The appearance of phantoms in severe fevers were observed by the ancients. How many deliriums, says Hippocrates, occur in ataxical and adynamic fevers, accompanied by frightful spectres, which announce ruin in the animal economy, and impending destruction !†

Moreau de la Sarthe relates, in the Encyclopedie Methodique (art. Mid. Mentale), his having attended a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, who, although scarcely acquainted with the first rudiments of Latin, was suddenly capable, during a raging fever, of speaking it in the greatest purity. The same child expressed his gratitude to those who attended him, in language superior to his age and the supposed power of his intellect. He died some days afterwards.

* Conolly, op. cit.

† Aberorombie, op. cit. p. 63.

Mr. Rayer speaks of having attended one of our most illustrious men, who was attacked with typhoid. For seven or eight days, he saw the figure of a man, at the foot of his bed, whom he endeavored to drive away. The phantom had no repulsive appearance; it only annoyed him by its presence. On his recovery, it entirely disappeared. Dr. Marotte has related an analogous case.

In two instances, we have noticed the fever to be followed by insanity, but we did not observe the hallucinations. M. Szaf-kowski noted, in 1845, in the arrondissement of Milan (Avey-ron), a deadly epidemic of typhoid fever, with a predominance of ataxical symptoms, accompanied with hallucinations of sight and hearing.*

English authors who have written on the fevers of Cadiz and Malaga, say, that the sick persons became insensible to external agencies, which were replaced by a new world of ideas, of the most terrible description. Hideous spectres, the forerunners of coma and death, appeared to them. Hallucinations have often been noticed in the typhus peculiar to armies, in pestilential fevers, and in several epidemics of the Middle Ages, which may be termed mixed typhus, because they appear to have been developed under the influence of human miasma and that arising from marshy land. Thucydides, the historian of the plague of Athens, speaks of the spectres which terrified the inhabitants. This plague is classed by modern authors with the great typhus. Procopius speaks of men who, in the time of the plague perished, victims of this scourge, from having dreamed that the demons touched them, or had told them that they would shortly die. In the epidemic that unpeopled Neo Cesarea, the inhabitants saw phantoms enter their houses. During a pest that broke out in Egypt, in the time of the Emperor Justinian, brass boats were seen on the sea, rowed by black men without heads. And in an epidemic which depopulated Constantinople, the inhabitants saw with horror, demons, who, clad as priests, went from house to house, carrying death wheresoever they entered.

Hildebrand published a valuable treatise on this malady; its chief defect is, that it was not written at a period when the study of pathological anatomy was cultivated; he has given very important details respecting delirium in ague fits, which he calls typhomania; many observations leave no doubt that hallucinations and illusions exhibit themselves during this severe disease.

* Op. tit. p. 134.

A pupil of this celebrated physician was attacked with contagions typhus. During a delirium of seven days, he imagined that he had to play the part of viper-eater, a character which he had seen a short time previously in an opera called the Miroir d'Arcadie. He fell into a terrible state of anguish and terror, difficult to be described, whenever he felt compelled to seise and swallow this dangerous reptile.*

In more recent descriptions of the army typhus, hallucinations of sight are also noticed. This symptom was frequently combined with the typhus of Mayence.

Hallucinations have often been observed to accompany inter-mittent fevers, which disease has been considered by modern authors sometimes to occasion insanity.†

Nicolai, the famous librarian of Berlin, whose case has already been noticed in this work, was attacked, in 1778, with an intermittent fever, during which colored figures, or landscapes, appeared to him. If he closed his eyes, the imaginary objects vanished, but reappeared on opening them.‡

A derangement of the digestive organs, by reacting on the brain and its membranes, has often given rise to hallucinations. This is also the case with congestion, and inflammation of the organs. It is easily understood that the circumstances which produce this delirium in one person may, in another case, give rise to false sensations.

In gastritis, gastro-enteritis, gastrology, and gastro-enterology, illusions of taste and smell are frequent, and many persons thus affected have very decided hallucinations.

Doctor Hungerford Sealy has published a pamphlet on a bilious disease common to hot countries, which is characterized by great irritability, accompanied by mental excitement and extraordinary muscular power; it chiefly attacks those who, having been in a foreign country for two or three years, begin to feel the attacks of nostalgia. The mind is disturbed by visions; the imagination is over-excited; the judgment still preserves some power over the imagination, which has, however, much difficulty in obeying it.

* Hildebrand, Du typhus contagieux, translated from the German.

† M. Baillarger, De la folie dans les fievres intermittentes, Ann. Med. Psych., November, 1843.

‡ Th. Sebastien, Remarques sur la melancholic et la manie suite de Sevres intermittentes. - Journal d'Hufeland, 1821; Ann. Mid. Psych., Sept. 1844, p. 211.

Amongst the examples which he gives, we will choose that of the English minister at Messina. When Mr. Hungerford Sealy called upon him, he found him looking wild, with eyes yellow, and starting from their sockets; the skin was dry, parched, and discolored; the tongue dry and red on the edges, with a brown spot in the centre and at the back; the pulse small and quick; he had been in this state for three weeks. Mr. Hungerford Sealy gave him purgatives, applied leeches to the neck, mustard plasters to the feet, and his symptoms were rapidly ameliorated.

During the progress of the disease, the hallucinations bore a striking analogy to the clairvoyance of magnetism; they were of a frightful character. His principal idea was to tear to pieces whatever was near to him, to cry, to sing, and to swear. He thought he saw his limbs part from his body; he was persuaded of the delusion of his vision, and attributed it to a diseased imagination. The hallucination, however, had such an air of truth that it was with the greatest difficulty he could persuade himself of its error. The seat of the disease was evidently in the biliary system and the mucous membrane of the intestines, which was proved by the success of the treament.*

In the fifteenth volume of Wilson's Philosophical Journal, there is a curious case of hallucinations, which occurred during an attack of pneumonia.