7 o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which particularly agitated and distressed him, he suddenly saw at the 

 distance often paces a figure the standing figure of a deceased per- 

 son. He asked his wife if she could not see it, but she, as she saw 

 nothing, was alarmed and sent for a physician. When he went into 

 another room it followed him. After troubling him for a day it dis- 

 appeared, but was followed by several other distinct figures ; some of 

 them the figures of persons he knew, but most of them of persons he 

 did not know. " After I had recovered," he says, " from the first im- 

 pression of terror, I never felt myself particularly agitated by these 

 apparitions, as I considered them to be what they really were the ex- 

 traordinary consequences of indisposition ; on the contrary, I endeav- 

 ored as much as possible to preserve my composure of mind, that I 

 might remain distinctly conscious of what passed within me." He could 

 trace no connection between the figures and his thoughts, nor could he 

 call up at his own pleasure the phantoms of acquaintances which he 

 tried to call up by vivid imagination of them ; however accurately and 

 intensely he pictured their figures to his mind, he never once succeeded 

 in his desire to see them externally, although the figures of these very 

 persons would often present themselves involuntarily. He saw the 

 figures when alone and in company, in the daytime and in the night ; 

 when he shut his eyes they sometimes disappeared, sometimes not ; 

 they were as distinct as if they were real beings, but he had no trouble 

 in distinguishing them from real figures. After four weeks they began 

 to speak, sometimes to one another, but most often to him : their 

 speeches were short and not disagreeable. Being recommended to lose 

 some blood, he consented. During the operation the room swarmed 

 with human figures, but a few hours afterward they moved more slowly, 

 became gradually paler, and finally vanished. This example proves 

 very clearly that a person may be haunted with apparitions, and yet 

 observe them and reason about their nature as sanely as any indifferent 

 outsider could do. It illustrates very well, too, the second mode of 

 origin ; for it is reasonable to suppose that they were produced by con- 

 gestion of blood in the brain acting upon the sensory centres, and that 

 they were dissipated by the removal of the congestion by bloodletting, 

 This is the more probable, as cases have been recorded in which the 

 suppression of an habitual discharge of blood from the body has been 

 followed by hallucinations, and others again in which hallucinations 

 have been cured by the abstraction of blood. 



Exhaustion of the nerve-centres themselves by excessive fatigue, 

 mental and bodily, or by starvation, or by disease, will cause a person 

 to see visions sometimes. I may call to mind the well-known case of 

 Brutus, who, as he sat alone at night in his tent before the decisive 

 battle of Philippi, rapt in meditation, saw on raising his eyes a mon- 

 strous and horrible spectre standing silently by his side. " Who art 

 thou?" he asked. The spectre answered: "I am thy evil genius, 

 Brutus. Thou wilt see me at Philippi." He replied, " I will meet thee 



