Increased Volition.
GENUS [II].
With increased Actions of the Organs of Sense.
In every species of madness there is a peculiar idea either of desire or aversion, which is perpetually excited in the mind with all its connections. In some constitutions this is connected with pleasurable ideas without the exertion of much muscular action, in others it produces violent muscular action to gain or avoid the object of it, in others it is attended with despair and inaction. Mania is the general word for the two former of these, and melancholia for the latter; but the species of them are as numerous as the desires and aversions of mankind.
In the present age the pleasurable insanities are most frequently induced by superstitious hopes of heaven, by sentimental love, and by personal vanity. The furious insanities by pride, anger, revenge, suspicion. And the melancholy ones by fear of poverty, fear of death, and fear of hell; with innumerable others.
Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,
Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli.
Juven. I. 85.
This idea, however, which induces madness or melancholy, is generally untrue; that is, the object is a mistaken fact. As when a patient is persuaded he has the itch, or venereal disease, of which he has no symptom, and becomes mad from the pain this idea occasions. So that the object of madness is generally a delirious idea, and thence cannot be conquered by reason; because it continues to be excited by painful sensation, which is a stronger stimulus than volition. Most frequently pain of body is the cause of convulsion, which is often however exchanged for madness; and a painful delirious idea is most frequently the cause of madness originally, but sometimes of convulsion. Thus I have seen a young lady become convulsed from a fright, and die in a few days; and a temporary madness frequently terminates the paroxysms of the epilepsia dolorifica, and an insanity of greater permanence is frequently induced by the pains or bruises of parturition.
Where the patient is debilitated a quick pulse sometimes attends insane people, which is nevertheless generally only a symptom of the debility, owing to the too great expenditure of sensorial power; or of the paucity of its production, as in inirritative, or in sensitive inirritated fever. See [III. 1. 1].