Ev. Yes. When the patient is insane on all points but one, we term it, “Folie raisonnante.”
The very idiot, indeed, is often fond of most exact arrangement. The savage of Aveyron instantly put things in order when they were deranged.
White, in his “History of Selborne,” records the propensities of an idiot, who, he says, was a very Merops-apiaster, or Bee-bird. Honey-bees, humblebees, and wasps, were his prey: he would seize them, disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Except in this adroitness, he had no understanding.
Pinel states the case of a mechanical genius, who became insane, believing his head to be changed. Yet he invented mechanism of the most intricate combinations. We are informed, too, of a clergyman, who was ever insane, but when delivering his discourses from the pulpit.
I believe some parts of a national establishment were constructed from the plans of one of its inmates, who was to all other intents and purposes a madman.
Dr. Uwins once told me, that some of the lines in his biographical work were written by a maniac in the Hoxton Asylum, who was ever aware of the approach of his mania. These lines were thought to be among the best in the work.
Nay, idiots will sometimes reason, and work out a syllogism. I think Dr. Conolly relates a story of two, who quarrelled, because each asserted that he was the Holy Ghost; at length, one decided that the other was the Holy Ghost, and that he could not be, because there were not two.
From this “folie raisonnante” there is an easy transition to that eccentricity which seems to be a set-off against the strength of mind of the deep thinker. The permanent derangement, however, we term insanity; the transient, eccentricity.
Marullus informs us that Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian Lake, and at last inquired where he was. Archimedes rushed into the street naked from the bath, in an ecstacy at having discovered the alloy in the crown of Syracuse. Pinel tells us of a priest, who, in an abstract mood, felt no pain, although part of his body was burning.
“Viote,” says Zimmerman, “during his fits of mathematical abstraction, would often remain sleepless and foodless for three days and nights.”