Page images
PDF
EPUB

If either brain, then, be a perfect instrument of thought, the consentaneity of the two, when acting together, must always necessarily depend on the due performance of conjoint functions by each of them, were such consentaneity essential to the exercise of mind as is generally supposed. In shewing that such complete concurrence is not essential to effect this object, it seems to me that future investigators of the structure, functions, and diseases of the brain, are liberated from a very embarrassing clog. Had all the cases of death during insanity been anatomically examined, without the impediment presented by a conviction of the oneness of the brain, we should have had a mass of facts collected from which some great mind would have been enabled to draw very important inferences.

How complete this separation-this perfect individuality of the two brains-is shewn by the extent to which disease may progress in one of them, absolutely in contact with the sound one, and yet the latter remain in all its essential functions unaffected. The great

commissure forms at once a bond of union and a wall of separation, and, as far as my experience goes, it is absolutely incapable of transmitting inflammation or malignant disease from one organ to another. Both indeed may be liable to the same disease, because both may have been supplied with unhealthy blood, or subjected to the same moral or physical causes of disturb ance and disorder; but I believe, though I do not assert, that whenever disease spreads from one cerebrum to the other, it is through the meninges, and never through the corpus callosum. Those who are attached to a great establishment, or engaged in the

office of teaching anatomy, and who have consequently dissected more extensively than myself, will be able to decide on the degree of truth and importance in this remark.

It is only a few of the cases of death from accident, or suicide during insanity, that can be available for this purpose. Hanging and drowning produce apoplexy, and make it impossible to judge of the previous state of the brain. Cutting the throat may, from the extensive hemorrhage, remove all traces of previous inflammation. It is the occurrence of pure accidents, as falls, and poisoning, and death by gunshot alone among the modes of suicide, that would enable us to judge of the living state by post-mortem appearances. These are necessarily rare, but if carefully examined may yet throw great light on this obscure subject. The common examinations of persons who have died from insanity can give us very little insight into the curable stage of the disease or diseases, since extensive subsequent disorganization must have taken place before it passed on to the destruction of life.

I may mention here (par parenthèse) an extraordinary case of a gentleman under the care of Sir Charles Bell in the year 1807, who, in a paroxysm of maniacal delirium, shot himself through the head. The ball passed in a little above one ear and came out nearly at the same point on the other side, wounding, one would suppose, many parts essential to life. The gentleman was the next moment perfectly sane, and lived several days. I cannot remember how long, but believe it was nearly a week, neither do I know the appearances on dissection, but no doubt the case was recorded.

CHAPTER XI.

POWER OF RESTING ONE BRAIN.-CASTLE

BUILDING.-CASE OF DELUSION

FROM PRIDE ANOTHER FROM REVERSE OF FORTUNE.-EQUIVOCAL HALLUCINATION. CASE OF A PAINTER. GENTLEMAN WHO SAW HIS OWN SELF.-LADY WHO THOUGHT HERSELF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

APPARENTLY the power of resting one brain is almost as absolute with some persons who have acquired a command over irregular volitions, as of covering up one eye when diseased, and making use of the other alone. In the latter case a sudden flash of light, or a shower of stars, seen by the disordered organ, will occasionally interrupt and confuse the perfect vision of the other; and in the mental phenomena, we see a steady consecutive train of thought interrupted for an instant by a remnant of mental delusion,-this is not unfrequent in the progress of recovery from deranged mind. It is in the exercise of the imagination chiefly that we rest one of the intellectual instruments, as it appears to me-a placid acquiescence of the torpid brain leaves the other free to follow its own vagaries; but should any casual circumstance, a sudden noise, the entrance of another person, a shock of any kind, or even an accidental concussion-if I may so call it-of two thoughts from the two brains occur, it instantly excites attention, or the concurrent action of both of them,this leads to judgment, the romantic or extravagant ideas in which we had been indulging are immediately

perceived to be erroneous or absurd, and we resume our usual habit of discrimination, and that degree of ratiocination with which we are respectively endowed by

nature.

The well-known process called castle-building-in which some persons can indulge till the false impression shall influence their actions-seems to me explicable in the same manner. One brain is allowed to go on with a train of thought which produces pleasurable sensations, unchecked by the conscious other, till the effort required to stop the disordered process becomes difficult or impossible. While the volition remains omnipotent, the case is merely the power of dwelling exclusively on pleasurable ideas--of which hope is one of the forms-the further indulgence of the habit produces almost the effect of truth, and the dull realities of life become insipid. In this state the person is fanciful and capricious, sometimes acting in harmony with the real position in society, sometimes putting forth absurd claims to respect and homage from equals. This degree of delusion is often produced or aggravated by the reading of novels and romances, where the painful effort of stern self-command necessary to the prosaic details of obtaining a livelihood are scarcely touched on, and the actors and actresses, either by fortune or station, are represented as possessed of unlimited power of locomotion, and have leisure for the indulgence of their own thoughts and the furtherance of their own plans; for no writer of judgment-no successful writer -will minutely describe the sordid details of life, or works which are only read for the pleasurable sensations they create would be soon cast aside and neglected.

I have known many individuals who have indulged

-perhaps I might say cultivated-this passion to such an extent that they cannot on ordinary occasions control it, and are only capable of the necessary effort when alarmed at the idea of its being mistaken for insanity. I know more than one example of a person in the very lowest station in life, who has felt to the day of her death a conviction that she should be ultimately discovered to be the daughter of some great person, or should inherit some great fortune; although there was no more rational probability of such an event than that she should inherit the throne.

The extraordinary changes which accompany those overturnings of the social structure produced by revolutions-the sudden alternations of fortune witnessed in a nation rapidly rising in prosperity-the progress of new inventions like printing, steam power, and railroads, which derange all combinations, and make foresight useless-the general prevalence of gambling, or the predominance of some temporary delusion, as the Mississippi scheme of law-the South-Sea bubble-lotteries-speculations in the funds, and a hundred analogous causes of excitement,-all tend to promote the indulgence of this habit of castle-building. Let it pass a little further, and it becomes a monomania; still further, and it degenerates into positive mental derangement. The power of self-control is lost-the person is insane. He thinks himself king, emperor, conqueror, Christ, or the Deity, and assumes the authority which he believes to be befitting the character.

Yet, in almost all these cases, there is a remnant of doubt in one of the brains at least, that he is neither king, emperor, nor Deity, but plain John Smith. He submits to the orders of a menial, eats coarse food, and

« PreviousContinue »