The Borderlands of Insanity, and Other Allied Papers: Being Essays from the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, Issue 243

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R. Hardwicke, 1875 - Mentally ill - 314 pages
 

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Page 97 - English captain, whose history no one knew, as he had been in chains forty years. He was thought to be one of the most furious among them ; his keepers approached him with caution, as he had in a fit of fury killed one of them on the spot with a blow from his manacles. He was chained more rigorously than any of the others. Pinel entered his cell unattended, and calmly said to him, " Captain, I will order your chains to be taken off, and give you liberty to walk in the court, if you will promise me...
Page 293 - The grenadier Groblin has committed suicide from a disappointment in love. He was in other respects a worthy man. This is the second event of the kind that has happened in this corps within a month. The First Consul directs that it shall be notified in the order of the day of the Guard, that a soldier ought to know how to overcome the grief and melancholy of his passions ; that there is as much true courage in bearing mental affliction manfully as in remaining unmoved under the fire of a battery....
Page 79 - ... a stout iron ring was riveted round his neck, from which a short chain passed to a ring made to slide upwards and downwards, on an upright massive iron bar, more than six feet high, inserted into the wall; round his body a strong iron bar about two inches wide, was riveted; on each side of the bar was a circular projection, which, being fastened to and enclosing each of his arms, pinioned them close to his sides.
Page 244 - I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is mortifying, that there is only a step between his state who deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity...
Page 224 - It was found necessary for her to learn everything again. She even acquired, by new efforts, the art of spelling, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradually became acquainted with the persons and objects around, like a being for the first time brought into the world. In these exercises she made considerable proficiency. But, after a few months, another fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself restored to the state she was in before the first paroxysm, but was wholly...
Page 259 - One afternoon in the month of May, feeling himself a little unsettled and not inclined to business, he thought he would take a walk into the city to amuse his mind ; and having strolled into St. Paul's Church-yard, he stopped at the shop-window of Carrington and Bowles, and looked at the pictures, among which was one of the cathedral. He had not been long there before a short grave-looking elderly gentleman, dressed in dark brown clothes...
Page 98 - In the evening he returned of his own accord into his cell, where a better bed than he had been accustomed to had been prepared for him, and he slept tranquilly. During the two succeeding years which he spent in the Bicetre, he had no return of his previous paroxysms, but even rendered himself useful by exercising a kind of authority over the insane patients, whom he ruled in his own fashion.
Page 6 - Such a state as mine," writes a patient, "you are probably unacquainted with, notwithstanding all your experience. I am not conscious of the suspension or decay of any of the powers of my mind. I am as well able as ever I was to attend to my business ; my family suppose me in health, yet the horrors of a madhouse are staring me in the face. I am a martyr to a species of persecution from within, which is becoming intolerable. I am urged to say the most shocking things. Blasphemous and obscene words...
Page 225 - ... time or means to become expert. During four years and upwards she underwent periodical transitions from one of these states to the other.
Page 78 - ... naked.' In another part of the house many women were found locked up in cells, naked and chained, on straw, with only one blanket for a covering ; but this being the common treatment at the time, did not seem to strike the public mind so much as the case of William...

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