His mind is naturally one of much greater activity than power, hence his harassing day and night practice and preparation for lecturing induced a morbid state of mind, in which condition a fever in his family occurred. Rapidly and unexpectedly, four male children, a niece, and a maid-servant, were the victims, and this completed the wreck of his overworked, active, and feeling mind.
His present state is most interesting and singular, and very difficult to describe. His activity of mind, prodigious command of words, and most animated and graceful manner, excite the greatest surprise; and even in his present deranged and deluded condition, with his varied stores of information, these exhibitions are mistaken for the remnants of versatility of genius; yet, as I have already said, it is most true that his mind was not naturally one of so much power as it was of amazing ambition and activity.
He will suddenly rush into some of his anatomical, surgical, and medical lectures, going through different parts of the human body, operations, and practice. His lectures on the circulation of the blood, seem to have been most strongly impressed upon his memory. At other times, his eloquence is displayed in imitations of various celebrated characters. If they are ancients, and he be asked, how can this be? since they lived two thousand years ago, he says: “Yes, but I died and rose again in the world.” And thus, he imagines himself every character he personifies, and that at that time he was alive, and afterwards died, again reappearing in such another character. In this way having passed through numberless transmigrations, he was Adam, Abel, or Melchisadeck, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Goliah, David, and Solomon. Solomon had great attractions: frequently describing, with great animation, his state of grandeur and enjoyment. In the same way he was Aristotle, Pythagoras, Confucius, Plato, Zoroaster, Pliny, Ptolemy, Cicero, Demosthenes, and particularly Homer, Mahomet, and even our Saviour, &c. All these he will still personate, and make speeches differing in manner and matter, and suitable in some measure to each of them.
In medicine, all the list of celebrated men are claimed as the same transmigration of his soul. He lifted up the serpent. He was Hypocrates, Celsus, Galen, Paracelsus, Stahl, Van Helmont, Boerhave, Cullen. In anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and natural philosophy, it was the same. The whole list of celebrated medical men is monopolized by this mania of transmigration.
He always addressed strangers as contemporaries, saying, “Good God! you were alive at such a time: I knew you well; you were with me when I conquered at the plains of Marathon! or, you met me at such a place when I was singing the Iliad, as old Homer,” and so on. All this with such a fascination of look, manner, and address, that he arrests and amuses every one, especially strangers. He frequently talks with imaginary, and especially angelic beings, which he does with a manner and expression that prove he believes he beholds their actual presence.
He had a peculiarly bright and glistening eye, indicative of the secret and destructive habit so dreadfully fatal to the insane.
It appeared to me, since amidst all this strange confusion and delusion, his intellectual powers were still in existence, that if his understanding could be constantly occupied, this confused condition might in time be corrected, and his mind restored to a right state: for this purpose I undertook to make him translate a French work, while I wrote from his dictation, at the same time checking and controlling his wild starts into all these vagaries. In this manner we nearly finished an important medical work together, and he was evidently much improved by the exercise; the task was however so amazingly arduous, that in the midst of my other duties I was obliged to discontinue it, and he then relapsed into his former state.
The effect, however, was sufficiently decided to prove a fact of very great importance, and many such facts having since occurred, which further tend to confirm that many cases which are generally given over as incurable, may be cured by a well-directed exercise of the understanding, by which it is at once strengthened, and the mind drawn and excluded from the exercise of its insane feelings and hallucinations. In some cases I have made them translate a work on the nature and effects of their secret vice, and it has silently checked this habit, and at last restored them.
Here I close my description of these old cases, conceiving I have given a sufficient number for the purpose I had in view, that of exhibiting a fair average picture of the state and character of the old insane. After one general abstract observation on the whole essay, I shall afterwards, and following this last case, make my next essay on the origin and nature of disease in general, and of insanity in particular: and which I shall do as preliminary to the more intimate and direct investigation of the causes and nature of insanity; and especially the direct consideration of the cause to which I have alluded in this case, because it is one of the most general and most fatal causes of insanity, and a cause, which if not removed, inevitably renders them incurable. Such was the habit of the person whose case obliged me very reluctantly to assume a defensive attitude, and refute falsehood by a statement of the truth, or otherwise I should have continued silently to proceed in the path of duty, without obtruding our own secret exertions on the notice of the public, as it may appear that I have done in this essay, as well as in those which are to follow, written, as they will be, in some measure on the same principle, for the truth should not suffer from diffidence, any more than it ought to be brought into disrepute by vain ostentation; still, I am quite certain, that I am actuated by no feelings incompatible with charity and justice.