Paralytic affections are a much more frequent cause of insanity than has been commonly supposed, and they are also a very common effect of madness; more maniacs die of hemiplegia and apoplexy than from any other disease. In those affected from this cause, we are, on enquiry, enabled to trace a sudden affection, or fit, to have preceded the disease. These patients usually bear marks of such affection, independently of their insanity: the speech is impeded, and the mouth drawn aside; an arm, or leg, is more or less deprived of its capability of being moved by the will: and in most of them the memory is particularly impaired. Persons thus disordered are in general not at all sensible of being so affected. When so feeble, as scarcely to be able to stand, they commonly say that they feel perfectly strong, and capable of great exertions. However pitiable these objects may be to the feeling spectator, yet it is fortunate for the condition of the sufferer, that his pride and pretensions are usually exalted in proportion to the degradation of the calamity which afflicts him. None of these patients have received any benefit in the hospital; and from the enquiries I have been able to make at the private mad-houses, where they have been afterwards confined, it has appeared, that they have either died suddenly, from apoplexy, or have had repeated fits, from the effects of which they have sunk into a stupid state, and gradually dwindled away.
The paralytic require to be kept warm, and to be allowed a more nutritious diet and cheering beverage than insane patients of any other description. In the winter months they suffer extremely, and ought to be treated as hot-house plants. The fare of the workhouse is ungenial to this wretched state of existence, and therefore they seldom long continue a burden to the parish.
When insanity supervenes on epilepsy, or where the latter disease is induced by insanity, a cure is very seldom effected. In two instances I have known madness alternate with epilepsy: one, a man about forty-eight years of age, was a pauper in the Cripplegate workhouse, where he had been kept about three years on account of his epileptic fits, but, becoming insane, was admitted into Bethlem Hospital, therein he continued a year, without being at all benefited; during that time he had no epileptic fit. Being returned to the workhouse, he there recovered his senses in a few months, when his epileptic attacks returned, and continued with their usual frequency. About two years afterwards he was re-admitted into the hospital, his insanity having recurred, and continued there another year without experiencing any attack of epilepsy. The other was a young woman, who had been epileptic for many years until she became insane, when she lost her epileptic fits; these, however, were said to have returned in a short time after she had recovered from her insanity.
All authors who have treated this subject appear to agree respecting the difficulty of curing religious madness. The infrequent recoveries in this species of insanity, have caused thinking persons to suppose, that this disorder is little under the dominion of the medical practitioner; and, that restoration to reason in all cases is more the effect of accident, or of circumstances not “dreamt of in our philosophy,” than the result of observation, skill, and experience. The idea that Religion; that which fastens us to the duties of this life; that which expounds the laws of God and of his creation to the ignorant; that which administers consolation to the afflicted; that which regulates man’s conduct towards his fellow creatures, to exercise charity among them, and, from such benevolence, to purchase happiness to himself: to believe, that the cultivation of such exalted sentiments would decoy a human being into madness, is a foolish and impious supposition.
“Thou, fair Religion, wast design’d,
Duteous daughter of the skies,
To warm and chear the human mind,
To make men happy, good, and wise;
To point, where sits in love array’d,
Attentive to each suppliant call,
The God of universal aid,
The God, the Father of us all.
“First shewn by Thee, thus glow’d the gracious scene,
’Til Superstition, fiend of woe,
Bad doubts to rise and tears to flow,
And spread deep shades our view and heaven between.”
Penrose.
It is therefore sinful to accuse Religion, which preserves the dignity and integrity of our intellectual faculty, with being the cause of its derangement. The mind becomes refreshed and corroborated by a fair and active exercise of its powers directed to proper objects; but when an anxious curiosity leads us to unveil that which must ever be shrouded from our view, the despair, which always attends those impotent researches, will necessarily reduce us to the most calamitous state.
Instituting a generous and tolerant survey of religious opinions, we see nothing in the solemn pomp of catholic worship which could disorganize the mind; as human beings, they have employed human art to render the impression more vivid and durable. The decorous piety, and exemplary life of the quaker has signally exempted him from this most severe of human infirmities. The established church of this country, of which I am an unworthy member, will delude no one, by its terrors, to the brink of fatuity: the solid wisdom, rational exposition, and pure charity, which flow through the works of Taylor, Barrow, Secker, and Tillotson, will inspire their readers with a manly confidence: the most enlightened of our species will advance in wisdom and in happiness from their perusal; and the simplicity and truth of their comments will be evident to those of less cultivated understanding. The pastors of this church are all men of liberal education, and many have attained the highest literary character; they are therefore eminently qualified to afford instruction. But what can be expected, when the most ignorant of our race attempt to inform the multitude; when the dregs of society shall assume the garb of sanctity and the holy office; and pretend to point out a privy path to heaven, or cozen their feeble followers into the belief that they possess a picklock for its gates? The difficulty of curing this species of madness will be readily explained from the consideration, that the whole of their doctrine is a base system of delusion, rivetted on the mind by terror and despair; and there is also good reason to suppose, that they frequently contrive, by the grace of cordials, to fix the waverings of belief, and thus endeavour to dispel the gloom and dejection which these hallucinations infallibly excite.
Although the faction of faith will owe me no kindness for the disclosure of these opinions, yet it would be ungrateful were I to shrink from the avowal of my obligations to methodism[23] for the supply of those numerous cases which has constituted my experience of this wretched calamity.
When the natural small-pox attacks insane persons it most commonly proves fatal. I was induced to draw this conclusion from consulting the records of Bethlem, where I found that few of those who had been sent to the Small-pox Hospital recovered; but subsequent experience has enabled me to point out this distinction: that those who have been in a furious state have generally experienced a fatal termination, and that those who recovered had the small-pox when they were in a state of convalescence from their insanity.
When patients, during their convalescence, become more corpulent than they were before, it is a favourable symptom; and, as far as I have remarked, such persons have very seldom relapsed. But it should also be observed, that many, who become stupid, and in a state, verging on ideotism, are very much disposed to obesity: these cases are not to be remedied.