Part 18

He is a surgeon, and was formerly in great repute as a successful practitioner, as well as a lecturer on anatomy, surgery, and the practice of physic.

He was very studious, and chiefly during the night, though his sleep was already sufficiently broken by his professional labour. As a young student he was ambitious to excel, as he would often say, “I employed my time well, that it might serve me in after life; and it did so.”

His mind is naturally one of much greater activity than power, hence his harassing day and night practice and preparation for lecturing induced a morbid state of mind, in which condition a fever in his family occurred. Rapidly and unexpectedly, four male children, a niece, and a maid-servant, were the victims, and this completed the wreck of his overworked, active, and feeling mind.

His present state is most interesting and singular, and very difficult to describe. His activity of mind, prodigious command of words, and most animated and graceful manner, excite the greatest surprise; and even in his present deranged and deluded condition, with his varied stores of information, these exhibitions are mistaken for the remnants of versatility of genius; yet, as I have already said, it is most true that his mind was not naturally one of so much power as it was of amazing ambition and activity.

He will suddenly rush into some of his anatomical, surgical, and medical lectures, going through different parts of the human body, operations, and practice. His lectures on the circulation of the blood, seem to have been most strongly impressed upon his memory. At other times, his eloquence is displayed in imitations of various celebrated characters. If they are ancients, and he be asked, how can this be? since they lived two thousand years ago, he says: “Yes, but I died and rose again in the world.” And thus, he imagines himself every character he personifies, and that at that time he was alive, and afterwards died, again reappearing in such another character. In this way having passed through numberless transmigrations, he was Adam, Abel, or Melchisadeck, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Goliah, David, and Solomon. Solomon had great attractions: frequently describing, with great animation, his state of grandeur and enjoyment. In the same way he was Aristotle, Pythagoras, Confucius, Plato, Zoroaster, Pliny, Ptolemy, Cicero, Demosthenes, and particularly Homer, Mahomet, and even our Saviour, &c. All these he will still personate, and make speeches differing in manner and matter, and suitable in some measure to each of them.

In medicine, all the list of celebrated men are claimed as the same transmigration of his soul. He lifted up the serpent. He was Hypocrates, Celsus, Galen, Paracelsus, Stahl, Van Helmont, Boerhave, Cullen. In anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and natural philosophy, it was the same. The whole list of celebrated medical men is monopolized by this mania of transmigration.

He always addressed strangers as contemporaries, saying, “Good God! you were alive at such a time: I knew you well; you were with me when I conquered at the plains of Marathon! or, you met me at such a place when I was singing the Iliad, as old Homer,” and so on. All this with such a fascination of look, manner, and address, that he arrests and amuses every one, especially strangers. He frequently talks with imaginary, and especially angelic beings, which he does with a manner and expression that prove he believes he beholds their actual presence.

He had a peculiarly bright and glistening eye, indicative of the secret and destructive habit so dreadfully fatal to the insane.

It appeared to me, since amidst all this strange confusion and delusion, his intellectual powers were still in existence, that if his understanding could be constantly occupied, this confused condition might in time be corrected, and his mind restored to a right state: for this purpose I undertook to make him translate a French work, while I wrote from his dictation, at the same time checking and controlling his wild starts into all these vagaries. In this manner we nearly finished an important medical work together, and he was evidently much improved by the exercise; the task was however so amazingly arduous, that in the midst of my other duties I was obliged to discontinue it, and he then relapsed into his former state.

The effect, however, was sufficiently decided to prove a fact of very great importance, and many such facts having since occurred, which further tend to confirm that many cases which are generally given over as incurable, may be cured by a well-directed exercise of the understanding, by which it is at once strengthened, and the mind drawn and excluded from the exercise of its insane feelings and hallucinations. In some cases I have made them translate a work on the nature and effects of their secret vice, and it has silently checked this habit, and at last restored them.

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Here I close my description of these old cases, conceiving I have given a sufficient number for the purpose I had in view, that of exhibiting a fair average picture of the state and character of the old insane. After one general abstract observation on the whole essay, I shall afterwards, and following this last case, make my next essay on the origin and nature of disease in general, and of insanity in particular: and which I shall do as preliminary to the more intimate and direct investigation of the causes and nature of insanity; and especially the direct consideration of the cause to which I have alluded in this case, because it is one of the most general and most fatal causes of insanity, and a cause, which if not removed, inevitably renders them incurable. Such was the habit of the person whose case obliged me very reluctantly to assume a defensive attitude, and refute falsehood by a statement of the truth, or otherwise I should have continued silently to proceed in the path of duty, without obtruding our own secret exertions on the notice of the public, as it may appear that I have done in this essay, as well as in those which are to follow, written, as they will be, in some measure on the same principle, for the truth should not suffer from diffidence, any more than it ought to be brought into disrepute by vain ostentation; still, I am quite certain, that I am actuated by no feelings incompatible with charity and justice.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.

The concluding general observations on this Essay and its Appendix, are, that the one principal object I have had constantly in view, has been the removal of the erroneous impressions and prejudices which exist almost universally against the insane, as if they alone were all furious wild beasts or infernal demons, and which have hitherto excited and still continue to excite a spirit and conduct toward them, productive of a baneful and injurious influence.

So long as these prejudices exist in the mind, even the soothing treatment which is now so much the boast of the age, assumes a spirit and manner, perhaps as galling and injurious to the afflicted as was, undoubtedly, the heartless tyranny of former times.

I deprecate that altered tone of voice and manner which implies in every word and action, that they are considered either as children, or as beings wholly bereft of rationality.

In the system (which I have in some degree stated and explained) of receiving and treating them as visitors, even as though they were still rational, and of course observing towards them the same polite and delicate attentions as are practised in well-bred society, the same irresistible effects which precept and example always produce in every sphere, in proportion as they are exercised in sincerity and truth, will be found to be produced also on them; and hence we may easily perceive how it comes to pass that we have so much greater dependence on their attachment, good conduct, fidelity, and honour, than is generally imagined to be possible, and why, consequently, the greater liberty which is given them is seldom or never abused; and, as cause and effect increase each other, it is evident that this system, by exciting and exercising the higher feelings and moral principles of the mind, produces, (as will be seen from the tables I shall hereafter introduce) a much greater proportion of cures than has hitherto been the case. It is much more conducive to cure than the system of perfect separation and exclusion from any association. This truth is another important reason for being anxious, from the best of motives, to remove these baneful prejudices which have hitherto made a marked moral line of distinction between diseases of the brain, and other parts of the system, exclusively and absurdly making the former a proof of some shameful criminality. And though this greater degree of well-judged liberty (not indiscriminate) appears alarming to those who retain the usual worldly prejudices against the insane, it is in reality attended with much less of danger or of any thing to excite the fears of others, than most assuredly is a contrary system.

I am now enabled, from nearly twenty years’ experience, to say this with confidence; and I am the more anxious to impress this on the world, in order that I may not be obliged, from too great a deference to its fears and prejudices, to abridge the exercise of this influence, so far as to lessen the happy effects of a system which theory and feeling have suggested and compelled me to pursue, and which increased knowledge and experience have confirmed and justified.

Our fears and prejudices create and realize that which would otherwise have no existence. We often blame effects of which we ourselves are the cause. This is one principal, if not the only, source of all our complaints and all our troubles. Servants, children, families, sects, parties, nations, and even the insane, are more or less good or bad in their conduct and character, in proportion as our principles and conduct towards them are under the influence of a wrong spirit or a right one.

Such are our views, and I trust it will be seen (the experimental part at least,—the theory will be explained in due course) that we have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to reduce them to practice.

Wherever natural and spiritual good exist, there we shall behold those best fruits of charity, of which the vine and fig-tree are beautifully appropriate emblems.

I trust that what I have advanced will be considered less as a personal boast than as an explanatory statement, suggested by recognised evils, and enhanced by candour and conviction. Although past conduct is the best guarantee for the future, yet it is by no means an infallible security; and it altogether ceases to be the test of any security, the moment boasting, pride, or self-confidence exclude a higher and better dependence.

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THE END.

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DEAN AND MUNDAY, PRINTERS, THREADNEEDLE-STREET.

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