The insanity of genius and the general inequality of human faculty, physiologically considered / by J.F. Nisbet.

Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The insanity of genius and the general inequality of human faculty, physiologically considered / by J.F. Nisbet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    CHAPTER IV EXAMPLES OF MEN OP LETTERS LAPSING INTO OR APPROACHING INSANITY—SWIFT, JOHNSON, COWPER, SOUTHEY, SHELLEY, BYEON, CAMPBELL, GOLDSMITH, CHARLES LAMB, WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ROUSSEAU, CHATTERTON, PASCAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, GEORGE SAND, TASSO, ALFIERI, EDGAR ALLAN POB, ETC. Among English men of letters and poets who have become actually insane, or who have had hallucinations and idiosyn- crasies characteristic of insanity, may be mentioned Swift, Johnson, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Campbell, Gold- smith, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Edgar Allan Poe, with whom may be coupled, among foreign writers, Rousseau, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Tasso, Silvio Pellico, and Alfieri. Swift has been harshly judged by those who regard genius and wisdom' as interchangeable terms. There was certainly much eccentricity, and even cruelty, in his conduct, especially in his treatment of the two hapless women known as Stella and Vanessa, to whom he held out delusive hopes of marriage, but he was never quite respon- sible for his actions. His insanity was congenital. A paternal uncle, Gordon Swift, was ' seized with lethargy, lost both speech and memory, and died insane,' and Swift, from his boyhood, was full of crazy impulse. At Dublin Univer- sity he led a wild, vicious life, for which he was severely censured by the academical authorities. The same irresponsi- bility marked his condi^t as a man, and from his correspon- dence and other sources we learn that he suffered at various times from giddiness, deafness, impaired sight, muscular twitchings, and paralysis of the muscles of the right side of the mouth—all symptoms of brain disease. He had violent explosions of temper, and sometimes addressed strangers in an abrupt and enigmatical fashion. Before he became a G