Another World: Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah

by Benjamin Lumley

MADNESS.

"Think not others blind because ye will not see….The concentrated light of the soul is not visible to the naked eye."

The microscope also led to the discovery of the incipient causes of madness, by the facility it afforded us for the dissection and examination of the minutest portions of the numerous divisions of the brain.

Before my laws came into operation the incipient symptoms of monomania were rarely noticed, and many were driven into confirmed madness and crime by neglect or improper treatment, whilst some of the supposed lunatics were really wiser than their keepers or the doctors who attended them. It often happened that the aspirations of a superior mind were mistaken for indications of the malady, and led to the incarceration of the supposed lunatic. For instance, a poor man, who lived in the reign of my predecessor, thought, and truly thought, that electricity might be used as a motive power for the heaviest bodies, and supply the place of wood used as fuel in manufactures. He also thought that electricity, then impalpable to the senses, was the material ingredient affecting the weight and coherence of bodies. People laughed at what they supposed to be illusions, and there the matter might have stopped; but the poor man persisted in his assertions that the sun contained electricity, which could be attracted, concentrated, and applied to various purposes. He appealed to the well-known fact, that the sun ripens the fruits of the earth, changes the colours of substances, affects the brain, and produces many wondrous phenomena without visible contact. His lucubrations, instead of suggesting experiment, were received with derision, and the man himself was cruelly treated, his very persistency in the truth convincing the world that he was a confirmed madman. In vain he appealed to the officers charged to visit the monomaniacs, and, in spite of all his efforts, he died in a lunatic asylum.

So dangerous, indeed, was it formerly to announce new ideas opposed to those already received, that we had a proverb to the effect, that he was not mad who had "droll" thoughts, but he was so who told them to the world. The proverb is now somewhat reversed, and he is thought wicked who, being favoured with gleams of light, allows them to perish with him.

Accompanying all laws, I gave to the people my reasons at length for their promulgation, together with answers to anticipated objections; and in the exposition of the laws relating to madness I bid them recollect that had I endeavoured to put my thoughts into action some years earlier, I should undoubtedly have suffered similar persecution to those under which many others had succumbed.

Monomania is not now assumed, as formerly, from the seeming extravagance or supposed absurdity of people's words; for it is well known in Montalluyah that thoughts which a few years before were scoffed at as the height of absurdity are now acknowledged facts, and they who could doubt the existence of the now familiar phenomena would alone be thought mad! It is known, too, that people often say strange things from confused or indistinct recollections of what has befallen them in a prior state of existence, or from prenotion or intuition of things as yet unknown to others; and although in the sciences we accept nothing as conclusive that is not confirmed by experiment, the vastness or strangeness of the thought, far from attracting ridicule, generally leads to inquiry, experiments, and results. Many of our great discoveries have been suggested by hints which formerly would have seemed the ravings of a disordered mind.

With our microscopes we have been enabled to examine and dissect all the minutest divisions of the brain, each of which responds to certain trains of thought, and to ascertain the physical cause of madness.

This knowledge enables us to discriminate with certainty, to detect the existence, nature, and locality of the germ, and apply effectual remedies during the earliest tendency to the malady. Until this discovery was made, I took effectual means for curing the numbers in whose brains madness had already been developed. I erected many great buildings, where each patient was separated from the others, for in Montalluyah madness is thought to be more or less contagious; but after I had reigned some years the deserted divisions only served to show for what purpose they had been formerly used, and, with one single exception, kept in case of need, these buildings are now appropriated to other purposes.

Amongst the discoveries that astonished the brain-doctors and mind-tamers was the following:—It was formerly thought that the disease existed in the overworked, portion of the brain; but this was found to be an error, inasmuch as the disease exists in those parts of the brain which have lain dormant or have been little used. From these the oleaginous fluids essential to their life and activity are drawn to supply the overworked portion, which remains in full health and power. The doctors admitted that their original belief would alone suffice to account for their having failed to cure so many cases of madness.

The heat of the climate, the power of the sun, the then excessive use of stimulants, and the excitability of the people,—whose pulsation is more rapid than yours,—all tended formerly to augment the victims of the scourge.