16 DEFECT, DISORDER, AND 



believed themselves to be dogs, (cynanthropia), goats, or other 

 animals ; and their assumed morbid habits were correspond- 

 ingly various. 



The other bestial phenomena of human insanity resemble 

 those of human idiocy, including, for instance 



1. In certain cases, the absence of all moral sense; utter 

 incapability of distinguishing or appreciating right and 

 wrong. 



2. Loss of self-control, incapability of regulating the will, 

 absence, real or apparent, of all volition. 



3. Absence of decency, modesty, chastity, with a propen- 

 sity to debauchery. 



4. Dislike to clothing, and propensity to denude the per- 

 son thereof. Many insane patients in our lunatic asylums 

 especially those in a state of acute mania insist on being in 

 a state of nudity. In some, running naked through the streets 

 of towns, or on country roads nudity as an offence against 

 public decency is not unfrequently the symptom that first 

 attracts the attention of the public authorities to the fact of 

 a man's insanity, and leads to his being placed under proper 

 treatment. In January 1876, for instance, a young man in 

 a state of mania from drink presented himself at my own 

 door, absolutely naked, after running wildly up and down 

 the road leading past my house. He had stripped himself 

 and left his clothes in a heap on the roadside, but when he 

 rang my bell and presented himself before me, he was utterly 

 unaware that he was not in proper visiting costume. 



5. Criminal impulse, for instance, to theft and homicide, 



6. Cruelty to each other, to the extent of serious mutila- 

 tion of the person. 



7. Filthy habits, such as ordure-smearing, or indifference 

 to personal cleanliness and the calls of nature. 



8. Morbid appetite, including ordure-eating, the mastica- 

 tion of grass and all kinds of leaves, swallowing all sorts of 

 iron- ware, such as needles, pins, and nails. I have myself 

 had insane patients who have swallowed indiscriminately 

 poultices, and poultice-clothes, letters, needles, and other 

 metallic or fibrous indigestible and highly unsavoury sub- 

 stances. The materials I have collected on this subject of 



