Case XI

"I was attacked,' says this physician, "with the influenza, and my brethren having decided that it was necessary to bleed me, they took from me three basins of blood. A quarter of an hour after the operation, I fell into a swoon, without entirely losing consciousness, which lasted during eight hours. Whilst they were administering restoratives, I distinctly heard a vial placed on a table that was near my bed, and immediately a crackling similar to that which occurs from the action of an acid on a carbonate. I thought they had spilled some acid on the marble table, and reproved those who were about me for their negligence. At first they considered that I was dreaming; then that I was delirious; and they attempted to undeceive me by the assurance that there was no vial on the table, and that no acid had been spilled. I then understood that I had a hallucination, and I gave credit to what I was told, rather than to what I had heard. But the noise was so distinct that, had I not had experience in hallucinations, I should have been, like others, deceived by this unusual phenomenon."*

M. Andral was himself the puppet of a similar illusion; for several instants he thought that a corpse lay extended before him in the room where he slept, after an indisposition. This vision might be traced to the painful recollections which the sight of a dead body had occasioned the first time he entered a dissecting-room.

It frequently happens that, on raising the head after it has been for some time held down, vertigo is experienced, and dazzling and sparkling lights are seen; the ears also are annoyed with a fatiguing, buzzing sound. With some persons this appears to have caused hallucinations.

Case XII

A servant-girl was cleaning a staircase; raising her head, she perceived feet, and then limbs, of so large a size that, seized with dread, she fled without waiting the development of the apparition. The ignorance of this girl would not allow of her assuring herself of the falsity of the vision, which an enlightened person would have done.†

A man of superior intelligence was constantly haunted by a spectre, that always appeared to him on lying down. When he sat up in bed, it vanished, but reappeared as soon as he assumed a horizontal position. (Dendy, op. cit., p. 280.)

* Leuret, Fragments Psychologiques sur la Folie, p. 135, Paris, 1834. † Ferriar, op. cit.

A great straggle of mind, great preoccupation, an association of ideas which cannot always be detected, may reproduce a fact already forgotten, and give it all the freshness of a living picture.

Case XIII

A middle-aged, well-dressed man, a stranger in Edinburgh, died suddenly in an omnibus. The corpse was exposed in the police-office until it was claimed by his friends. On the following day, a medical man was called in to report on the cause of his death.

On entering the room where the body lay, the reporter was struck with the open, intelligent, and agreeable expression on the face of the dead. He had completely forgotten the matter, however, when it was recalled in the following manner: After several days' close study of a medical subject, he perceived, on raising his eyes, the form of the stranger opposite to him, as distinctly as he had seen him the first time on the table in the police-office; with this difference only, that he had on his hat. For a while, he looked steadfastly on the surgeon, with the same amiable expression the latter had before remarked, and in a few minutes disappeared.

Mental exertion, in over-exciting the brain, often causes hallucinations. We have known several persons, amongst them a medical man, who distinctly heard voices calling them at night; several of these individuals turned to reply, and went to the door under the impression that the bell rang. This state appears to be common among those who soliloquize, talk aloud, and hold conversations as though another were present.