AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 231 



Theodorus, who was unremittingly tortured by Julian, the apos- 

 tate, for ten hours, relates that, whilst under the hands of the exe- 

 cutioners, he was visited by a bright youth, conceived by him to be 

 a messenger from heaven, who allayed his sufferings by wiping the 

 perspiration from his body, and pouring cold water upon his lace- 

 rated limbs. Gregory, Archbishop of Prague, under the extremity 

 of the torture of the rack, had a vision, in which he supposed him- 

 self visited by three men, who were afterwards elected the first 

 bishops of the Moravians. Massinger, in his play of The Virgin 

 Martyr, has taken advantage of this fact, and introduces a spectral 

 illusion to comfort Theophilus under torture by the command of 

 the tyrant Dioclesian. The extacy produced in the martyr's mind 

 by the hallucination is finely described by the poet. 



" Most glorious vision ! 

 Did ere so hard a bed yield man a dream 

 So heavenly as this ? I am confirmed, 

 Confirmed, you blessed spirits ! and make haste 

 To take that crown of immortality 

 You offer me. Death, till this blest minute 

 I never thought thee slow paced, nor would I 

 Hasten thee now for. any pain I suffer, 

 But that thou keep'st me from a glorious wreath 

 Which through this stormy way I would creep to, 

 And, humbly kneeling, with humility wear it. 

 Oh ! now I feel thee. Blessed spirit, I come ! 

 And, witness for me all these wounds and scars, 

 I die a soldier in the Christian wars." 



Very vivid sensations of either kind, whether of pain or pleasure, 

 change their character after long continuance ; the pleasurable 

 becoming painful, whilst the painful are ultimately attended with 

 extreme pleasure. It is the latter circumstance which is supposed 

 to act with so much intensity upon the mind in cases of long-con- 

 tinued torture, and, by producing in it a like degree of excitement, 

 to call up that kind of illusion to which I have just referred. 

 The histories of religious persecutions furnish a multitude of facts 

 of this nature. Happily, at this aera, and in this country, we know 

 not the effects of bodily torture inflicted by the caprice or will of 

 man : the rack, the wheel, and the pulley are now merely the curi- 

 osities of museums. 



The only kind of hallucinations remaining to be noticed, are those 

 produced by the nitrous oxide and by certain narcotic and acro-nar- 

 cotic substances, as opium and the deadly nightshade. Those pro- 



