“Who e’en for change of scene wou’d seek the shades below,”
“Who e’en for change of scene wou’d seek the shades below,”
and to one unhallowed story related in “Salmonia.”
From this excess there is the stimulus ofpain to move; one of the most powerful motives of human action. Cardan, if we may believe in his “Opera et Vita,” was at least a monomaniac; and he “was wont instinctively, as it were, to relieve this tendency of his mind by the excitement of bodily pain.” I may assure you that I have, during my professional studies, often witnessed (and indeed have sometimes suggested) a remedy on this knowledge: you may be aware, that a severe and painful disorder will mitigate, if not entirely dissipate, that apathetic misery which springs from a vacant or unoccupied mind.
In contrasting childhood and age, we witness these curiosities in the restless activity of youth and early manhood, for at these periods we are very constant somnambulists; not so in the passive state of old age, in which sleep-walking is very rare. Something of this we see also in thegrowing painsandfidgetsof girls and those whose duties are sedentary. Exercise is the relief for all this.
Now when the sleep-walk has exhausted this excess of irritability or electricity (if it be so), the dreamer returns to bed and sleep. A hint is here thrown out to us, that if powerful exertion be employed previous to sleep, the night-walk might not ensue. Lethargy often terminates in somnambulism.
If I may for another moment still prose over the intricate, but deeply interesting question of the pathology of somnambulism, I will observe, that we often find it one symptom of madness or idiocy, and we know that somnambulism not seldom terminates in epilepsy.
In the brains of epileptic idiots, who are very determined somnambulists, we discover changes the most various;effusion,congestion,ossification of membranes,ramollissement,indurcissement, bonyspiculæ, or points pressing the brain,tubercles,cysts. In some, the skull assumes the density of ivory. Yet in those persons who have been known to be sleep-walkers, the inspection is seldom satisfactory.Plethoraof the head has often, however, preceded the sleep-walk. Signor Pozzi, physician to Benedict XIV., if he submitted not to depletion each second month, became a somnambulist; and we have known that inchorea, previous to the dance, and in some cases of somnambulism also, pain has been felt from theocciputalong the course of thespinal marrow. This is from immediate excitement; butdyspepsiaand otherabdominal derangementsmay so influence thegangliaandnerves of organic life, and through them the brain and cord, as to excite sleep-walking byremotesympathy.
That injuries of the nervous matter about the nape of the neck are of the highest importance in our studies of these eccentric actions, is certain. The experiments of Flourens show that theprogressiveorforwardmotion of animals, is influenced by varied states of thecerebellum. When Majendie cut through thecorpora striata, the animal darted forward; when thepons Varoliiwas cut, the animal rolled over sixty times in a minute.
When a soldier is struck by a ball about thecervical vertebræ, he often springs from the ground and drops dead.
It is our duty, then, not to slight the condition of the somnambulist. Ifsimple irritationbe its exciting cause, much benefit may be derived fromcounter-actionon the surface, and other remedial means. Even if there bediseased structure, some palliation may be afforded. As preventives of the fit, we may inculcate an abstinence from late meals, exercise in the evening previous to retirement to rest, a high pillow, &c.
If the propensity continue in spite of our efforts, it will be right to have the windows fastened or locked, and the door of the chamber boltedwithout; or to confine the ankle or wrist to the bed-post by a long fillet, which may by its detention awake the sleeper on starting from the bed.
IMITATIVE MONOMANIA.
“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,As it were doomsday.”Julius Cæsar.
“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,As it were doomsday.”Julius Cæsar.
“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,As it were doomsday.”Julius Cæsar.
“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,As it were doomsday.”Julius Cæsar.
“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 ofSt. Vitus’s dancepresent 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 tobursting, 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 violentimitativepropensity; 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; thetarantulaof Apulia, in which melancholy was succeeded by madness; the feats of theJumpersof Cornwall, and theConvulsionnairesof 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 theDanceof 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.
TheTigretier, 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 isdrowning; so that Strambi has termed this monomania,water-madness.
Others are driven on by still more horrible fancies. ThusGrenierwrapped himself in a wolf-skin, and murdered young maids that he might devour them. And, among ourselves, the desire tochange the infant into acherub, has led the wild fanatic to the murder of the innocents!
Astr.This, I suppose, isLycanthropy, 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.”
“Thousand vain imaginations,Making some think their heads as big as horses,Some that they’re dead, some that they’re turned to wolves.”
“Thousand vain imaginations,Making some think their heads as big as horses,Some that they’re dead, some that they’re turned to wolves.”
“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. TheLoup-garoux, orWehr-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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 ofhysteriaandepilepsy. 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 doingevery 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 satcross-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, andseemedpossessed 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 theworkings 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 fromyoungvoices; 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 ofSir 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 hisfollowers, and of the military who were called out to secure him. Hisdisciples, to the last, not only believed in his divine nature, but even after his interment were watchingin 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 termedmaniacal, and this without the slightest profanation of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while we deplore itsimmediateeffects, 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 thisunknownlanguage, 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 thefirstevent 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, thethaumaturgiaceased. 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 personsimitated 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 immolatedas 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 naturalleaning 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, occurredspontaneously; and it is a most interesting study to note the analogies betweenthesediseased actions, andthoseresulting from the influence of certain gases and vegetable juices.
I have known the seeds ofstramonium, when swallowed by children, produce a temporary delirium, and a state ofchorea, 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 ofstramoniumfor 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,” thelaughing-gas. So intense is its impression on the nerves and blood of the brain, that it effects a perfectmetempsychosis. 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 andpugnacityare quickly developed: we think ourselves grand seignors, and elevated far beyond the common class of mortals. We expect from all asalaam, 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 highlyoxygenizedblood, 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 exceptsugar and sweet cakes, and to swallowmolasseswith his meat and potatoes.
Althoughsparringis 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.
REVERIE.
“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”“In his brainHe hath strange places cramm’dWith observation, the which he ventsIn mangled forms.”As You Like It.
“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”“In his brainHe hath strange places cramm’dWith observation, the which he ventsIn mangled forms.”As You Like It.
“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”
“That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”
“In his brainHe hath strange places cramm’dWith observation, the which he ventsIn mangled forms.”As You Like It.
“In his brainHe hath strange places cramm’dWith observation, the which he ventsIn mangled forms.”As You Like It.
“In his brain
He hath strange places cramm’d
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.”
As You Like It.
Astr.I was dreaming last night, Evelyn, of your eccentric puppets; and I cannot but wonder at thecontrastedinfluences of nitrous oxide on the brain and marrow, as you say. In one, we see the wondrous phenomena of somnambulism; in the other, a state of apathy, like the almost senseless reverie of the idiot.
Ev.You are shrewd, Astrophel, and have hit on these objective analogies with the acuteness of a pathologist. Contrasts they truly are; and yet there is a natural transition from one to the other.
Somnambulism is the most eccentric condition of sleep; andReverieis that state which constitutes the nearest approximation to slumber. But the French verb,rêver, is a comprehensive word, signifying all the eccentricities of mind, from idiocy to divine philosophy; so that its derivative, “Reverie,” may be construed into Dream, Delirium, Raving, Thought, Fancy, Meditation, Abstraction.
You may wonder at this combination, but, however you may smile, the existence of every one is marked by a certain degree of moral or instinctive mania, modified by the peculiarity of habit, taste, or sentiment; and, I may add, of intellectualmonomania(“monomanie raisonnante”), in reference to some particular subject. There may indeed be anincubationof madness; and, if circumstances occur tositandhatch, the germs will be developed. When these two, moral and intellectual error (which mayseparatelypass current in the world for eccentricity), unite, then the man is mad, and becomes an irresponsible agent.
The term “Reverie,” then, will imply the varied conditions of that faculty, which phrenology termsconcentrativeness; the extremes of which mark the idiot and the sage.
Idiocy is the most abject and imperfect condition of the waking mind, resembling closely the first disposition to slumber, the sensation ofdoziness. The creature will commit the most absurd acts, and utter the most ridiculous or profane expressions, without the redeeming apology of being engaged in abstract thought or abstruse calculation.
It is consolatory, however, to know that this weakness is usuallyconnate, or manifested at the very dawn of intellect; so that we have not the painful study of contrasting, in one being, the light of mind with its shadowy darkness.
The idiot, indeed, often appears so little more than a laughing or a dancing vegetable, that pity yields to curiosity and mirth; and, instead of mourning, we work into the plot and incidents of a novel or a stage farce, either that strange mixture of weakness and cunning which is delineated in Davie Gellatly, or the absolute imbecility of Audrey, Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
But this melancholy being is not always asolitarycuriosity. In many districts, especially in the stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia, nature fails, by wholesale, in the development of that “paragon of animals,” man.
Such are theCapots, orCretins, of Chinese Tartary, as we learn from Sir George Staunton; those of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys; theColibertsof Rochelle; theCagneuxof Brittany; theGaffosof Navarre; theGavachosof Spain; and theGezitaniof the Pyrenees.
The condition of the lowest class of these wretched beings is indeed that of idiocy; their intellectual power being little more than the mental blank which would mark theacephalous, or brainless monsters, could such abortions attain the age of maturity. It is mereanimal life, with the very faintest stamp of intelligence.
TheCretinis from four to five feet high, cadaverous, flabby, the head immensely out of proportion, the skin studded with livid eruptions, the eyes blear and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak and crooked; and (like theStulbingsof Swift) the senses are imperfect, the hearing and speech often absolutely lost,—the expression being that of a fool or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the frequent causes of all this; for, in the skull of these beings, we often find abluish jelly, instead of healthy brain. This diseasedpulpis thus the source of both animal and intellectual apathy. The idiot will often seem insensible to pain, while his flesh is burning; and objects or subjects do not cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to produce theirimage, so that the being may almost live without a sense.
Cast.This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful picture, and shows us one of those impressive contrasts which nature is fraught with. The Cretin dwarf amidst the gigantic sublimity of the Alps; the lava stream rolling over the chestnut groves of Valombrosa; the malaria that steams up from the Pontine even to Albano; the murky sulphur cloud that floats over Avernus, and the Solfaterra; and the poison-snake creeping among the honied flowers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how intimately are blended the lights and shadows of creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if there are not many beautiful stories, which we may have deemed the creation of poesy, proving that idiotism is not alwaysdefiniteandpermanent. I ought to blush while I recite them. The romance of Cymon and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have heard a story of a youth who was an idiot to his 17th year. At this time he saw a beautiful girl, and instantly felt deep and devoted love for her; and became, from this almost divine influence, as acute in intellect as his playmates.
Astr.And what writeth the quaint Anatomist of Melancholy?—“We read in the lives of the Fathers a story of a child that was brought up in the wilderness from his infancy by an old hermite. Now come to man’s estate, he saw by chance two comely women wandering in the woods. He asked the old man what creatures they were. He told him fayries. After a while talkingobiter, the hermite demanded of him which was the pleasantest sight that he ever saw in his life? He readily replied, the two fayries he espied in the wilderness. So that without doubt there is some secret loadstone in a beautiful woman, a magnetique power.”
Ida.We do not hold your gallantry lightly, Astrophel; there is some hope of your conversion.
Ev.That mind is termedweak, where there is a want of the power of fixing the attention to one object, awandering of the imaginative faculty. A train of ideas arises, between the links of which there is some remote relation; but its beginning and end may appearso dissonant, that the absent person will fail to recognize the connexion, until, by an effort to retrace the steps of thought, the mystery is developed.
Ida.The subjects of this form of reverie are, I presume, thewool-gatherersof society, being “every thing by turns, and nothing long;” and often, like the dog in the fable, losing the substance while they grasp at the shadow; others employ their time by sitting
“Musing all alone,Building castles in the air,”
“Musing all alone,Building castles in the air,”
“Musing all alone,Building castles in the air,”
“Musing all alone,
Building castles in the air,”
forming plans and projecting schemes which shall fill men’s minds with wonder, and their own pockets with gold.
But these castle-builders are, alas! but the dupes of their own mad fancy. The card-house is nearly finished, and one imprudent touch of the child topples it down headlong. One of the most salutary lessons on this foible is the fable of the Persian visionary, the glassman Alnaschar, who, by rehearsing one kick of the foot, that was to indicate his despotic will, broke into ten thousand pieces the basket of merchandize, which, by its accumulating profits, was to raise him to the highest dignities. Such are the results of self-glamourie or castle-building.
Ev.It is a moral lesson of great worth, dear Ida. But these wanderings are often assimilating the true delirium of fever, of which the dreams of Piranesi are examples. In his sketches of these illusions he figures himself as ascending by steps so high that he at length vanishes into the clouds.
Now there are many curious instances of forgetfulness, as there may be a confusion of ideas from this deficiency of concentration, memory being, as it were, deranged. From study, or intense thought, a jumble of strange ideas will sometimes force themselves involuntarily on the mind, displacing or confusing the subject of meditation.
Thus a German, of the name of Spalding, of high attainments, informs us, that after great mental labour, he was intending to write this receipt: “fifty dollars, being one half-year’s rate,” but quite unconsciously concluded it thus: “fifty dollars through the salvation of Bra.” And the author of the “Spiritual Treasury,” Mason, during his devotion to its composition, had, as he believed, taken the address of a visitor on whom he was to wait; but on referring to his note, he read, not the address, but—“Acts ii. verse 8.”
Children havenaturallya want of power of concentration. I have told you that if a new or more attractive object strikes their sight, they will drop that which they were holding; and Foote would often, while taking a pinch, let his snuff-box fall from his hand, if for a moment his attention was diverted.
Astr.The reverse of wandering, then, you termconcentrativeness. You would not stigmatize the passive or involuntary form of abstraction, as the reverie of amonomaniac.
Ev.No. As attention is concentration of a sense, abstraction is the concentration or attention of the mind; therefore the power of fixing the senses and forgetting the mind, is attention, that of fixing the mind and forgetting the senses, is abstraction—philosophy, if you will.
The active form, the power of fixing the attention on one subject, or of separating ideas and bringing them into association on one point, is the great characteristic of the philosopher and the mathematician. That inattention tominutiæduring this abstraction, has, I grant, caused the shafts of satire to be profusely flung at many a “learned pundit;” for the jokes of Rabelais are eclipsed by the eccentricities of our sages: Dominie Sampson is no caricature.
As I trace these forms of reverie from monomania to its curious contrast, thefolie raisonnanteof men of one idea, (in which there is an aberration of intellect, or want of consciousness onall subjects but one,) and so on to philosophical abstraction, we shall learn, not without some humility, how close an alliance does really exist between great wits and madness.
The records of history and fiction teem with the illusions of the monomaniacs from intense impression. The madness of Ophelia and of Lear, are true and faithful illustrations of the effects ofbrooding over sorrow. In the monarch, indeed, that one momentary glimpse of reason when the word “king” like an electric shock falls on his ear, and, for an instant, lights up his intellect, which as suddenly darkness again overshadows, beautifully shows forth by contrast this madness of one idea.
Dr. Gooch relates the case of a lady, who in consequence of an alarm of fire, believed that she was the Virgin Mary, and that her head was constantly encircled by a brilliant halo or glory.
A gentleman, on narrowly escaping from the earthquake at Lisbon, fell into a state of delirium whenever the word “earthquake” was pronounced in his hearing.
In “Pechlin” we read of a lady, who gazed with painless interest on the comet of 1681 until she observed itthrough a telescopeof high power; the terror was so intense, that she was frightened to death even in a few days.
Dr. Morrison relates the case of an insane gentleman who had consulted a gypsy, and was instantly in a state of high excitement, whenever a subject associated with her prophecies was alluded to.
My friend, Dr. Uwins, informed me of an intellectual young gentleman, who from some morbid association with the idea of an elephant, was struck by an horrific spasm whenever the word was named,or even writtenbefore him; and to such a pitch was this infatuation carried, that elephantpaper, if he were sensible it were such, produced the same effect.
The Reverend John Mason, of Water Stratford, evinced in every thing sound judgment, except that he believed that he was Elias, and foretold the advent of Christ, who was to commence the millennium at Stratford.
Dr. Abercrombie writes of a young botanist who had gained a prize: he thought he was in a boat sailing to Greenwich on a botanical excursion, and conversed rationally on all points but that of the prize, which he asserted another student had gained.
Hear, too, another rhapsody of the “Opium-Eater.” After a close and intense study of the works of Livy, the words Consul Romanus seemed to haunt his mind. “At a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-rending sounds of ‘Consul Romanus;’ and immediately came sweeping by in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus Marius girt round by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions.”
There is a story (written in the seventeenth century) of a youth, who in a playful frolic put a ring on the marriage finger of a marble Venus; and a strange illusion came upon him that she had thus become his wife, and, in obedience to the injunctions of the ceremony, came to his bed when the sable canopy of night was spread around them. So intense was this illusion, and so cold and loveless was his heart withal, that, as the story goes, anexorcist was employedto dissolve the spell which had so firmly bound him.
Ida.I believe it was Mrs. Barry, who (as we read in the “Last Essays of Elia,”) averred that when playing the child of Isabella, she felt the burning tears of Mrs. Porter fall on her neck, as she was breathing o’er her some pathetic sentence. Even the study of Lady Macbeth, in midnight solitude, so intensely excited the imagination of Mrs. Siddons, that Campbell says, as she was disrobing herself in her chamber, she trembled with affright, even at the rustling of her own silk attire.
Ev.I could add many stories to yours, Ida. This sensibility, if protracted or in excess, becomes thePanophobiaof Esquirol. He attended once a lady whom the slightest noise alarmed, and who was wont to scream with affright at the simple moving of herself in bed.
From the journal of Esquirol I will quote other fragments, in which we see that every object was associated withoneimage.
“During our promenade he (a gallant general) interrupted me several times, in the midst of a very connected conversation, saying, “Do you hear how they repeat the words ‘coward,jealous?’ &c.” This illusion was produced by the noise of the leaves and the whistling of the wind among the branches of the trees, whichappeared to him well-articulated sounds; and, although I had each time combated it with success, the illusion returned whenever the wind agitated the trees anew.
“A young married man was in a state of fury whenever he saw a woman leaning on a man’s arm, being convinced that it washis own wife. I took him to the theatre at the commencement of his convalescence, but as soon as a lady entered the saloon accompanied by a gentleman, he became agitated, and called out eagerly several times, ‘That is she, that is she.’ I could hardly help laughing, and we were obliged to retire.
“A lady, twenty-three years of age, afflicted with hysterical madness, used to remain constantly at the windows of her apartment during the summer. When she saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, she screamed out ‘Garnerin, Garnerin, come and take me!’ and repeated the same invitation until the cloud disappeared. She mistook the clouds for balloons sent up by Garnerin.”
Cast.There is here as much romance, as when Ajax mistook a drove of oxen for the armed Greeks, or Don Quixote the windmills for a band of Spanish giants.
Ev.Again, Dr. Beddoes relates the case of a scholar, who locked himself up to study the Revelation. The confinement brought ondyspepticpains and spasms, and he was persuaded that “the monster blasphemy, with ten heads, was preying on his vitals.”
The Reverend Simon Brown died with the conviction that hisrational soulwas annihilated by a special fiat of the Divine will; and a patient in the Friends’ “Retreat,” at York, thought he had no soul, heart, or lungs.
From “Tulpius” we learn, that the wife of Salomon Galmus sank into a state of extreme melancholy, from the deep conviction that she was a visitant from the tomb, but sent back to the worldwithout her heart, for God had detained that in heaven.
Such illusions are sometimes excited by wounds of the brain. A soldier of the field of Austerlitz was struck with a delirious conviction that he was but an ill-made model of his former self. “You ask how Père Lambert is,” (he would say;) “he is dead, killed at Austerlitz;thatyou now see is a mere machine, made in his likeness.” He would then often lapse into a state of catalepsy insensible to every stimulus.
Dr. Mead tells us of an Oxford student, who ordered thepassing bellto be rung for him, andwent himselfto the belfry to instruct the ringers. He returned to his bed only to die.
A Bourbon prince thought himself dead, and refused to eat until his friends invited him to dine with Turenne and other French heroes long since departed.
There was a tradesman who thought he was a seven-shilling piece, and advertised himself thus: “If my wife presents me for payment, don’t change me.” Accuse me not of transatlantic plagiarism.
Bishop Warburton tells us of a man who thought himself agoose pie; and Dr. Ferriday, of Manchester, had a patient who thought he hadswallowed the devil.
So indeed thought Luther. As in Hudibras,