7 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion. Knowing this, I asked him how it was that no one of the many 

 persons whom he met daily in business had ever complained of any bad 

 smell, and the answer he made was that they were all too polite to do 

 so, but he could see that they were affected nevertheless, as they some- 

 times put their handkerchiefs to their noses no doubt for a quite 

 innocent purpose. 



Another gentleman was the victim of a very common hallucination : 

 he was much afflicted by voices, which were continually speaking to 

 him at all times and all places in the quietude of his room and in the 

 crowded streets, by night and by day. He had come to the conclusion 

 that they must be the voices of evil spirits in the air which tormented 

 him. They knew his thoughts, and replied to them before he had him- 

 self conceived them ; the remarks which they made were always an- 

 noying, often threatening and abusive, and sometimes most offensive 

 and distressing, and they disturbed him so much at night that he got 

 very little sleep. He had been driven to the expedient of buying a 

 musical-box, which he placed under his pillow when he went to bed. 

 The noise of the music drowned the noise of the tormenting voices, 

 and enabled him to get to sleep ; but, as he said, the measure was not 

 entirely satisfactory, because when the box had played out its tunes, it 

 stopped, and he was obliged to wind it up again. It was impossible to 

 persuade this gentleman, sensible as he seemed in other respects, that 

 the voices had no real existence, and that they were due to the dis- 

 ordered state of his nervous system. After listening attentively to my 

 arguments, he went away sorrowful, feeling that I had no help for him. 

 I may remark, by-the-way, that auditory hallucinations of this kind are 

 apt to occur in prisoners who are subjected to long periods of solitary 

 confinement in their cells : thev have no mental resources to fall back 

 upon, and their brooding thoughts, not being distracted by the con- 

 versation of others, nor having their usual outlet in their own con- 

 versation, become audible by them as actual voices. 



I might relate many more examples, but these will suffice. Each 

 sense may of course be affected, and sight stands next to hearing in its 

 liability to suffer. In delirium tremens, hallucinations of sight are 

 characteristic features ; the patient commonly sees reptiles and vermin 

 in his room, serpents crawling over the floor, rats and mice running 

 over his bed, and pushes them away in a state of restless agitation. In 

 some forms of insanity, the sufferer mistakes persons, believing entire 

 strangers to be near friends or relations ; or, again, he may see a per- 

 son, whom he imagines to be his persecutor, escape from the house, 

 when there was really no such person, and buy a revolver, to be ready 

 for him when next he comes prowling about ; and in one form of the 

 deepest melancholy, which is known as melancholia attonita, he has 

 sometimes terrible hallucinations sees, probably, a deep abyss of roar- 

 ing flames or a vast sea of blood immediately in front of him, and will 

 not make the least movement, lest he should be precipitated headlong 



