COINAGES OF THE BRAIN. 303 



one morning (April 20th, 1791) at eleven o'clock. The surgeon 

 was alone with me," continues Nicolai ; " during the operation the 

 room was filled with human figures of every kind : this hallucination 

 continued without interruption till half-past four, when I perceived 

 that the motion of the phantoms became slower. Soon afterwards 

 they began to grow pale, and at seven o'clock they had all a whitish 

 appearance ; their movements were slow, but their forms still dis- 

 tinct. By degrees they became vaporous, and appeared to mix with 

 the air, although some of their parts remained very visible for some 

 time. About eight o'clock they were all gone, since which time I 

 have seen nothing of them, although I have thought more than once 

 they were about to appear." 



This interesting recital affords us not only a very typical case 

 of spectral illusions, but suggests from certain of its details the 

 influence of continuance and habit in intensifying the appearances 

 presented by the phantom array. At first the spectres preserved 

 the usual ghostly silence ; and in about a month after their first 

 appearance Nicolai began to hear them speak, whilst they increased 

 in number as time advanced. These two latter phases of Nicolai's 

 case are highly instructive. They tend to prove, firstly, that sub- 

 jective sensations, like normal or objective impressions, increase in 

 number and distinctness with use and habit ; and they show, in the 

 second place, that a continuance of the sensations developed their 

 complexity and intensified the reality of the creatures of Nicolai's 

 brain. The apparent addition of speech on the part of the phantoms, 

 and the illusion of words, clearly showed that the affection had 

 become one of subjective hearing, as well as of subjective sight. 

 And thus illusions exhibit a tendency to develop or to disappear 

 like aberrations of bodily functions ; whilst the course and nature 

 of these " troubles of the brain," as a rule, are in perfect harmony 

 with the spirit of the age, with the special proclivities of the subject, 

 and with the times in which the sufferer lives two facts to which 

 may be added a third, namely, the palpable influence of habits of 

 body or mind such as religious fervour and belief upon the pro- 

 duction and nature of the illusions in question. 



The case of a Mrs. A., related by Sir David Brewster, is as 

 typical as that of Nicolai, in its description of the development of 

 these "coinages of the brain." On December 21, 1830, this lady 

 was startled to hear her husband's voice calling to her. After open- 

 ing every door in the neighbourhood of the hall in which she was 

 standing, she concluded that Mr. A. must have departed from the 



letting in which our great-grandfathers and the succeeding generation indulged in 

 spring-time, on some curious and mistaken popular notion (probably founded upon 

 the periodic revival of nature and the returning growth of plants) that local depletion 

 was necessary for the preservation of health. 



