Case X

We can match this with a case given by Bostock. "Oppressed," relates this English physiologist, "by a fever that had reduced me to a state of great weakness, I also suffered from a violent headache, which was confined to the right temple. After a sleepless night, I observed before me figures similar to those described by Nicolai. Being free from delirium, I made my remarks on them during the three days and three nights that they remained almost uninterruptedly. Two circumstances appeared to me very remarkable, namely, that the apparitions always followed the movement of the eyes; and that the objects best formed, and which remained the longest, had never before appeared. I had constantly before me, for twenty-four hours, a human face, whose features and headdress were as distinct as those of a living person, and whose whole appearance, after the interval of many years, is as vividly before me as it then was. I never knew any one having the slightest resemblance to this fantastic personage.

* Paterson, op. cit.

"After the disappearance of this phantom, and during the progress of my sickness, I had a particular and very amusing hallucination. I perceived a crowd of little human figures, which disappeared by degrees like a troop of puppets; they were all of the same height, and apparently at the same distance. When one of these figures had remained visible for a few minutes, it melted away, and was replaced by another more distinct. I do not recollect that these apparitions had any resemblance to persons or objects which I had previously seen, but they were so many creations or new combinations, the originals of which I could not trace."*

"If it be asked," adds Conolly, "how it was that Nicolai and the English physiologist did not lose their reason, the reply is, that they never believed in the reality of these visions. But why did they not believe, since the deranged have full faith in them? The evidence is alike in both cases, since it is closely linked with the evidence of the senses, than which nothing can be better. Did not Nicolai and Dr. Bostock deserve the name of madmen, for not believing their senses, rather than they who did? The explanation should be thus: The printer of Berlin and the London physician compared the objects that passed before their eyes, and concluded that the room could not contain so many persons. Noticing the tranquillity and the unembarrassed looks of those around them, it was evident that these apparitions were invisible to them; with the assistance of their other senses, they became convinced that the appearances were false, whatever madmen might make of them.

"These examples lead to the suspicion, which is confirmed by many others, that madness consists in the loss or the weakening of one or more of the mental faculties, which no longer have the power of comparing."†

A state of weakness, convalescence, syncope, and that condition which precedes asphyxia, sometimes cause hallucinations.

* Bostock, System of Physiology, vol. iii. p. 204. † Conolly, An Inquiry concerning the Indications of Insanity, p. 112, 8vo., London, 1834.

Leuret relates a fact that occurred to himself: -