"O let me not be mad-not mad-sweet Heaven!" Thus Lear: but in King John: "My name is CONSTANCE; I was Jeffrey's wife; I quote these passages, not as illustrative of madness itself, but of the horror entertained for it by some, and the refuge which it promises to the imagination of others. The Romans, heartless in most things, esteemed insanity sacred; the moderns, humane in most things, regard it, for the most part, with contempt: This, of all maladies that man infest, 64 Claims most compassion, and receives it least!" Nothing is yet known of the principle of mind : all is conjecture. All, therefore, man can do, is to study the capacities and modes of action it exhibits in its shape of bodily combination. Esquirol, Pinel, and Haslam even assure us that the mental functions may be a total wreck, and yet the most profound medical practitioner would not be able to detect the slightest derangement of structure. From this it is argued (and with no small share of logical analogy) that no evidence in favour of the materiality of the mind can be drawn from pathology. Whether the brain be an organ or an aggregate of organs is of no importance to this inquiry, the brain being only the (probable) seat of the mind, and not, as some would insist, the organ of the mind. Neither the brain, nor the heart, nor the visual nerve, is sensible to touch; pain, therefore, does not arise from those organs, but from the parts which surround and protect them. The EYE is guarded by a nerve which covers all its exterior surfaces, and gives to them intensity of sensation. By this the nerve of sight is protected; because, being itself insensible, it has no power of B B guarding itself. The HEART, too, is insensible. It is nevertheless affected by every change, whether of the body or of the mind, being in perpetual sympathy with both. The BRAIN also may be touched; nay, a portion of it may even be separated from the rest, and yet the patient remain not only insensible to the loss, but unconscious of the wound. Anatomy, then, as before observed, affords no insight whatever (at least at present) in regard to the structure and functions of the mental faculties. The mind is doubtless as distinct from the bodily organs as are the exterior influences which call them into action. The manner in which sensation is propagated and the mind influenced is totally unknown. That the mind is influenced by what is taken into the bodily system can be, nevertheless, proved in a moment, viz., by the admission of opium or brandy. The mind is shown by this to be, as it were, married to the body; and here, I believe, all real knowledge ceases. Four or five years ago I visited a private asylum for lunatics. I was ushered into the drawing-room, and drank tea with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, two of whom were highly educated. One said he had climbed Teneriffe; and the other, the Ghauts, and several peaks among the Himalayas. These might have been mere boasts or fancies; but they distinctly showed that they were intimately acquainted with Tasso and Ariosto, and one was even conversant with Dante. After tea one of the ladies sang, another played, and all entered occasionally into animated discourse. The friend whom I went to see, however, kept aloof, not being in goodhumour. As I was going away, the master of the establishment inquired how I had been entertained. "Never more agreeably," said I. "And yet," he replied, to my great surprise, "every one of those gentlemen and ladies (except my own family) are patients. This is the anniversary of my marriage, and we invited them from their apartments to partake of our happiness." In December, 1828, I was present at the investigation of a question relative to the sanity of a gentleman, named Rothwell, and I record it on account of the very extraordinary declaration of the patient: "I feel no hesitation in declaring, in the most solemn manner, my conviction, from the unerring light which glows within me, as well as from concurrent circumstances of another description, that this person who is here in the form of my attendant is no other than the Divine Creator!" Bishop Watson observes, in a letter to Mr. Hayley, that disorders of the mind generally originate in a disordered body; and Dr. John Hunter and M. Mongelloz insist that, strictly speaking, there are no hereditary maladies. That internal and external conformations are hereditary is nevertheless certain. From the statements of M. Friedrich, it appears that the raving mad are more frequently cured than the melancholy mad, since to animate sensibility is less difficult than to moderate too great an irritability; that raving madness is more prevalent in man, and moody madness in women; and that the principle in both (in his opinion) is to be found less in the mind than in a deranged bodily organization. Both suffer, however, from fixed ideas in men, derangements of the understanding are more frequent; in women, derangements of the imagination.* There are two remarkable things in insane persons. Those they formerly hated they admire and regard; and those they once loved, they not only hate, but despise. They prefer, also, to be with those *In 1789, Black found in Bedlam-insane from grief and misfortune, 206; religion, 90; love, 74; jealousy, 6; fright, 51; study, 15; pride, 8; drunkenness, 58; childbirth, 79; constipation, 10; hereditary complaints, 115; contusions and broken bones, 12; syphilis, 14; smallpox, 7; retrocession of the itch, and healed ulcers, 5.-Friedrich. most of whom they stand most in awe: a circumstance which may probably be rightly ascribed to their being conscious of their condition, and from the satisfaction they derive from having a superior agent near them who can protect them from themselves, most insane persons being more fearful of themselves than they are of other persons. Dr. Abercrombie regards insanity and dreaming as having a remarkable affinity. Erroneous impressions in INSANITY he considers as “permanent, and affecting the conduct;" in DREAMING, 66 as transient, and not affecting the conduct." In INSANITY "the senses are alive to external impressions," and "the motions of the body are under the influence of the will." In DREAMS the senses are in a great degree "closed against external impressions," and "the influence of the will upon the motions of the body is in general suspended." The arguments employed to support this hypothesis are exceedingly ingenious. We ought, however, to remember that the author does not identify insanity with dreaming; he speaks merely of their affinity. But to me insanity appears to be rather an intermediate state between wakefulness and dreaming; a species of hallucination, as it were, disturbed by reality, and rendered observable to others by the force of volition, and the power of impulse and action. The cure of insanity is beyond the province of my inquiry. It is sufficient for me to mention that the practice of insulating patients from relations and friends is recommended by Cullen, Willis, Pinel, Esquirol, and indeed, I believe, by all the more eminent English, French, German, and Italian physicians. What Spanish ones have recommended, we have no opportunity of knowing; since, if I mistake not, no treatise of any authority has been of late years published in that language. I believe, however, that they have not yet reached the knowl edge that insanity is in some cases a bodily complaint; in others, a mental one; in most, a disease both of the mind and of the body. But whether the mind operates on the body in the first instance, or the body on the mind, is in most cases an exceedingly difficult problem to determine. I will here remark, that an entire absence of phosphorus from the brain would, in the opinion of M. Couerbe, reduce us to the state of quadrupeds; and that a great excess of it engenders excitement so violent as to resemble madness, if it does not even produce it. THE TRIALS AND CAPRICES OF FORTUNE. THE Scholiasts number five methods of acquiring knowledge: observation, reading, listening, conversation, and meditation: they leave out the most important-suffering. But mere scholars, and men who have been rich from their birth, and continue so till the hour of their death, ought never to take so great a liberty with common sense as to suppose they have ever possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind. Felicity was deified by the Greeks and Romans; but they found her the most ungrateful of all the divinities. The Scythians represented Fortune as a woman having hands and wings, but without a foot to stand upon yet many men think misfortune not only a disgrace, but a crime, till they come to be unfortunate themselves, and then they perceive the folly of asserting that every misfortune may be prevented by courage or by prudence. They find, too, that fortune not only triumphs over folly and imprudence, but over wisdom and virtue. Many worthy persons, however, seriously fancy their good fortune to be the result of their own management, when all they have to do is to sit still and keep themselves warm! |