M. M. When there appears a tendency to bite in the painful epilepsy, the end of a rolled-up towel, or a wedge of soft wood, should be put into the mouth of the patient. As a bullet is said sometimes to be given to a soldier, who is to be severely flogged, that he may by biting it better bear his punishment.
[19]. Citta. A desire to swallow indigestible substances. I once saw a young lady, about ten years of age, who filled her stomach with the earth out of a flower-pot, and vomited it up with small stones, bits of wood, and wings of infects amongst it. She had the bombycinous complexion, and looked like a chlorotic patient, though so young; this generally proceeds from an acid in the stomach.
M. M. A vomit. Magnesia alba. Armenian bole. Rhubarb. Bark. Steel. A blister. See Class [I. 2. 4. 5].
[20]. Cacositia. Aversion to food. This may arise, without disease of the stomach, from connecting nauseous ideas to our usual food, as by calling a ham a hog's a——. This madness is much inculcated by the stoic philosophy. See Antoninus' Meditations. See two cases of patients who refused to take nourishment, Class [III. 1. 2. 1].
Aversions to peculiar kinds of food are thus formed early in life by association of some maniacal hallucination with them. I remember a child, who on tasting the gristle of sturgeon, asked what gristle was? And being told it was like the division of a man's nose, received an ideal hallucination; and for twenty years afterwards could not be persuaded to taste sturgeon.
The great fear or aversion, which some people experience at the sight of spiders, toads, crickets, and the like, have generally had a similar origin.
M. M. Associate agreeable ideas with those which disgust; as call a spider ingenious, a frog clean and innocent; and repress all expressions of disgust by the countenance, as such expressions contribute to preserve, or even to increase, the energy of the ideas associated with them; as mentioned above in Species [17]. Ira.
[21]. Syphilis imaginaria. The fear that they are infested with the venereal disease, when they have only deserved it, is a very common insanity amongst modest young men; and is not to be cured without applying artfully to the mind; a little mercury must be given, and hopes of a cure added weekly and gradually by interview or correspondence for six or eight weeks. Many of these patients have been repeatedly salivated without curing the mind!
[22]. Psora imaginaria. I have twice seen an imaginary itch, and twice an imaginary diabætes, where there was not the least vestige of either of those diseases, and once an imaginary deafness, where the patient heard perfectly well. In all these cases the hallucinated idea is so powerfully excited, that it is not to be changed suddenly by occular sensation, or reason. Yet great perseverance in the frequently presenting contrary ideas will sometimes slowly remove this hallucination, or in great length of time oblivion, or forgetfulness, performs a cure, by other means in vain attempted.
[23]. Tabes imaginaria. This imaginary disease, or hallucination, is caused by the supposed too great frequency of parting with the semen, and had long imposed upon the physician as well as the patient, till Mr. John Hunter first endeavoured to shew, that in general the morbid effects of this pollution was in the imagination; and that those were only liable to those effects in general, who had been terrified by the villainous books, which pretend to prevent or to cure it, but which were purposely written to vend some quack medicine. Most of those unhappy patients, whom I have seen, had evidently great impression of fear and self-condemnation on their minds, and might be led to make contradictory complaints in almost any part of the body, and if their confessions could be depended on, had not used this pollution to any great excess.