Zoonomia Volume Ii Part 34

M. M. Some restraint in exhausting the usual pleasures of the world early in life. The agreeable cares of a matrimonial life. The cultivation of science, as of chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history, which supplies an inexhaustible source of pleasurable novelty, and relieves ennui by the exertions it occasions.

In many of these cases, whence irksomeness of life has been the ostensible cause of suicide, there has probably existed a maniacal hallucination, a painful idea, which the patient has concealed even to his dying hour; except where the mania has evidently arisen from hereditary or acquired disease of the membranous or glandular parts of the system.

12. _Pulchritudinis desiderium._ The loss of beauty, either by disease, as by the small-pox, or by age, as life advances, is sometimes painfully felt by ladies, who have been much flattered on account of it. There is a curious case of this kind related in Le Sage's Bachelor of Salamanca, which is too nicely described to be totally imaginary.

In this situation some ladies apply to what are termed cosmetics under various names, which crowd the newspapers. Of these the white has destroyed the health of thousands; a calx, or magistery, of bis.m.u.th is supposed to be sold in the shops for this purpose; but it is either, I am informed, in part or entirely white lead or cerussa. The pernicious effects of the external use of those saturnine applications are spoken of in gutta rosea, Cla.s.s II. 1. 4. 6. The real calx of bis.m.u.th would probably have the same ill effect. As the red paint is prepared from cochineal, which is an animal body, less if any injury arises from its use, as it only lies on the skin like other filth.

The tan of the skin occasioned by the sun may be removed by lemon juice evaporated by the fire to half its original quant.i.ty, or by diluted marine acid; which cleans the cuticle, by eroding its surface, but requires much caution in the application; the marine acid must be diluted with water, and when put upon the hand or face, after a second of time, as soon as the tan disappears, the part must be washed with a wet towel and much warm water.

Freckles lie too deep for this operation, nor are they in general removeable by a blister, as I once experienced. See Cla.s.s I. 2. 2. 9.

It is probable, that those materials which stain silk, or ivory, might be used to stain the cuticle, or hair, permanently; as they are all animal substances. But I do not know, that any trials of this kind have been made on the skin. I endeavoured in vain to whiten the back of my hand by marine acid oxygenated by manganese, which so instantly whitens cotton.

The cure therefore must be sought from moral writers, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, which are frequently a more valuable possession than celebrated beauty.

13. _Paupertatis timor._ The fear of poverty is one kind of avarice; it is liable to affect people who have left off a profitable and active business; as they are thus deprived of their usual exertions, and are liable to observe the daily expenditure of money, without calculating the source from whence it flows. It is also liable to occur with a sudden and unexpected increase of fortune. Mr. ----, a surgeon, about fifty years of age, who was always rather of a parsimonious disposition, had a large house, with a fortune of forty thousand pounds, left him by a distant relation; and in a few weeks became insane from the fear of poverty, lamenting that he should die in a jail or workhouse. He had left off a laborious country business, and the daily perception of profit in his books; he also now saw greater expences going forwards in his new house, than he had been accustomed to observe, and did not so distinctly see the source of supply; which seems to have occasioned the maniacal hallucination.--This idea of approaching poverty is a very frequent and very painful disease, so as to have induced many to become suicides, who were in good circ.u.mstances; more perhaps than any other maniacal hallucination, except the fear of h.e.l.l.

The covetousness of age is more liable to affect single men, than those who have families; though an acc.u.mulation of wealth would seem to be more desirable to the latter. But an old man in the former situation, has no personal connections to induce him to open his purse; and having lost the friends of his youth, and not easily acquiring new ones, feels himself alone in the world; feels himself unprotected, as his strength declines, and is thus led to depend for a.s.sistance on money, and on that account wishes to acc.u.mulate it. Whereas the father of a family has not only those connections, which demand the frequent expenditure of money, but feels a consolation in the friendship of his children, when age may render their good offices necessary to him.

M. M. I have been well informed of a medical person in good circ.u.mstances in London, who always carries an account of his affairs, as debtor and creditor, in his pocket-book; and looks over it frequently in a day, when this disease returns upon him; and thus, by counteracting the maniacal hallucination, wisely prevents the increase of his insanity. Another medical person, in London, is said to have cured himself of this disease by studying mathematics with great attention; which exertions of the mind relieved the pain of the maniacal hallucination.

Many moral writers have stigmatised this insanity; the covetous, they say, commit crimes and mortify themselves without hopes of reward; and thus become miserable both in this world and the next. Thus Juvenal:

c.u.m furor haud dubius, c.u.m sit manifesta phrenitis, Ut locuples moriaris, egenti vivere fato!

The covetous man thought he gave good advice to the spendthrift, when he said, "Live like me," who well answered him,

----------"Like you, Sir John?

"That I can do, when all I have is gone!"

POPE.

14. _Lethi timor._ The fear of death perpetually employs the thoughts of these patients; hence they are devising new medicines, and applying to physicians and quacks without number. It is confounded with hypochondriasis, Cla.s.s I. 2. 4. 10. in popular conversation, but is in reality an insanity.

A young gentleman, whom I advised to go abroad as a cure for this disease, a.s.sured me, that during the three years he was in Italy and France he never pa.s.sed a quarter of an hour without fearing he should die. But has now for above twenty years experienced the contrary.

The sufferers under this malady are generally at once discoverable by their telling you, amidst an unconnected description of their complaints, that they are nevertheless not afraid of dying. They are also easily led to complain of pains in almost any part of the body, and are thus soon discovered.

M. M. As the maniacal hallucination has generally arisen in early infancy from some dreadful account of the struggles and pain of dying, I have sometimes observed, that these patients have received great consolation from the instances I have related to them of people dying without pain.

Some of these, which I think curious, I shall concisely relate, as a part of the method of cure.

Mr. ----, an elderly gentleman, had sent for me one whole day before I could attend him; on my arrival he said he was glad to see me, but that he was now quite well, except that he was weak, but had had a pain in his bowels the day before. He then lay in bed with his legs cold up to the knees, his hands and arms cold, and his pulse scarcely discernible, and died in about six hours. Mr. ----, another gentleman about sixty, lay in the act of dying, with difficult respiration like groaning, but in a kind of stupor or coma vigil, and every ten or twelve minutes, while I sat by him, he waked, looked up, and said, "who is it groans so, I am sure there is somebody dying in the room," and then sunk again into a kind of sleep.

From these two cases there appeared to be no pain in the act of dying, which may afford consolation to all, but particularly to those who are afflicted with the fear of death.

15. _Orci timor._ The fear of h.e.l.l. Many theatric preachers among the Methodists successfully inspire this terror, and live comfortably upon the folly of their hearers. In this kind of madness the poor patients frequently commit suicide; although they believe they run headlong into the h.e.l.l, which they dread! Such is the power of oratory, and such the debility of the human understanding!

Those, who suffer under this insanity, are generally the most innocent and harmless people; who are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes, and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe, however contradictory to human apprehension, or derogatory to the great Creator of all things. The maniacal hallucination at length becomes so painful, that the poor insane flies from life to become free from it.

M. M. Where the intellectual cowardice is great, the voice of reason is ineffectual; but that of ridicule may save many from those mad-making doctors; though it is too weak to cure those, who are already hallucinated.

Foot's Farces are recommended for this purpose.

16. _Satyriasis._ An ungovernable desire of venereal indulgence. The remote cause is probably the stimulus of the s.e.m.e.n; whence the phallus becomes distended with blood by the arterial propulsion of it being more strongly excited than the correspondent venous absorption. At the same time a new sense is produced in the other termination of the urethra; which, like itching, requires some exterior friction to facilitate the removal of the cause of the maniacal actions, which may probably be increased in those cases by some a.s.sociated hallucinations of ideas. It differs from priapismus chronicus in the desire of its appropriated object, which is not experienced in the latter, Cla.s.s I. 1. 4. 6. and from the priapismus amatorius, Cla.s.s II. 1. 7. 9. in the maniacal actions in consequence of desire. The furor uterius, or nymphomania, is a similar disease.

M. M. Venesection. Cathartics. Torpentia. Marriage.

17. _Ira._ Anger is caused by the pain of offended pride. We are not angry at breaking a bone, but become quite insane from the smallest stroke of a whip from an inferior. Ira furor brevis. Anger is not only itself a temporary madness, but is a frequent attendant on other insanities, and as, whenever it appears, it distinguishes insanity from delirium, it is generally a good sign in fevers with debility.

An injury voluntarily inflicted on us by others excites our exertions of self-defence or of revenge against the perpetrator of it; but anger does not succeed in any great degree unless our pride is offended; this idea is the maniacal hallucination, the pain of which sometimes produces such violent and general exertions of our muscles and ideas, as to disappoint the revenge we meditate, and vainly to exhaust our sensorial power. Hence angry people, if not further excited by disagreeable language, are liable in an hour or two to become humble, and sorry for their violence, and willing to make greater concessions than required.

M. M. Be silent, when you feel yourself angry. Never use loud oaths, violent upbraidings, or strong expressions of countenance, or gesticulations of the arms, or clenched fists; as these by their former a.s.sociations with anger will contribute to increase it. I have been told of a sergeant or corporal, who began moderately to cane his soldiers, when they were awkward in their exercise, but being addicted to swearing and coa.r.s.e language, he used soon to enrage himself by his own expressions of anger, till toward the end he was liable to beat the delinquents unmercifully.

18. _Rabies._ Rage. A desire of biting others, most frequently attendant on canine madness. Animals in great pain, as in the colica saturnina, are said to bite the ground they lie upon, and even their own flesh. I have seen patients bite the attendants, and even their own arms, in the epilepsia dolorifica. It seems to be an exertion to relieve pain, as explained in Sect. x.x.xIV. 1. 3. The dread of water in hydrophobia is occasioned by the repeated painful attempts to swallow it, and is therefore not an essential or original part of the disease called canine madness. See Cla.s.s III. 1. 1.

15.

There is a mania reported to exist in some parts of the east, in which a man is said to run a muck; and these furious maniacs are believed to have induced their calamity by unlucky gaming, and afterwards by taking large quant.i.ties of opium; whence the pain of despair is joined with the energy of drunkenness; they are then said to sally forth into the most populous streets, and to wound and slay all they meet, till they receive their own death, which they desire to procure without the greater guilt, as they suppose, of suicide.

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 Cla.s.s 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, Cla.s.s III. 1. 2. 1.

Aversions to peculiar kinds of food are thus formed early in life by a.s.sociation 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. a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sociated 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 diabaetes, 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 s.e.m.e.n, 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.

M. M. 1. a.s.sure them if the loss of the s.e.m.e.n happens but twice a week, it will not injure them. 2. Marry them. The last is a certain cure; whether the disease be real or imaginary. Cold partial bath, and astringent medicines frequently taken, only recal the mind to the disease, or to the delinquency; and thence increase the imaginary effects and the real cause, if such exists. Mr. ---- destroyed himself to get free from the pain of fear of the supposed ill consequences of self-pollution, without any other apparent disease; whose parents I had in vain advised to marry him, if possible.

24. _Sympathia aliena._ Pity. Our sympathy with the pleasures and pains of others distinguishes men from other animals; and is probably the foundation of what is termed our moral sense and the source of all our virtues. See Sect. XXII. 3. 3. When our sympathy with those miseries of mankind, which we cannot alleviate, rises to excess, the mind becomes its own tormentor; and we add to the aggregate sum of human misery, which we ought to labour to diminish; as in the following eloquent lamentation from Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, Book II. 1. 200.

----------------Dark, As midnight storms, the scene of human things Appear'd before me; deserts, burning sands, Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south; And desolation blasting all the west With rapine and with murder. Tyrant power Here sits enthroned in blood; the baleful charms Of superst.i.tion there infect the skies, And turn the sun to horror. Gracious Heaven!

What is the life of man? Or cannot these, Not these portents thy awful will suffice?

That, propagated thus beyond their scope, They rise to act their cruelties anew In my afflicted bosom, thus decreed The universal sensitive of pain, The wretched heir of evils not its own!

A poet of antiquity, whose name I do not recollect, is said to have written a book describing the miseries of the world, and to have destroyed himself at the conclusion of his task. This sympathy, with all sensitive beings, has been carried so far by some individuals, and even by whole tribes, as the Gentoos, as not only to restrain them from killing animals for their support, but even to induce them to permit insects to prey upon their bodies. Such is however the condition of mortality, that the first law of nature is, "Eat or be eaten." We cannot long exist without the destruction of other animal or vegetable beings, either in their mature or their embryon state. Unless the fruits, which surround the seeds of some vegetables, or the honey stolen from them by the bee, may be said to be an exception to this a.s.sertion. See Botanic Garden, P. I. Cant. I. l. 278.

Note. Hence, from the necessity of our nature, we may be supposed to have a right to kill those creatures, which we want to eat, or which want to eat us. But to destroy even insects wantonly shews an unreflecting mind or a depraved heart.

Nevertheless mankind may be well divided into the selfish and the social; that is, into those whose pleasures arise from gratifying their appet.i.tes, and those whose pleasures arise from their sympathizing with others. And according to the prevalence of these opposing propensities we value or dislike the possessor of them.