring so often
in nervous persons, or resulting from close application to study, does
not often appear to depend on a _turgid_ condition of the vessels of the
_choroïd coat_ or _retina_. It is usually relieved more by _tonics_ than
by depletion; and very strange illusions of sight will sometimes be
produced merely by depressing medicines, especially the preparations of
antimony. Yet these dark specks appear to be floating _before_, and
often at some distance _withoutside_ the eye. Therefore we may believe
that excited images or _more perfect forms_ may also appear before the
retina, _palpable_. Between the first impression and its recurrence, a
long period may have passed (memory being unlimited); and it is
sufficient that one sole idea be excited to produce a succession; as a
_spark_ of fire will ignite a _train_ of gunpowder; or as an electric
spark will discharge a whole battery.
In the curious case of _photopsia_, or _suffusio scintillans_, we have a
series of illusive spectra, in the forms of “lucid points,” and “yellow
flames,” and “fiery veils,” and “rings of light.” In some cases of
ophthalmia, and in acute inflammation of the brain, the candles and
other bright objects in the chamber will look like blood. Beguelin, as
we read in the “Berlin Memoirs,” by straining his eyes on a book, always
saw the letters red.
There is a story in Voltaire, that the Duke of Florence threw the dice
with a field-officer of his enemy. The spots on the dice seemed, to his
_excited brain_, like drops of blood: he instantly ordered a retreat of
his army. And this is not wonderful; it is but excited sensibility, of
which many analogies indeed may be artificially produced, as the flash
of light from the pricking of the retina with a fine needle, and the
beautiful _iris_ which is formed by pressure on the globe of the eye. In
the very interesting history of the prisoner in the dungeon of the
Chatelet at Paris, the _phosphorescence_ of the eye was itself the
source of light, in this instance so powerful as to enable the prisoner
to discern the mice that came around him to pick up the crumbs, although
the cell was pitchy dark to others.
There are many curious illusions resulting from over-straining or
over-excitement of the eye.
Dr. Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, vol. iii. says, “If
in a fine dark night we unexpectedly obtain a glimpse of any object,
either in motion or at rest, we are naturally anxious to ascertain what
it is, and our curiosity calls forth all our powers of vision. Excited
by a feeble illumination, the retina is not capable of affording a
permanent vision of the object; and while we are straining our eye to
discover its nature, it will entirely disappear, and afterwards
_re-appear_ and _vanish_ alternately.”
A friend of Buffon had been watching the progress of an eclipse through
a very minute aperture. For three weeks after this there was a perfect
spectrum of the lucid spot marked on every object on which he fixed his
eyes.
Dr. Brewster had been making protracted experiments on some brilliant
object, and for several hours after this a dark spectrum, associated
with intense pain, floated constantly before his eye.
In the third volume of his Physiology, Dr. Bostock thus concludes the
account of his own ocular spectra: “It appeared as if a number of
objects, principally human faces or figures, on a small scale, were
placed before me, and gradually removed, like a succession of
medallions. They were all of the same size, and appeared to be all
situated at the same distance from the face. After one had been seen for
a few minutes, it became fainter, and then another which was more vivid
seemed to be laid upon it, or substituted in its place, which in its
turn was superseded by a new appearance.”
Coloured vision may arise from permanent defect or from acute disorder:
from some peculiar refraction of a ray of light on the lens of the eye,
or by the optical laws of the _accidental_ colours.
The ray of white light consists of the three prismatic or primitive
colours. Now, if the eye is fatigued by one of these colours, or it be
lost, mechanically or physiologically, the impression of _two_ only will
remain, and this accidental or complementary colour is composed of the
two remaining constituents of the white ray. Thus, if the eye has been
strained on a _red_ colour, it is insensible to this, but perceives the
_blue_ and the _yellow_, the combination of which is _green_. So, if we
look long on a _green_ spot, and then fix the eye on _white_ paper, the
spectrum will be of light _red_. A _violet_ spot will become _yellow_; a
_blue_ spot _orange-red_: a black spot will entirely disappear on a
_white_ ground, for it has _no_ complementary colour; but it appears
_white_ on a _dark_ ground, as a white spot will change to black.
By this law I may explain the impression made by black letters on the
red ground of a play-bill, which appear _blue_. The accidental colour of
orange-red is blue; that of black is white. By looking on this, the
black letter first becomes white, and the accidental colour of the
red—_blue_, is transferred to the white ground of the letters.
ASTR. Then, as D’Agessau recommended the parliament of Paris to leave
the demoniac of our times to the physician and not the divine, you would
delegate the management of all those, to whom the mysterious world of
shadows is unfolded, to the sapient leech with his phials and his
lancet.
EV. Nay, I presume not to so potent a faculty. Many of the slight
imperfections of vision are, as I have confessed, merely exaggerations
of romantic ideas floating in the memory; and this is not a novel
notion, for Plato and other philosophers held it long before our time.
_Muscæ volitantes_ are usually, though not always, _substantial_: i.e.
depending on _points_ or _fibres_ in the axis of vision, on
_congestions_, or _varicose_ states of the vessels of the _choroïd_ or
_retina_, or of atoms floating in the _humours_. These specks, which do
not appear alike in the eyes of all, and the brilliant beams in the
_suffusio scintillans_, so varied and so whimsical, might be readily
moulded into human form, by the imagination of an enthusiast, or the
feelings of the ghost-seer, who is usually morose and melancholy, in a
state of _longing_ for a ghost or a mystery.
But when many of the more confirmed illusions are depending on
structural disease in the membranes and humours of the eye, I am
confident in the resources of our science to relieve, if not to remove.
Coleridge indeed has expressed his belief, that by some convulsion of
the eye, it may see projected before it part of its own body, easily
magnified into the whole by slight imagination. If this be true, the
whole mystery of the Death-fetch is unravelled.
The nerves and their _ganglia_ are often diseased, when we least
suspect: and _calcareous_ and _scrofulous_ tumours, pressing on the
_optic axis_, in the brain, or on the _pneumogastric_ nerve above its
_recurrent_ branch, and disease in the bronchial glands around the
cardiac plexus, may exist, with the very slightest sensations of pain.
Even in extreme _disorganization_ of the brain, there may be
_remissions_ of painless repose; and in other cases, where _pain_ is
_synchronous_ with illusion, the illusion may subside although the pain
remains; an indication, or proof, indeed, of _structural_ cause for the
phantasy. And this discrimination, Astrophel, of the line of distinction
between sanity and derangement, is often of a hair’s breadth; and the
law confesses here the high value of pathology, seeing that, in cases of
suicide or of idiocy, and other states which involve the rites of
sepulture, the conveyance of entailed estates, or personal
responsibility, the judgment of the physician is held to be _oracular_.