Nervous and mental diseases / by Archibald Church ... and Frederick Peterson ... With 305 illustrations.

  • Church, Archibald, 1861-1952.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nervous and mental diseases / by Archibald Church ... and Frederick Peterson ... With 305 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    has varied greatly, according to the state of my health. When I used to be sick with the fever and ague, I would lie in bed and gaze at the coarsely daubed window-shades in my bedroom, until I had made out every possible kind of a profile that could be distinguished. The other of the two most serious abnormal peculiarities is the supplying of missing articulations to vocal sounds, heard but not understood distinctly, so as to give my mind the impression of certain words, at the same time that I knew I had not understood. Sometimes I have been really cheated this way, and only found it out by inquiring afterward. This might not give conclusive proof of the deception, it is true. Not to violate privacies, I will illustrate supposititiously. _ If it were proclaimed aloud, far enough from me to allow the inflections but not the articulations to reach my ear with certainty— We See Wheee Lies the Dreadful Secret ! my mind might involuntarily and instantaneously reshape it in such a way that I would understand : Deceive Where Lies Were Ever Sacred ! My attention was always quite easily disturbed by noises, par- ticularly talking. In boyhood the sound of voices in conversation at a little distance after I had retired to _ rest often gave me very serious annoyance, showing excessive irritability of the brain. '' Such was my mental state on the eve of my being overtaken by a more marvelously awful fate than ever fell to the lot of mortal man. _ '' My original purpose was to follow the incidents having a bearing on my mental fortunes with tolerable minuteness, in an unbroken chain, up to the time of reaching that wonderful state in which I have existed for the last six and one-half years. I shall be obliged to confine myself more to generalities. I was in such a towering state of morbid sensitiveness that a slight tinge of impertinence, brusqueness, or fancied contemptuousness in the manner of those I met, put me on the rack at once. ... It began to occur to me after a little that my ears were becoming wonderfully acute for such things. Very often I would hear lively discussions on my character, and disputes about the proper epithets and titles to be applied to me, which I understood perfectly at an astonishing distance off. ... I was wrought up to such a pitch that I formed a resolve that if I were given a sufficiently open provocation, I would attempt a bloody revenge, and on one occasion went out with a razor in my pocket. . . . I had an oppressive feeling of impotence, as if para- lyzed, and suddenly did things I had no intention of doing, as in breaking glass. ... I had a soreness all through my limbs which I compared to molten fire running through my nerves. I began to hear responses to and comments on my performances, and it gradually dawned upon me that I had been making myself a conspicuous object of curiosity to the whole neighborhood. . . . The comments heard grew more numerous and more and more derisive. . . . I had no suspicion at the time of any of the inspiration being drawn directly from my head. I do not say it was so. This is the debatable ground. . . /it was not until about a week later that it became evident