Eighth report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from 1st January to the end of the year 1855.

  • Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighth report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from 1st January to the end of the year 1855. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/62 (page 16)
    himself. The second was a case of sudden death, on a man who had been in the asylum since 1848, and who was in the habit of assisting the quarryman ; whilst engaged at work on the grounds in front, he complained of giddiness and faintness, he was laid against the bank of earth and died instantaneously. The brain was unusually large and projected over the edges of the cranium : there was nothing else unnatural in the post¬ mortem appearances. The third, a painful case, was on a man who had been also in the asylum since 1848, he was incohe¬ rent but cheerful and goodnatured; he was in the habit of assisting at the gas house and furnaces; he left the house as usual after dinner, a little before the others, and on his way to the gas house went to the lime kiln, he stepped across it, placing one foot on the stones which sunk some inches below the edge, the blaze rose and set fire to his smock frock, he ran a short distance, which fanned the flame, then stopped, and tore off the whole of his burning clothes. He was seen immediately and carried to the infirmary, where he died a peculiar form. The blacksmiths form a caste called “ Tobbib,” which is held in. some degree of contempt, and excluded from the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, because it is believed they can change themselves into hysenas and other beasts of prey, they are regarded with horror. They nevertheless live unmolested and are not burned as the Lyeanthrops were of old. Sympathy, the common bond of union among human beings, for good and evil, reason and folly ; as the electric shock is propagated by contact from body to body ; producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent. To this instinct of imitation, is united a loss of all power over the will, and an actual disease of the mind. In 1787, a factory girl in Lancashire, put a mouse into the bosom of another girl who had a great dread of mice —the girl was immediately thrown into a fit of the most violent convulsions wnich continued for 24 hours. Within four days 23 girls in the same factory, and one man who had been fatigued with holding the girls were seized with convulsions. These patients were re¬ lieved by shocks of electricity, and the convulsions spread no farther. This together with the supervision of hysterical fits may aptly enough be com¬ pared to Tarantism. A young female, visiting one of the patients, in the Charite hospital at Berlin, fell down in convulsions. At the sight of her violent contortions, six other female patients immediately became affected in the same way, and by degrees eight more were in like manner attacked. Two of the nurses were also attacked. It was four months before they all recovered; treatment principally with opium. Now “ every species of enthusiasm, every strong affection, every violent passion, may lead to convulsions—to mental disorders—to a concussion of the nerves, from the sensorum to the very finest extremities of the spinal chord. The world is full of examples of this turmoil, which is irresistably propagated by imitation. Those 'who are thus infected do not spare their own lives, but, as a hunted flock of sheep will follow their leader and rush headlong over a precipice, so will whole hosts of enthusiasts, deluded by their infatuations, hurry on to a self inflicted death. Such has ever been the case; from the days of the Milesian virgins to the modern associations for self - destruction. Of all enthusiastic infatuations, however, that of religion is