Unfortunately, the means which had relieved Augustus killed his nephew Marcellus; and the Laconicum and the Tepidarium were again crowded with the “fashion.”
Persecution and its prohibitions have also been most powerful in working upon our imagination. Rare and forbidden fruits will always be considered more desirable than those we can easily obtain. The history of tobacco is a striking instance of this influence of difficulty upon the mind of man. Pope Urban VIII. prohibited its use in any shape, under the penalty of excommunication. It was afterwards forbidden in Russia, under the pain of having the offender’s nose cut off. In some cantons of Switzerland the prohibition was introduced in the decalogue, next to the commandment against adultery. Amurath IV. ordered all persons taken in flagranti delicto smoking tobacco, to be impaled, on the principle that its use checked the progress of population. The denunciation of our James I. may be considered as a masterpiece of the imaginary horrors attributed to this obnoxious weed. “It is,” he says, “a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that is bottomlesse.” During the reign of this monarch such a restriction might have been necessary, unless the consumption of tobacco enriched the exchequer: for it appears that some amateurs consumed no less than £500 per annum in smoke. Surely we should reap some flourishing revenue from fashion and credulity, when we find our government awarding £5000 to a certain Johanna Stephens for her discovery of certain medicines for the cure of calculi! The same imaginary hope induced many a credulous creature to minister to the necessities of another Johanna, for certain expectations. Alas! how this indefinite sense exhibits the infinite folly of poor humanity!
A morbid imagination, although frequently the source of much misery, will prove in many cases the fountain-head of many noble qualities; its exaltation constitutes genius, which is, in fact, a natural disposition of individual organization sometimes bordering upon insanity. “Non est magnum ingenium sine mixturâ dementiæ,” says Seneca; and Montaigne observes, “De quoi se fait la plus subtile folie que de la plus subtile sagesse? il n’y a qu’un demi-tour à passer de l’une à l’autre.” Aristotle asserts that all the great men of his time were melancholy and hypochondriac. The ancient and eastern nations entertained a singular idea regarding men of innate genius, and possessed of more than common attributes; they fancied that they were the first-born, and the offsprings of illicit love: Zoroaster, Confucius, Mahomet, Vishnou, were born of virgins; and Theseus, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, and Romulus, were all illegitimate.
So prone is a lively imagination to a derangement of the intellectual harmony, that the greatest care should be taken during the youthful development to resort to a sound and proper exercise. The constant tendency to wild and supernatural visions, the disregard of every daily and vulgar matter of fact consideration, soaring in regions of fiction, should engage our incessant vigilance, such a state of mind, as Abercrombie justly observes, “tends in a most material manner to prevent the due exercise of those nobler powers which are directed towards the cultivation both of science and of virtue,” and Foster has thus beautifully illustrated this subject in his essays.
“The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will accompany the mind into the most serious speculations or rather musings, on the real world, and what is to be done in it and expected; as the image which the eye acquires from looking at any dazzling object, still appears before it wherever it turns. The vulgar materials, that constitute the actual economy of the world, will rise up to its sight in fictitious forms, which it cannot disenchant into plain reality, nor will ever suspect to be deceptive. It cannot go about with sober, rational inspection and ascertain the nature and value of all things around it—in that paradise it walks delighted, till some imperious circumstance of real life call it thence, and gladly escapes thither again when the avocation is past. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been enjoyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficial institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen in that happy region, could have been imported into this terrestial place!—what a delightful thing the world would have been to awake each morning to see such a world once more!”
Of the miseries the hypochondriacs experience the following extract of a letter to a physician will afford a specimen: “My poor body is a burning furnace, my nerves red-hot coals, my blood is boiling oil; all sleep has fled, and I am suffering martyrdom. I am in agony when I lie on my back; I cannot lie on either side; and I endure excruciating torture when I seek relief by lying on my stomach; and, to add to my misery, I can neither sit, stand, nor walk.” The fancies of hypochondriacs are frequently of the most extraordinary nature: one patient imagines that he is in such a state of obesity as to prevent his passing through the door of his chamber or his house; another impressed with the idea that he is made of glass, will not sit down for fear of cracking; a third seems convinced that his head is empty; and an intelligent American, holding a high judicial seat in our West Indian colonies, could not divest himself of the occasional conviction of his being transformed into a turtle.
The most melancholy record of the miseries of hypochondriacism is to be found in the diary of Dr. Walderstein of Gottingen. He was a man much deformed in person, and his mind seemed as distorted as his body. Although of deep learning and research, and convinced of the absurdity of his impressions, yet he was unable to resist their baneful influence. “My misfortune,” says the doctor, “is, that I never exist in this world, but rather in possible combinations created by my imagination to my conscience. They occupy a large portion of my time, and my reason has not the power to banish them. My malady, in fact, is the faculty of extracting poison from every circumstance in life; so much so that I often felt the most wretched being because I had not been able to sneeze three times together. One night when I was in bed I felt a sudden fear of fire, and gradually became as much oppressed by imaginary heat as though my room were in flames. While in this situation, a fire-bell in the neighbourhood sounded, and added to my intense sufferings. I do not blush at what might be called my superstition any more than I should blush in acknowledging that my senses inform me that the earth does not move. My error forms the body of my judgment, and I thank God that he has given it a soul capable of correcting it. When I have been perfectly free from pain, as is not unfrequently the case when I am in bed, my sense of this happiness has brought tears of gratitude in my eyes. I once dreamt,” adds Walderstein, “that I was condemned to be burnt alive. I was very calm, and reasoned coolly during the execution of my sentence. ‘Now,’ I said to myself, ‘I am burning, but not yet burnt; and by-and-by I shall be reduced to a cinder.’ This was all I thought, and I did nothing but think. When, upon awaking, I reflected upon my dream, I was by no means pleased with it, for I was afraid I should become all thought and no feeling.” It is strange that this fear of thought, assuming a corporeal form in deep affliction, had occurred to our poet Rowe, when he exclaims in the Fair Penitent, “Turn not to thought my brain.” “What is very distressing,” continues the unfortunate narrator, “is, that when I am ill I can think nothing, feel nothing, without bringing it home to myself. It seems to me that the whole world is a mere machine, expressly formed to make me feel my sufferings in every possible manner.” What a fearful avowal from a reflecting and intelligent man! Does it not illustrate Rousseau’s definition of reason—the knowledge of our folly.
Dr. Rush mentions a man who imagined that he had a Caffre in his stomach who had got into it at the Cape of Good Hope, and tormented him ever since. Pinel relates the case of an unfortunate man who believed that he had been guillotined, but his innocence having been made complete after his execution, his judges decided that his head should be restored to him, but the person intrusted with this operation had made a mistake, and put on a wrong head. Dr. Conolly knew a man who really believed that he had been hanged, but had been brought to life by galvanism, but he maintained that this operation had not restored the whole of his vitality.
Jacobi relates the case of a man confined in the lunatic asylum at Wurtzburg, in other respects rational, of quiet, discreet habits, so that he was employed in the domestic business of the house, but who laboured under the impression that there was a person concealed in his stomach, with whom he held frequent conversations. He often perceived the absurdity of this idea, and grieved in acknowledging and reflecting that he was under the influence of so groundless a persuasion, but he never could get rid of it. “It was very curious to observe,” adds our intelligent author, “how, when he had but an instant before cried what nonsense!—is it not intolerable to be thus deluded? and while the tears which accompanied these exclamations were yet in his eyes, he again began to talk, apparently with entire conviction about the person in his belly who told him that he was to marry a great princess. An attempt was made to cure him, by putting a large blister on his abdomen, and the instant that it was dressed, moving from behind him a dressed-up figure, as if just extracted from his body. The experiment so far succeeded that the patient believed in the performance, and his joy was at first boundless in the full persuasion that he was cured; but some morbid feeling about the bowels, which he had associated with the insane impression, still continuing, or being again experienced, he took up the idea that another person similar to the first was still left within him, and under that persuasion he still continues to labour.”
A nobleman of the court of Louis XIV., fancied himself a dog, and would invariably put his head out of window to bark aloud. Don Calmet relates the case of some nuns in a convent in Germany, who imagined that they were transformed into cats, and wandered about the building loudly mewing and spitting at and scratching each other.