and kill the first person who came in his way, while, as he said, he constantly experienced an internal contest between the ferocious impulse of his destructive instinct, and the deep horror inspired by the fear of crime.— There was no evidence of wildness in the memory, imagination, or judgment. He avowed to me, during his close confinement, that his propensity to commit murder was absolutely forced and involuntary; that his wife, notwithstanding his affection for her, had been on the point of becoming its victim, and that he had only had time to warn her to take to flight. All his lucid intervals brought back the same melancholy reflections, the same expression of remorse; and he had conceived such a disgust for life, that he had several times sought, by a final act, to terminate its course. What reason, said he, should I have to murder the superintendent of the hospital, who treats us with so much humanity? Yet, in my moments of fury, I think only of rushing on him, as well as the rest, and burying my dagger in his bosom. It is this unhappy and irresistible propensity which reduces me to despair, and which has made me attempt the destruction of my own life.* Another madman experienced paroxysms of rage, which were periodically renewed for six months of the year. The patient himself felt the decline of the symptoms toward the end of the paroxysms, and the precise period when they could without danger restore him his liberty, in the interior of the hospital. He himself requested to have his deliverance deferred, if he felt that he could not yet govern the blind impulse which led him to acts of the greatest violence. He confessed, in his calm intervals, that, while the paroxysm continued, it was impossible for him to repress his fury; and then, if any one appeared before him, he imagined that he saw the blood flowing from that man's veins, and experienced an irresistible desire to taste it, and to tear his limbs with his teeth, to render

* L. c. p. 102.

*

the suction easier. We see that these examples refer themselves at once to what I have said of reasoning madness, of excitement, and of the manifestation of malevolent propensities. and of partial alienation.

In reasoning madness, the subjects know their situation, and judge with accuracy of the disorder which reigns in their propensities, sensations, and ideas; they even experience remorse, immediately after the malevolent action. "A young mad woman," says M. Pinel,† “ experiences every morning the access of maniacal delirium, which leads her to tear every thing she lays her hands on, and to exercise acts of violence on all those who approach her, so that they are forced to confine her with the straight jacket. This kind of control soon calms her violence; but she preserves so painful a recollection of her past extravagance, that she testifies the greatest repentance, and believes herself to have merited the severest punishment."

In a species of periodical madness, in which the subjects are drawn irresistibly to murder, M. Pinel remarks, as diagnostic signs, that these subjects have the consciousness of the atrocity of their actions, that they answer correctly the questions put to them, and show no derangement in their ideas or in their imagination. Thus a consistent manner of acting, a capacity of maintaining correct conversation, just answers, whether in the lucid periods, or at the moment of the illegal act, do not prove the absence of all insanity.

The most embarrassing cases, are those in which the alienation manifests itself without the symptoms, which usually accompany it, such as convulsion, heat, thirst, redness, fury; for then the faculties of the mind and soul do not appear at all deranged. A young man, having received a considerable wound near the temporal bone, was trepanned by Acrell. When the wound was cured, he could not abstain from theft, though before he

had no such propensity. Acrell knew that it was only to be attributed to the lesion of the head, and had him released from prison. This phenomenon is not rare in pregnancy. We know four examples of women, who, in their ordinary state, have not the least propensity to theft, but who, during pregnancy, are impelled to it by violent inclination. We know that women subject to leucorhæa, and pregnant women, experience singular fancies: now, if they have this disordered appetite for eating charcoal, chalk, and dung; if a virtuous woman, during pregnancy, cannot bear the sight of a beloved husband, or experience the visiting of a gross passion, why find it incredible, that irresistible propensities to illegal actions should also be developed at these periods? Prochaska* relates from Schenk, that a pregnant woman observing the naked arm of a butcher, was seized with an irresistible desire to bite a piece. She forced her husband to hire the butcher to submit to the operation. Another woman, in the same condition, satisfied a horrible longing for eating the flesh of her husband. She killed him, salted the flesh and fed on it several months. ́ As the nature of reasoning madness is not very generally known, it happens that malefactors, who belong to this class, and who are seen to act and reason in a consistent manner, are, in some countries, condemned to imprisonment or death; while, in others, they are consigned to insane hospitals.

Of Madness, accompanied with Visions and Inspira

tions.

Mental alienation, sometimes, is accompanied with visions and inspirations; and this peculiar symptom shows, that the malady has acquired its greatest degree of exaltation. The unfortunate subjects conduct them

* Op. minora. tom. ii. p. 98.

selves in the most consistent manner in the pursuit of the project they have formed; they act, as M. Pinel remarks, with a firm determination, and in the most uncontrollable manner. Such a madman, conscious of the support of a higher power, despises all the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose, and places himself above all human considerations. His conduct is often calm he hardly judges other men worthy of being the confidants of his secret motives. He hopes nothing from their assistance; he fears not their threats. He who has experienced, were it only for a moment, the effect of visions and inspirations, and who is not very familiar with the knowledge of nature, can hardly be persuaded, when he returns to a regular state, that all he has experienced is unreal. Do these visions continue? Does the madman hear incessantly, or at different times and places, this imagined voice of authority which addresses him? How shall we, then, find means to restrain him, except by relieving the irritation and the derangement within? The most furious madmen often allow themselves to be turned from their purpose by menaces, by the sight of the superintendent or physician, by mild and reasonable treatment; but what effect will all human efforts produce on a man, whom heaven and hell command, or who has them under his orders? M. Pinel* cites the example of an old monk, whose reason had been impaired by devotion. He thought, one night, that he had seen, in a dream, the Virgin surrounded by a choir of happy spirits, and that he had received an express order to put to death a man whom he viewed as incredulous. This murderous project would have been executed, had not the madman betrayed his intentions, and been prevented by severe confinement. The same author † also speaks of a credulous vine-dresser, whose imagination was so strongly shaken by the sermon of a missionary, that he believed himself condemned to eternal

or

fires, and that he could only save his family, from the same fate, by what is called the baptism of blood, martyrdom. He first tried to commit murder on his wife, who, with great difficulty, succeeded in escaping his hands; soon after, his furious hand was turned upon his two young children, and he had the barbarity to murder them in cold blood, in order to obtain immortal life for them. When surrendered into the hands of justice, he cut the throat of his fellow-prisoner, still with the intention of making an expiatory sacrifice. His madness being ascertained, he was condemned to be shut up for the rest of his life in the cells of the Bicêtre. The solitude of a long imprisonment, always fitted to exalt the imagination, and the idea of having escaped death, notwithstanding the sentence, which he supposed to have been passed by the judges, still aggravate his delirium, and make him believe that he is clothed with almighty power, or, to use his expression, that he is the fourth person in the Trinity; that his special mission is to save the world by the baptism of blood, and that all the potentates of the world, united, could not touch his life. His madness is, however, partial, and limited to this religious phrenzy; he appeared, on every other subject, to enjoy the soundest reason. This subject had passed more than six years in close confinement, and, from the uniform appearance he presented of a calm and tranquil state, it had been determined to grant him the liberty of entering the courts of the hospital with the other convalescents. Four more years of trial had served to establish a confidence in his cure, when, on a sudden, he again manifested his superstitious and sanguinary ideas. On a Christmas eve, he formed a project of making an expiatory sacrifice of whatever should fall into his hands. He obtained a shoe-maker's knife, seized the moment when the overseer was making his rounds, made a thrust at him from behind, which fortunately only grazed his ribs, cut the throats of two patients who were near him, and would have continued his carnage, had not the attendants secured his person, and thus put a stop to his fury.