occur, even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicetre
and the other living at Sainte-Anne."
Dr. Moreau ranked as a very considerable medical authority, but I cannot
wholly accept this strange story without fuller information. Dr. Moreau
writes it in too off-hand a way to carry the conviction that he had
investigated the circumstances with the sceptic spirit and scrupulous
exactness which so strange a phenomenon would have required. If full and
precise notes of the case exist, they certainly ought to be published at
length. I sent a copy of this passage to the principal authorities among
the physicians to the insane in England, asking if they had ever
witnessed any similar case. In reply, I have received three noteworthy
instances, but none to be compared in their exact parallelism with that
just given. The details of these three cases are painful, and it is not
necessary to my general purpose that I should further allude to them.
There is another curious French case of insanity in twins, which was
pointed out to me by Professor Paget, described by Dr. Baume in the
_Annales Medico-Psychologiques_, 4 série, vol. i., 1863, p. 312, of
which the following is an abstract. The original contains a few more
details, but it is too long to quote: Francois and Martin, fifty years
of age, worked as railroad contractors between Quimper and Châteaulin.
Martin had twice had slight attacks of insanity. On January 15, a box in
which the twins deposited their savings was robbed. On the night of
January 23-4 both Francois (who lodged at Quimper) and Martin (who lived
with his wife and children at St. Lorette, two leagues from Quimper) had
the same dream at the same hour, three A. M., and both awoke with a
violent start, calling out, "I have caught the thief! I have caught the
thief! they are doing injury to my brother!" They were both of them
extremely agitated, and gave way to similar extravagances, dancing and
leaping. Martin sprang on his grandchild, declaring that he was the
thief, and would have strangled him if he had not been prevented: he
then became steadily worse, complained of violent pains in his head,
went out of doors on some excuse, and tried to drown himself in the
River Steir, but was forcibly stopped by his son, who had watched and
followed him. He was then taken to an asylum by gendarmes, where he died
in three days. Francois, on his part calmed down on the morning of the
24th, and employed the day in enquiring about the robbery. By a strange
chance he crossed his brother's path at the moment when the latter was
struggling with the gendarmes; then he himself became maddened, giving
way to extravagant gestures and making incoherent proposals (similar to
those of his brother). He then asked to be bled, which was done, and
afterwards, declaring himself to be better, went out on the pretext of
executing some commission, but really to drown himself in the River
Steir, which he actually did, at the very spot where Martin had
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