Volume 1

A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement; designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity / [Anon].

  • Perceval, John, active 1840-1860.
Date:
1838-1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman, during a state of mental derangement; designed to explain the causes and the nature of insanity, and to expose the injudicious conduct pursued towards many unfortunate sufferers under that calamity / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    my family would be united to further his advance¬ ment when an opportunity might offer. I next took a view of politics. At that time the duke of Wellington had just succeeded Mr. Canning, and I had been disgusted and exasperated by what I still consider the betrayal of Portugal into the hands of Don Miguel, for continental purposes. My last attachment to the Tory party, and to the pride of being an Englishman, where then severed. I had thought my country upright, noble, and generous, and that party honest and honourable. I now despised the one, and began to hate and fear the other. Holding his conduct to have been dis¬ honourable in respect of Portugal, I was not sur¬ prised at the Duke’s change of policy in yielding the Roman Catholic question to the Irish papists, but I was alarmed by the tone of his government, opposing the desire of the nation for reform, after that fatal blow to our Protestant institutions, and I conceived it but too possible that he might have the idea of putting down the will of the people by the bayonet; and if that struggle come, thought I, I should like to be free to choose my side, if it be agreeable to the will of God that I should interfere at all. I was also strongly persuaded that the time of the end was at hand, and that God was about to visit the nations with his plagues, his promises having been rejected; and finding in Scripture an exhorta¬ tion to his people to come out in those days from the profane, and to flee to the mountains, &c., &c., I