AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. Do 



of a dream than the sober certainties of waking reality. Of this 

 the history of Tommaso Anniello, better known as the fisherman of 

 Naples, Masaniello, affords one of the most striking examples on 

 the whole page of history.'* 



That species of disordered intellect termed, by authors, mania 

 mitis — roving or restless melancholy — affords one of the best sub- 

 jects for the illustration of the fancy of the insane. Let us take a me- 

 dical description of it, and see how closely the creations of the poets 

 resemble the natural pictures from which they are copied. Cl These 

 people wake as others dream. Though they talk with you and 

 seem to be very intent and busy, they are only thinking of a toy ; 

 and still that toy runs in the mind, whatever it be — that fear, that 

 suspicion, that agony, that vexation, that cross, that castle in the 

 air, that fiction, that pleasant waking dream."t 



The kind and degree of this craziness will vary from the previous 

 constitution of the mind, from its natural bias, and from the causes 

 which produced the mental aberration. I shall notice three exam- 

 ples of it : one of a French watch-maker, the second of Ophelia, and 

 the third of Madge Wildfire — the first of these a real occurrence, the 

 second and third fictitious, but strictly analogous to the descriptions 

 of the malady given by authors, and faithful representations of 

 nature. The case of the watch-maker is recorded by the celebrated 

 Pinel, physician to the Bicetre, in Paris, during the revolution and 

 the republic. This man was infatuated with the chimera of perpe- 

 tual motion, and to effect this discovery he set to work with indefa- 

 tigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his 

 enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolutionary disturb- 

 ances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, 

 and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was 

 marked by a most whimsical illusion of the Imagination : he fancied 

 that he had lost his head upon the scaffold ; that it had been thrown 

 promiscuously among the heads of many other victims ; that the 

 judges, having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered these 

 heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon 

 their respective shoulders ; but, that in consequence of an unhappy 

 mistake, the gentlemen who had the management of that business 

 had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy com- 

 panions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied 



* For a full account of the rise, fall, and madness of Masaniello, see Miss 

 Hoi ford's "Italian Histories" 



-f- The Study of Medicine, by John Mason Good, 



