Esquirol reports the case of a general suffering from mania, whose “delusions persist throughout the summer, with some lucid intervals, during which the patient writes comedies and vaudevilles which betray the incoherence of his ideas.... In spite of the confusion of his mind, the general conceives an idea for the perfecting of a certain weapon, draws designs, and manifests the desire of getting a model constructed.” One day, he went to the foundry, and, on his return, was seized with agitation and delirium. A while later, he paid a second visit to the foundry, and “the model having been executed, gave an order for fifty thousand. This order was the only act which gave the founder reason to suspect the general’s malady. His invention was afterwards officially adopted.” Thus, in the midst of general incoherence, an important series of ideas was maintained and carried out to the end.
A writer not practised in mental disease, Esquiros whom we have already had occasion to quote, mentions the following facts, which are very significant:—
“Dr. Leuret,” he says, “related to us the history of a patient in the Bicêtre who, during his malady, had shown a remarkable talent for writing, though when in good health he would have been quite incapable of doing as much. ‘I am not quite cured,’ he said to the physician, who thought him convalescent. ‘I am still too clever for that. When I am well, I take a week to write a letter. In my natural condition I am stupid; wait till I become so again.’ The same observer also cites the case of a merchant whose affairs were in danger. During his illness, this man found means to re-establish them; the result of each of his attacks was the perfecting of some mechanism, or the invention of some means for facilitating his industry; and at the end of this invaluable insanity, he was found to have recovered both his reason and his fortune.
“We have been shown at Montmartre, in Dr. Blanche’s establishment, traces of charcoal-drawings on a wall. These half-effaced figures, one of which represented the Queen of Sheba, and the other some king, were the work of a distinguished young author, who has since recovered his reason. This illness had developed a new talent, which was non-existent, or at least played a most insignificant part, while he was in health.
“It is said that Marion Delorme met, in a madhouse, with the first man who conceived the idea of applying the forces of steam to the needs of industry, Salomon de Caus. Talents created by disease forsake the individual, for the most part, at the same time as the disease itself.”[296]
I had under treatment at Pavia, a peasant lad, aged twelve, who composed extremely original musical melodies, and bestowed on his companions in misfortune nicknames which fitted so well that they always kept them. With him was a little old man afflicted with rickets and pellagra who, when asked whether he was happy, replied, like a philosopher of ancient Greece, “All men are happy, even the rich, if they are only willing.”
Many of my pupils still remember B——, by turns musician, servant, porter, keeper of a cookshop, tinman, soldier, public letter-writer, but always unfortunate. He left us an autobiography, which, apart from a few orthographical mistakes in spelling, would be quite worth printing; and he asked me for his discharge in terms which, for an uneducated working man, were wanting neither in beauty nor in originality.
Not long ago I heard a poor hawker of sponges, when insane, thus conjecture and sum up the cardinal idea of the circulation of life: “We do not die. When the soul is worn out it melts, and is turned into another shape. In fact, when my father had buried a dead mule, we afterwards saw mushrooms growing in great numbers on the same spot, and the potatoes in the same place, which were formerly very small, grew to twice their usual size.”
Thus a vulgar mind, enlightened by the energy of mania, stumbles on theories which the greatest thinkers arrive at with difficulty.
G. B., a maniac, nephew of a celebrated author, said to me one day, when I hesitated before permitting him to ride a somewhat skittish horse, “No fear, doctor—similia similibus.”