“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,
As it were doomsday.”
JULIUS CÆSAR.
There are other very curious analogies of somnambulism, which are marked
by a power of action that appears preternatural. And here again we
witness the irresistibility of motion, which seems to subvert the laws
of gravitation and the principles of mechanics. The involuntary
twitchings and contortions of _St. Vitus’s dance_ present the slighter
form of these eccentric actions, which, in the intense degree, become
like the fury of a raving maniac.
In young girls there often is a proneness to be excited by slight
causes,—to be startled by mere trifles.
Savarry tells us of a man who, at two o’clock each day, was irresistibly
impelled to rap at doors and make very odd noises, and felt intense
pleasure in doing this. If this had occurred in the night, it would have
been termed somnambulism.
Gall also relates of a young man at Berlin, who, after rolling about in
his bed for some time, and jumping out and in repeatedly in his sleep,
at last started up awake, astonished at the crowd around his bed. And
Dr. Darwin writes of a boy, nine years old, who went through a course of
gymnastics, with an occasional song between the acts. At length he
seemed bursting, and soon sank down in a stupor.
ASTR. I have read, (I think in Mezeray,) of an epidemic mania of this
sort, in which the creatures tore off their clothes, and ran naked
through the streets and churches, until they fell breathless on the
ground. Some of them swelled even to _bursting_, unless they were bound
down by cords. The disease was referred to the agency of demons, and
treated by exorcisms; they even tore their flesh to free themselves from
their possessing devils. I have seen also a confident story of some
nuns, who jumped so high during an hysteric ecstacy, that they were at
length seen to fly; in imitation, perhaps, of the Corybantes, the
priests of Cybele, who, in the celebration of their mysteries, leaped
and raved, like madmen in the midst of their shrieks and howlings.
EV. All these eccentricities amount to complete monomania for the time
they last, and they are marked often by a very violent _imitative_
propensity; like the delirium which came upon the Abderites, on
witnessing the performance of the “Andromeda” of Euripides, by
Archelaüs. Of such nature was the “_dancing mania_” of the middle ages;
the _tarantula_ of Apulia, in which melancholy was succeeded by madness;
the feats of the _Jumpers_ of Cornwall, and the _Convulsionnaires_ of
the Parisian miracles.
Yet with all this apparent violence, there might be a power of control
by management. On some sudden and extreme mental influence, there was in
the Maison de la Charité, at Haerlem, an infectious convulsion of this
nature, so that the troop of little scholars, girls and boys, were a
mere legion of dancing maniacs; and nothing appeared to relieve them,
until a ruse of the physician Boërhave put to flight the illusion. With
a solemn voice he pronounced, in the hearing of the little creatures,
his decision that each of them should be burned to the bone of the arm
with a red hot iron. From that moment the mania subsided.
Dr. Hecker, in his account of the _Dance_ of the middle ages, notices
two forms of this national monomania:—“_Tarantulism_,” and the “_Danse
de Saint Guy_.”
The first was marked by all sorts of illusions, demonomania, obscene
dancing, groaning, and falling down senseless.
The persons who believed themselves bitten by the tarantula became sad
and stupid. The flute or guitar alone could give them succour. At the
sound of its music they awoke, as if by enchantment; their eyes opened,
their movements, which at first slowly followed the music, gradually
became animated, until they merged into an impassioned dance. To
interrupt the music was disastrous:—the patients relapsed into their
stupidity, until they became exhausted by fatigue. During the attacks,
several singular idiosyncracies were manifested, contrary to what
occurred in Germany. Scarlet was a favourite colour, though some
preferred green or yellow. A no less remarkable phenomenon was their
ardent longing for the sea; they implored to be carried to its shores,
or to be surrounded by marine pictures; some even threw themselves into
the waves. But the dominant passion was for music, though they varied in
their particular tastes. Some sought the braying sound of the trumpet,
others the softer harmony of stringed instruments.
There was once a woman of Piedmont who was charmed by the “capriccio,”
played by the leader of an orchestra, into an ecstatic dance. In her,
the sensations, as she expressed them, were so “strangely mingled,” as
powerfully to illustrate the fine line of distinction between pleasure
and pain. She gradually became weaker, and the memory of the music was
so intense, that, while she was irresistibly impelled to this maniacal
dance, her expressions were those of acute pain, and her cries were
constantly of those “horrid sounds.” In six months, this unhappy
creature died exhausted.
The _Tigretier_, of Abyssinia, is believed in Africa to be the effect of
demoniac influence. Indeed there is in this strange state a complete
metamorphosis of features, and voice, and manner. In the hearts, even of
the women, the affections of nature and of attachment seem to be
annihilated, and they seem overwhelmed by some oppressive weight, which
is dissipated only by almost preternatural exertion, excited by the
charm of music; in which wild dance the female is dressed in ornaments
of silver, like the chiefs of battle. This maniac movement is often, I
believe, kept up from early morning until sunset, ere the accumulation
of energy is exhausted; and even then the woman will start off suddenly
and outrun the fleetest hunter, until she drops as if dead. But it seems
the climax of the cure is not complete, until she drops all her
ornaments, and a matchlock is fired over her, when she owns her name and
family, both having been previously denied. She is taken to the church
and sprinkled with holy water, and then the spell is broken.
There is another strange monomania, an incitement to suicide, evinced in
that loathsome disease of the Lombard and Venetian plains, _Pellagra_.
The prevailing fashion is _drowning_; so that Strambi has termed this
monomania, _water-madness_.
Others are driven on by still more horrible fancies. Thus _Grenier_
wrapped himself in a wolf-skin, and murdered young maids that he might
devour them. And, among ourselves, the desire to _change the infant into
a_ _cherub_, has led the wild fanatic to the murder of the innocents!
ASTR. This, I suppose, is _Lycanthropy_, or wolf-madness, on which old
Burton so funnily expatiates; and to which the author of the old play of
“Lingua” also points, alluding to the
“Thousand vain imaginations,
Making some think their heads as big as horses,
Some that they’re dead, some that they’re turned to wolves.”
In the woods of Limousin, in France, the belief in the power of changing
from men to wolves is still prevalent. The _Loup-garoux_, or
_Wehr-wolf_, was thought to have been in league with Satan.
In my wanderings through Poictou, these monsters seemed to me to confine
their unholy powers to midnight prowling, and the wolf-howl. Yet Marie,
in the “_Lai du Bisclavaret_,” endows them with the cannibalism of the
goul and the vampire:
“So Garwal roams in savage pride,
And hunts for blood, and feeds on men;
Spreads dire destruction, far and wide,
And makes the forests broad his den.”
EV. The extraordinary effects of the instinct of imitation in spreading
these epidemics, is but an example on the grand scale of what we see
daily instances of in yawning, hiccoughing, coughing, and other similar
acts, and in the propagation of _hysteria_ and _epilepsy_. Some persons,
again, possess an irresistible tendency to imitate others in mere
trifling things. Tissot relates a case of a female, who never could
avoid doing _every thing she saw any one else do_. She was obliged to
walk blindfolded in the streets; and, if you tied her hands, she
experienced intolerable anguish until they were loosened. There was
another girl, that was seen by Dr. Horn, at Salzburg, who sat
_cross-legged_, like a hog. She had been brought up in a sty.
Even during the Commonwealth, the religious fanaticism of the Quakers
carried the proselytes to such a pitch, that the preachers were thrown
into excessive convulsions, and _seemed_ possessed of demons. The
churches were broken into, and the ministers insulted and attacked in
the pulpits. Chains, and locks, and the pillory, which were inflicted on
these mad people, failed, as it might be expected, in restoring their
senses, although they bore them with the most astonishing fortitude. In
their worshipping, the same eccentricities were seen: after a deep and
long silence, a number of the devotees rose at once, and declaimed. The
presumptuous imitation of the Saviour was a favourite illusion; and the
forty-days’ fast sometimes terminated in death. Naylor, convinced of his
divine identity, rode in procession on a mule, while his deluded
proselytes spread their garments, and sang Hosannas to him. Nay, the
purity of the female mind was so grossly perverted, that a Quakeress
walked naked into a church, before Cromwell, _as a sign to the people_!
There was a letter in an “Aberdeen Herald,” dated Invergordon, Sept. 9,
1840, from which I quote this story:
“I had the curiosity to go to the church of Roskeen, last night, to
observe the _workings of a revival_. I was prepared for something
extraordinary, but certainly not for what I saw. The sobs, groans, loud
weeping, fainting, shrieking, mingled in the most wild and unearthly
discordance with the harsh cracked voice of the clergyman, who could
only at intervals be heard above the general weeping and wailing. I was
struck by the cries being all from _young_ voices; and on examining a
little more closely, I found that the performers were almost wholly
children—girls, varying from five to fourteen years of age; a few young
women, perhaps a dozen, but not a single man or lad. I stood for nearly
half an hour by three girls, the eldest about twelve years of age, who
were in the most utter distress, each vying with the other in despairing
cries. Their mother came to them, but made no exertion to check their
bursts of—I don’t know what to call it. In the church-yard there were
lots of children in various stages of fainting. One poor girl seemed
quite dead, and I insisted on one of the old crones, who was piously
looking on, to go for some water, or to attempt something to give her
relief, but was told, ‘It was no’ a case for water; it was the Lord, and
he would do as he liked with her. She was seeing something we didna see,
and hearing something we didna hear.’ She was lying on the ground,
supported by her father. Indeed the poor ignorant parents have been
worked upon until they believe they are highly honoured by the Lord, by
having such signs of the Spirit manifested in their families. The
service, if it may be called so, was in Gaelic.”
In the reign of the second George, Count Zinzendorf came from Germany
and established the principles of the Hernhutters, or Moravians. These
were debased by ceremonies, which they misnamed worship, of the most
licentious character.
Like Mahomet, Zinzendorf proclaimed himself a prophet and a king, and in
his presumption of an immediate appeal to, and answer from, the Saviour,
in all matters of doubt, made a host of proselytes.
IDA. In our own day, another delirious profanation of the holy name of
the Saviour has been exhibited, in the imitative monomania of _Sir
William Courtenay_ (as he was called), in Kent. In May, 1838, this wild
enthusiast (whose beauty of feature and expression closely resembled the
paintings of Christ by Guido and Carlo Dolce, and who, to heighten this
resemblance, wore his hair and beard in a peculiar form, and clothed
himself in a robe) gained by his art numerous disciples in Kent, who
implicitly believed his divine nature and mission. His career was,
however, soon closed in a very awful and bloody tragedy—the death of
himself, of many of his _followers_, and of the military who were called
out to secure him. His _disciples_, to the last, not only believed in
his divine nature, but even after his interment were watching _in
implicit belief of his approaching resurrection_!
The mania of the “unknown tongues” has almost equalled this delusion. If
we presume to analyse, on the principles of philosophy or reason, those
religious eccentricities, which seem, even in the mind of the fanatic,
to spring from sincerity or conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be
termed _maniacal_, and this without the slightest profanation of the
Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while
we deplore its _immediate_ effects, we must not hope to reveal its
origin or its end.
At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the Millennium chapels, the
wife of Caird, who was then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this
_unknown_ language, which paralysed some, and threw into convulsions
many others of the congregation. A young French lady among them
instantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, after some
infliction of self-torture, became delirious and died in a hospital.
We learn from Plutarch, that in Milesium there was once a prevalent
fashion among the young girls to hang themselves; while the same mania
once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to drown themselves in the
Rhone. The Convulsionists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted
self-torture, but in their wild delight solicited the bystanders to
stone them.
The commission of a great or extraordinary crime to this day produces,
not unfrequently, a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which
it happened. I have known incidents, falsely called religious, to
occasion similar events; and what is remarkable, the scene or place of
the _first_ event seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons
approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before the
gate of the convent of St. Genevieve, such a number of similar
occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police was
compelled to post a peremptory notice on the gate, prohibiting any
individual from working miracles on the place in question. When the
locality was thus shut up, the _thaumaturgia_ ceased. It is not long
since we witnessed in Paris two events of a similar character. About
four years ago, at the Hotel des Invalides, a veteran hung himself on
the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. No suicide had occurred
in the establishment for two years previously, but in the succeeding
fortnight five invalids hung themselves on the same cross-bar, and the
governor was obliged to shut up the passage. During the last days of the
empire, again, an individual ascended the column in the Place Vendome,
and threw himself down and was dashed to pieces. The event excited a
great sensation; and in the course of the ensuing week, _four persons_
imitated the example, and the police were obliged to proscribe the
entrance to the column. The same mania was almost induced by the suicide
of a foolish girl, who leaped from the balcony of our own city column on
Fish-street Hill. Indeed Monseigneur Mare, of Paris, alludes to a
society enrolled for the mere purpose of suicide; and there was an
annual ballot to decide which of these miserable creatures should be
immolated _as the suicide of the year_!!
Dr. Burrows, I remember also, relates cases analogous to these. They
occurred in the ranks of some army on the continent, in which there was
an epidemic propensity to suicide, until the general began to hang the
soldiers on trees as scarecrows. The mania, as you may believe, very
soon subsided.
EV. Your curiosities eclipse mine, Ida. But the natural _leaning to the
marvellous_, will, without mania or fanaticism, by the mere sympathy of
intercommunicating minds, spread wide these illusions, even in the most
simple instances. Some time since, a very large assemblage were watching
with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies, at Northumberland
House. They were unanimous in the conviction that he was swinging his
tail to and fro; a false impression, of course, which had gradually
accumulated from this solitary exclamation of a passenger: “By heaven,
he wags his tail!” Of this sort of illusion I was myself a witness.
Beneath the western portico of St. Paul’s, a crowd of gazers were
bending their eyes on the image of the saint, who was nodding at them
with a very gracious affability. Curiosity had risen to the pitch of
wonder at a miracle, when suddenly a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets
of the saint, and the illusion vanished.
These eccentricities, you will perceive, occurred _spontaneously_; and
it is a most interesting study to note the analogies between _these_
diseased actions, and _those_ resulting from the influence of certain
gases and vegetable juices.
I have known the seeds of _stramonium_, when swallowed by children,
produce a temporary delirium, and a state of _chorea_, singing, dancing,
laughing, and other mad frolics, which could not be controlled. And in
the “History of Virginia,” by Beverly, it is recorded, that during the
rebellion of Bacon, at James Town, some soldiers, after eating the young
leaves of _stramonium_ for spinach, enacted “a very pleasant comedy, for
they turned natural fools upon it for several days. One would blow up a
feather into the air, another would dart straws at it with much fury,
another, stark naked, was seen sitting up in a corner, like a monkey,
grinning and making mouths.” In this frantic condition they were
confined for safety. In eleven days they recovered, but had no memory of
the delirium. Such also is the effect of large quantities of black
henbane. Dr. Patouillet, of Toucy, in France, in 1737 witnessed a mania
of this sort in nine persons, who had eaten of that root. It was marked
by the strangest actions and expressions. In these also there was no
recollection of the illusion.
But the closest analogy, in point of concentrated energy, to eccentric
somnambulism, is the effect of the inhalation of the “gaseous oxide of
azote,” or “protoxide of nitrogen,” the _laughing-gas_. So intense is
its impression on the nerves and blood of the brain, that it effects a
perfect _metempsychosis_. This gas contains a greater relative
proportion of oxygen than common air, and it is inhaled through a tube
from a bladder or silk bag. After a little giddiness and headache, the
breather soon begins to feel a very delicious thrilling; the eyes are
dazzled by even common objects, so much are the senses excited. Pride
and _pugnacity_ are quickly developed: we think ourselves grand
seignors, and elevated far beyond the common class of mortals. We expect
from all a _salaam_, and, with all the proud dignity of papacy, wonder
that the people do not fall down and kiss our toe. We turn a deaf ear to
all which is addressed to us; in short, we are dissociated from all
around us. Sir Humphrey Davy, as the effect was wearing off, seemed to
have been charmed into the combined philosophy of Berkley and Hume. He
writes, “with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I exclaimed:
‘Nothing exists but thoughts; the universe is composed of impressions,
ideas, pleasures, and pains.’”
This brilliancy is probably the effect of scarlet or highly _oxygenized_
blood, acting on the brain and nerves of the senses.
The duration of this gaseous influence is usually from five minutes to a
quarter of an hour. It is not, however, always so transient.
From the record of Professor Silliman, it seems to have converted an “Il
Penseroso” into a “L’Allegro.” A man of melancholy became a man of
mirth: and, although before his inhalation he had no sweet tooth in his
head, he began to eat little except _sugar and sweet cakes_, and to
swallow _molasses_ with his meat and potatoes.
Although _sparring_ is the grand amusement of the gas-breather, yet we
can often decide on the shades of character, however studiously they may
have been concealed from us in sane moments.
A gentleman among my fellow-students threw himself forcibly on his back,
by his attempts to spout Shakspere with dignity and effect.
Another threw himself prostrate in the snow, and rolling himself over
and back across the quadrangle at Guy’s, turned himself into an immense
cylindrical snowball.
Another snapped his fingers in defiance, and walked with a most pompous
strut, and without his hat, to the middle of London Bridge, ere he was
brought to his senses.
Indeed these experiments seem so replete with the ludicrous, that I
wonder Cruikshank and Hood have not often caught a fact, as a theme for
their brilliant fancy.