HALLUCINATIONS OF THE SENSES. 707 



and refuses it when it is given to him by one attendant whom he sus- 

 pects of poisoning him, will take the same food from another attend- 

 ant, of whom he has no suspicion, without tasting any poison a proof 

 how much the morbid idea perverts his taste. There is a form of in- 

 sanity, known as general paralysis, which is marked by an extraordi- 

 nary feeling of elation and by the most extravagant delusions of wealth 

 or grandeur, and the patient who labors under it often picks up peb- 

 bles, pieces of broken glass, and the like, which he hoards as priceless 

 jewels : there is another form of insanity known as melancholia, which 

 is marked by an opposite feeling of profound mental depression and 

 corresponding gloomy delusions, and the patient who labors under its 

 worst form sometimes sees devils in those who minister to him, hears 

 jeers in their consoling words, and imagines torments in their anxious 

 attentions. In each case the hallucinations reflect the dominant mor- 

 bid feelings and ideas. 



A second way in which hallucinations appear to originate is di- 

 rectly in the organ of sense or in its sensory ganglion, which for pres- 

 ent purposes I may consider as one. Stimulation of the organ or of its 

 ganglion will undoubtedly give rise to hallucination : a blow on the 

 eye makes a person see sparks of fire or flashes of light, a blow on the 

 ear makes his ears ring ; in fact, any organ of sense, when irritated 

 either by a direct stimulus to its nerve-centre, or by a perverted state 

 of the blood which circulates through it, will have the same sensation 

 aroused in it, no matter what the stimulus, as is produced by its natural 

 stimulus. We can irritate the sensory ganglion directly by introducing 

 certain poisonous substances into the blood, and so occasion hallucina- 

 tions : for example, when a person is poisoned with belladonna (deadly 

 nightshade) he smiles and stares and grasps at imaginary objects which 

 he sees before him, and is delirious. Other drugs will produce similar 

 effects. A French physiologist has made a great many experiments in 

 poisoning dogs with alcohol by injecting it into their veins, and he has 

 found that he can arouse in them very vivid hallucinations : the dog 

 will start up, perhaps, with savage glare, stare at the blank wall, bark 

 furiously, and seem to rush into a furious fight with an imaginary dog ; 

 after a time it ceases to fight, looks in the direction of its imaginary 

 adversary, growling once or twice, and settles down quietly. 



The hallucinations which occur in fevers and in some other bodily 

 diseases evidently proceed directly from disorder of the sensory cen- 

 tres, and not from the action of morbid idea upon sense ; for we have 

 seen that before they are fixed the intellect struggles against them suc- 

 cessfully and holds them in check. A well-known and instructive in- 

 stance of hallucinations, due to bodily causes, and which did not affect 

 the judgment, is that of Nicolai, a bookseller of Berlin, who, being a 

 person of great intelligence, observed his state carefully and has given 

 an interesting account of it. He had been exposed to a succession of 

 severe trials which had greatly affected him, when, after an incident 



