232 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



But, just as he was bidding the madman farewell, 

 promising to return shortly with good tidings, 

 " Your excellency," said he, " will always be 

 welcome, except on Saturday ; for, on that day, 

 the Holy Virgin makes me a visit." 



A commissary came to Bicetre to set at liberty 

 those who were considered as cured. He 

 questioned an old vine-dresser, who allowed no 

 incoherent expression to escape him in his 

 answers. The statement of his condition is pre- 

 pared, and, according to custom, given him to 

 sign. What was the surprise of the magistrate 

 to find the madman give himself the title of Christ, 

 and indulge all the fancies suggested by this idea. 

 A goldsmith imagined that his head had been 

 changed. He also thought he had discovered the 

 perpetual motion. Tools were given him, and 

 he went to work with the greatest activity. 

 He did not discover the perpetual motion, 

 but he made the most ingenious machines, 

 implying profound reflection, and the most just 

 combinations. We often see individuals, sensible 

 in other respects, who believe themselves, one to 

 be a general, another a minister or monarch, 

 another God himself. All works on alienation 

 contain a number of these examples. It is 

 sufficient forme to remind my readers that there 

 are partial alienations, with respect to malevolent 

 propensities, which lead to illegal actions, as there 

 are with respect to the other faculties. The evi- 

 dence of this may be found in several of the 

 examples which I have cited, and in others 

 which I shall relate hereafter. 



Of the Reasoning Alienations. 



We give the name to those cases in which the 

 insane individuals are really reasonable in all 

 which does not concern their disease, and in 

 which, even in regard to the alienation, they act 

 in the most consistent manner, and with con- 

 sciousness. A person whose intellectual faculties 

 we -, e generally sane, believed herself possessed of 

 a demon ; she yielded, however, to the urgency of 

 her father, who entreated her to consult me as to 

 her disease. She declared that she had consented 

 to this only from filial duty, and added, with a 

 smiling and confident air, that it was useless for 

 me to give myself the trouble to ask her so many 

 questions ; that her disease could not be natural, 

 since so many physicians who had promised to 

 relieve her could not succeed. As she answered 

 very pertinently to whatever was said to her, I 

 tried by all sorts of reasoning to make her change 

 her opinion. But she persisted in her mode of 

 answering with the same consistency which she 

 would have shown had her state not been 

 imaginary. She expected absolutely nothing from 

 the aid of men, and had recourse only to prayer. 



In this reasoning madness, it is likewise pos- 

 sible that the propensities may become injurious 

 by too great a degree of energy. Madmen of this 

 species answer questions with precision and accu- 

 racy; we observe no disorder in their ideas; they 

 employ themselves in reading and writing, and 

 engage in conversation, as if their moral and intel- 

 lectual faculties were perfectly sound. Yet, at the 

 same time, they will tear in pieces their clothes 

 and bed-linen, and they have their fixed ideas and 

 desires. But, although such madmen act in as 

 consistent a manner as if they wei*e sane, and in 



all other respects are reasonable, they are not the 

 less mad as respects the illegal act. Some examples 

 will set this matter beyond doubt. 



At Berlin, M. Mayer, surgeon of a regiment, 

 showed us, in presence of M.M. Heim, Finney, 

 Hufeland, Goergue, and others, a soldier in whom 

 sorrow for the loss of a wife whom he tenderly 

 loved, had greatly enfeebled the physical powers, 

 and induced excessive irritability. At length he 

 had every month an attack of violent convulsions. 

 He was sensible of their approach, and as he felt 

 by degrees a violent propensity to kill, in pro- 

 portion as the paroxysm was on the point of com- 

 mencing, he was earnest in his entreaties to be 

 loaded with chains. At the end of some days the 

 paroxysm and the fatal propensity diminished, 

 and he himself fixed the period at which they 

 might without danger set him at liberty. At 

 Haina we saw a man, who at certain periods felt 

 an irresistible desire to injure others. He knew 

 this unhappy propensity, and had himself kept in 

 chains till he perceived that it was safe to libe- 

 rate him. An individual of melancholic tempera- 

 ment was present at the execution of a criminal. 

 The sight caused him such violent emotion, that 

 he at once felt himself seized with an irresistible 

 desire to kill ; while at the same time he enter- 

 tained the utmost horror at the commission of the 

 crime. He depicted his deplorable state, weeping 

 bitterly, and in extreme perplexity. He beat his 

 head, wrung his hands, remonstrated with him- 

 self, begged his friends to save themselves, and 

 thanked them for the resistance they made to him. 



M. Tinel has also observed, that in furious mad- 

 men there is often no disorder of the mental 

 faculties. Hence he likewise declares himself 

 against the definition which Locke has given of 

 mental alienation. He speaks of an individual 

 whose mania was periodical, and whose paroxysms 

 were regularly renewed after an interval of several 

 months. " Their attack was announced," says he, 

 " by the sense of a burning heat in the interior of 

 the abdomen, then in the chest, and finally in the 

 face ; then redness of the cheeks, an inflamed 

 aspect, a strong distension of the veins and 

 arteries of the head ; then fury, which led him, 

 with irresistible propensity, to seize some weapon, 

 and kill the first person who came in his way, 

 while, as he said, he constantly experienced an 

 internal contest between the ferocious impulse of 

 his destructive instinct, and the deep horror in- 

 spired by the fear of crime. There was no evi- 

 dence of wilduess in the memory, imagination, 

 or judgment. He avowed to me, during his close 

 confinement, that his propensity to commit murder 

 was absolutely forced and involuntary ; that his 

 wife, notwithstanding his affection for her, had 

 been on the point of becoming its victim, and that 

 he had only had time to warn her to take to flight. 

 All his lucid intervals brought back the same me- 

 lancholy reflections, the same expression of 

 remorse; and he had conceived such a disgust for 

 life, that he had several times sought, by a final 

 act, to terminate its course. What reason, said 

 he, should I have to murder the superintendent of 

 the hospital, who treats us with so much humanity ? 

 Yet in my moments of fury I think only of rushing 

 on him, as well as the rest, and burying my 

 dagger in his bosom. It is this unhappy and 

 irresistible propensity which reduces me to de- 



