Aged forty, admitted 11th April 1822. This poor creature is an
unmarried woman, but has got a child living, and, whatever was the
cause of her derangement, she is the wretched victim of maternal
fondness and painful anxiety for her child, which she imagines is
starving to death. Every thing she eats she thinks this child ought
to have, and she therefore takes her provisions with the greatest
reluctance, insomuch, that it frequently becomes necessary to
administer by force the sustenance which she obstinately refuses to
take of her own accord, and this reluctance has reduced her almost to a
skeleton.
Whenever the doctors, or a party of visitors, go round to view the
establishment, she instantly accosts them, falls on her knees, and in
the most pathetic manner implores and entreats them to let her see her
dear child, who is starving to death for want of the food that she
eats; and though the evil be merely ideal, this poor creature suffers
in her mind all the anguish of maternal woe.
Otherwise she is quite harmless, and at no time inclined to be
mischievous.