BEAN SWIFT'S DISEASE. 807 



sane part of Swift's life was likely to have been in any way affected 

 by the latent presence of insanity ; whether a correct diagnosis was 

 possible ; whether parallel cases were on record ; and, finally, whether 

 a surfeit of green fruit, at the age of twenty-three years, was capable 

 of resulting in the absolute fatuity from which the patient suffered at 

 seventy-five. 



This questioning has stimulated me to an investigation which I 

 had thought was already threadbare, but which I found full of inter- 

 est ; and when I say that, upon weighing the evidence, it will prob- 

 ably be acknowledged that Jonathan Swift's mysterious disease was 

 an instance of that curious form of disease, labyrinthine vertigo, or 

 le maladie de Meniere, the knowledge of which is one of the most 

 recent triumphs of pathological research directed by physiological ex- 

 periment, it will scarcely be thought that it was needless to reopen a 

 controversy in which already everything had been said which ought 

 to have been said, and not a little which ought not to have been 

 said. 



When Dr. Beddoes suggested that Swift's ailments and his con- 

 duct toward women were due to dissolute habits in youth, Sir Walter 

 Scott replied that, " until medical authors can clearly account for and 

 radically cure the diseases of their contemporary patients, they may 

 readily be excused from assigning dishonorable causes for the dis- 

 orders of the illustrious dead." But, if Dr. Beddoes were unques- 

 tionably wrong in making such a suggestion without evidence, Sir 

 Walter was scarcely right in making his retort too general ; for, if 

 medical opinions respecting the states of mind of persons who have 

 departed this life must be forbidden until medical men can insure the 

 radical cure of diseases, not only will much valuable evidence respect- 

 ing the validity of wills be excluded, but the science of pathology 

 itself, depending upon the history of diseases and verified by obser- 

 vations made after death, must be interrupted until an event which 

 seems impossible has taken place. 



Whether the causes of disease are or are not dishonorable, and 

 whether the subjects of them are or are not illustrious, has nothing to 

 do with the scientific question ; and the often-quoted sneer of Swift's 

 greatest biographer at the medical profession seems, when examined, 

 as silly as general sarcasm usually is. Undeterred by such sarcasm, 

 an eminent medical man did investigate the causes for the disorders of 

 the illustrious dead in a work which he modestly called an essay, pub- 

 lished in 1849, and entitled " The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life," 

 etc., by W. R. Wilde, M. R. I. A., F. R. C. S. This little work, marked 

 by the excellences of careful research, sound reasoning, moderate opin- 

 ions and fair conclusions, would have rendered further discussion 

 needless if medical science had stood still since its publication ; but 

 the advances made in medical psychology during the last thirty-two 

 years might give us some excuse for reconsideration even if Meniere 



