John Haslam

“ Kiteing.—This is a very singular and distressing mode of assailment, and much practised by the gang. As boys raise a kite in the air, so these wretches, by means of the air-loom and magnetic impregnations, contrive to lift into the brain some particular idea, which floats and undulates in the intellect for hours together ; and how much soever the person assailed may wish to direct his mind to other objects, and banish the idea forced upon him, he finds himself unable ; as the idea which they have kited keeps waving in his mind, and fixes his attention to the exclusion of other thoughts. ”

“ Man possesses language, the instrument of thought, the vehicle of intelligible communication;—and he is gifted with the hand, to record the subjects of his experience, to fabricate his contrivances, and to rear the durable monuments of his piety and splendour. ”

“ As the law requires a precise developement of opinion, I should define a lucid interval to be a complete recovery of the patient’s intellects, ascertained by repeated examinations of his conversation, and by constant observation of his conduct, for a time sufficient to enable the superintendant to form a correct judgment. Unthinking people, are frequently led to conclude, that if, during a short conversation, a person under confinement shall bewray nothing absurd or incorrect, he is well, and often remonstrate on the injustice of secluding him from the world. ”

“ Death, from which, as other human beings, she now shrunk with horror, was then the most desirable of all events.—Respecting the child, she observed her mind was as suddenly seized with the conviction that she had destroyed it, as a person is attacked with the shivering fit of an ague, and feels the sensation of cold in the hottest day of summer. ”

“ Allow a human being to be gifted with his five senses, exquisitely attuned for the conveyance of those perceptions, which the separate organs and common sensory are destined to receive: let him during fifty, or as many thousand years, scent the most delicious perfumes,—convey to his palate the flavour of the choicest viands,—to his eyes, present the fairest prospects in nature,—impart to his ear the sweetest music, and regale his touch with smoothness and warmth ”

“ By misfortunes the habits of intoxication are readily formed. Those, who in their youth have shaken off calamity as a superficial incumbrance, at the middle age feel it corrode and penetrate: and when fermented liquors have once dispelled the gloom of despondency, and taught the mind either to excite a temporary assemblage of cheerful scenes, or to disdain the terror of impending misery, it is natural to recur to the same, though destructive cause, to reproduce the effect. ”

“ For if it is clearly demonstrable, that the issue of paper money should be a function of the State, and should be exercised exclusively with a view to public interests, it is no less rigidly deducible from the best established data of monetary science, and no less agreeable to the spontaneous conclusions of common sense, that there should only be a single bank of issue. ”

“ When we reflect, that from our infancy to the natural decline of our intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the exercise of language; [8] —by conversation, often desultory, where we range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where the mind enduringly broods on the subject;—or when we read, and attentively consider the thoughts of others:—these occupations contribute to augment our vocabulary, and fix the meaning of the words we employ. ”

“ It has also been considered, that intellectual labour frequently becomes a cause of insanity; that those, who are in the habit of exercising the faculty of thought, for the perfection and preservation of the reason of others, are thereby in danger of losing their own. We hear much of this, from those who have copiously treated of this disease, without the toil of practical remark; whose heads become bewildered by the gentlest exercise, and to whom the recreation of thinking becomes the exciting cause of stupidity or delirium. ”

“ All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do; that an inability to manage a man's affairs will not do, unless that inability, and that incapacity to manage his affairs amount to evidence that he is of unsound mind; and he must be found to be so. Now there is a great difference between inability to manage a man's affairs, and imbecility of mind taken as evidence of unsoundness of mind. ”

“ The most experienced physician who has seen insanity in all its forms, and viewed its more delicate shades, must in a question of this nature submit his opinion, to the comprehension and feeling of the ordinary persons who are to appreciate his deposition. Their Belief of the alleged insanity must be the test by which his scientific opinion is to be established. That which may be deemed by the medical evidence, clear and unequivocal madness, may not hit the sense of the gentlemen of the long robe, nor carry conviction to the jury. ”

“ By perception, I understand, with Mr. Locke, the apprehension of sensations; and after a very diligent enquiry of patients who have recovered from the disease, and from an attentive observation of those labouring under it, I have not frequently found, that insane people perceive falsely, the objects which have been presented to them. It is true, that they all have false ideas, but this by no means infers, a defect of the power by which sensations are apprehended in the mind. ”

“ But unrepresented paper money is not capital, and is no more the property of the banker or his customers, than it is of the merchant and manufacturer, or their respective customers. In effect however it is equivalent to capital, and its employment is equally profitable; any transfer, therefore, of the profits arising out of its issue to a number of private individuals, is not only an act of injustice to all the rest of the community, but is a real source of injury to every banker or dealer in money, who is excluded from the enjoyment of the privilege. ”

“ The history of our species unfolds the splendid catalogue of man's achievements: many monuments, reared by his patriotism and piety, and elaborated by his tasteful ingenuity, that have resisted the corrosions of time, and the spoliations of conquest, remain in our possession: and we still preserve those intellectual treasures that embalm the poetry, the eloquence, and the wisdom of the enlightened nations of antiquity. ”

“ The endurance of attention in minds of the highest order, by a wise law of our constitution, is limited; and if it be attempted to continue the exertion beyond the natural power, the effort is infructuous. As straining the muscles produces fatigue, stiffness, and tremor;—as ocula spectra intrude on the forced and protracted attention of the visual organs,—so confusion ensues, when thought is racked and goaded to exhaustion.
As the staple of the human intellect is vastly superior to that of animals, so we find among our own species a considerable range of capacity ”

“ If therefore, there be the same Belief in delusion as in reality—if the maniac be persuaded that his vision has brought him into the presence of the Almighty, or that the fancied voice is the divine command, he becomes the subject of pity and protection, but not of punishment. If he be acknowledged insane upon many subjects, and kills another, should he be supposed of sound mind on account of having committed such outrage? ”

“ From the great degree of insensibility which prevails in some states of madness, a degree of cold would scarcely be felt by such persons, which would create uneasiness in those of sound mind; but experience has shewn that they suffer equally from severity of weather. When the mind is particularly engaged on any subject, external circumstances affect us less than when unoccupied. Every one must recollect that, in following up a favourite pursuit, his fire has burned out, without his being sensible of the alteration of temperature ”

“ In our survey of the Creation endowed with life and intellect, we are impelled to the conclusion, that the human mind is, beyond all comparison, the most perfect specimen that the Divine Author has chosen to allot to his creatures. ”

“ The wonderful capacity which man exclusively enjoys, both for the communication of his thoughts, and for the improvement of his memory, in being enabled to acquire and transmit knowledge by impregnating sound with intelligence, and more especially in exhibiting its character embodied to the eye, leaves the rest of animated creation at a prodigious distance. ”

“ Before treating of the intellect in a deranged state, it will perhaps be expected that some system of the human mind, in its perfect and healthy condition, should be laid down. It will be supposed necessary to establish in what sanity of intellect consists, and to mark distinctly some fixed point, the aberrations from which are to constitute disease. ”

“ On a more attentive consideration, there appears to be something latent and perhaps mischievous, in the terms Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, as applied to cases of [20] insanity. If an insane person be responsible for his conduct, I know of no law which sanctions his confinement. If he can discriminate between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, on what pretence is he to be deprived of his liberty? Is it humane to suppose him in his senses when he becomes most outrageous? ”

“ To those who have not attentively considered the subject, there is considerable difficulty in understanding how a determinate number of words can include the intelligence contained in a proposition or sentence: and especially how these components of separate significations can become connected for such general and comprehensive meaning. It should be recollected that such is the amazing inclosure of language, that it comprehends all the living and inanimate materials of this world, all that perception can detect, memory recall, or thought elaborate. ”

“ During the course of my experience I have witnessed only two attempts of such imposture, and in both instances the deception was so clumsily executed, that it required but little knowledge of the disorder to detect it. To sustain the character of a paroxysm of active insanity would require a continuity of exertion beyond the power of a sane person;—they do not keep up the deception when they suppose themselves alone and unwatched;—the assumed malady then disappears, and the imposture is re-commenced when they are in the society of others. They are likewise unable to prevent sleep. ”

“ In acquiring a knowledge of numbers, as far as the senses are concerned, the eye and the touch are especially exercised; but it appears that the touch is the corrector of the sight: if fifty pieces of money be laid on a table, they will sooner and more accurately be numbered by the touch, than the eye; and we know in other instances, that the motion of the hand is quicker than the discernment of the sight. There are many circumstances, although they do not amount to a proof, which might induce us to consider, that the human hand has much contributed to our knowledge of numbers. ”

“ Nature indeed could not have bestowed on us a gift more precious than the human voice, which, possessing sounds for the expression of every feeling, and being capable of distinctions as minute, and combinations as intricate as the most complex instrument of music; is thus enabled to furnish materials so admirable for the formation of artificial language. The greatest and most important discovery of human ingenuity is writing ”

“ The important duty which the medical practitioner has to perform, when he delivers his testimony before a court of justice, should be clearly defined, conscientiously felt, and thoroughly understood,—his opinion ought to be conveyed in a perspicuous manner; he should be solemnly impressed that he speaks upon oath, the most sacred pledge before God [4] between man and man—and that the life of a human being depends on the clearness and truth of his deposition. ”

“ Consciousness, therefore, accompanies human action through all its [Pg 14] tenses: it is equivalent to the knowledge we possess of our own personal identity, the evidence of mind, and therefore must accompany every act of intelligence. Thus we are equally conscious that we perceive, remember, think or reflect, and reason. As consciousness must accompany every act of perception, it follows that we cannot be impressed with more than one at the same instant; for it can never be contended that we are able to experience two acts of consciousness at the same moment. ”

“ The human body is a material fabric: the brain and nerves, together with those delicate organs that are the instruments of our perceptions,—whereby we receive light, detect fragrance, apprehend sounds, relish viands, and enjoy the gratifications of contact, are all of material structure: and when that state, called Death, has ensued, their offices cease, and they undergo the decompositions to which all animal matter is subjected. ”

“ He is not to palm on the court the trash of medical hypothesis as the apology for crime; neither should the lunatic receive his cure at the gallows by the infirmity of his evidence—but above all his opinion should be so thoroughly understood by himself ”

“ Time, or the admeasurement of the successive order of our perceptions, embraces a wide area of definition; and it is perhaps impossible, in a few words, to circumscribe the range of its meaning. The sagacity of the human intellect, although by very slow gradations, has accumulated the wonderful mass of knowledge we now possess on this subject: and the investigations which have been made into the faculties of animals, justify the conclusion that its comprehension is limited to man. ”