Curiosities of Medical ExperienceMillingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Philosophy
Curiosities of Medical Experience
Millingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Medicine
She eats with voracity, but is a perfect skeleton in appearance;
the devils consume all, and leave her nothing. They constantly bid her to
go and drown herself; but she cannot obey them, since eternity is her
doom. They are scarcely sensible of painful agents, and are unconscious of
heat, cold, or the inclemency of the weather. Their perspiration,
frequently profuse, exhales a most unpleasant odour; hence the vulgar
fancy that they smell of the lower regions. This circumstance is the usual
consequence of many nervous affections, and arises, most probably, from
the foulness of the breath, a natural result of impaired digestion, and
from a peculiar acrimony of the cutaneous secretions.
Pinel relates the case of a missionary whose enthusiastic aberrations led
him into the horrible belief, that he could only be saved from eternal
torments, by what he called a _baptism of blood_. This fatal mania induced
him to attempt the life of his wife, who was fortunate to escape from the
danger, after he had immolated two of his children, to secure their
salvation! Tried for this crime he was sentenced to perpetual confinement
in Bicetre. In his dungeon he fancied himself the _fourth person in the
trinity_, maintained that he was sent upon earth to baptize with blood,
and all the power of the universe could not affect his life. During ten
years' confinement this miserable wretch, betrayed the same insanity
whenever religious subjects were touched upon, in all other matters, he
reasoned most soundly. His lucid intervals at last became so long in their
duration and calm, that it was questioned whether he might not be
liberated--until on a Christmas eve, his sanguinary monomania resumed all
its intensity, and having by some means or other obtained possession of a
leather-cutter's knife, he inflicted a desperate wound on one of his
keepers, and cut the throat of two patients who were near them; many other
inmates of the establishment would, no doubt, have been sacrificed by the
desperate maniac had he not been secured. This case might decidedly be
considered one of true daemonomania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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