Of this the following instance was told to the author by a gentleman
connected with the sufferer. A young man of fortune, who had led what is
called so gay a life as considerably to injure both his health and
fortune, was at length obliged to consult the physician upon the means
of restoring, at least, the former. One of his principal complaints was
the frequent presence of a set of apparitions, resembling a band of
figures dressed in green, who performed in his drawing-room a singular
dance, to which he was compelled to bear witness, though he knew, to his
great annoyance, that the whole _corps de ballet_ existed only in his
own imagination. His physician immediately informed him that he had
lived upon town too long and too fast not to require an exchange to a
more healthy and natural course of life. He therefore prescribed a
gentle course of medicine, but earnestly recommended to his patient to
retire to his own house in the country, observe a temperate diet and
early hours, practising regular exercise, on the same principle avoiding
fatigue, and assured him that by doing so he might bid adieu to black
spirits and white, blue, green, and grey, with all their trumpery. The
patient observed the advice, and prospered. His physician, after the
interval of a month, received a grateful letter from him, acknowledging
the success of his regimen. The greens goblins had disappeared, and with
them the unpleasant train of emotions to which their visits had given
rise, and the patient had ordered his town-house to be disfurnished and
sold, while the furniture was to be sent down to his residence in the
country, where he was determined in future to spend his life, without
exposing himself to the temptations of town. One would have supposed
this a well-devised scheme for health. But, alas! no sooner had the
furniture of the London drawing-room been placed in order in the gallery
of the old manor-house, than the former delusion returned in full force:
the green _figurantés_, whom the patient's depraved imagination had so
long associated with these moveables, came capering and frisking to
accompany them, exclaiming with great glee, as if the sufferer should
have been rejoiced to see them, "Here we all are--here we all are!" The
visionary, if I recollect right, was so much shocked at their
appearance, that he retired abroad, in despair that any part of Britain
could shelter him from the daily persecution of this domestic ballet.
There is reason to believe that such cases are numerous, and that they
may perhaps arise not only from the debility of stomach brought on by
excess in wine or spirits, which derangement often sensibly affects the
eyes and sense of sight, but also because the mind becomes habitually
predominated over by a train of fantastic visions, the consequence of
frequent intoxication; and is thus, like a dislocated joint, apt again
to go wrong, even when a different cause occasions the derangement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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