Mutiny of the Bounty and story of Pitcairn Island, 1790-1894Young, Rosalind Amelia
History
Mutiny of the Bounty and story of Pitcairn Island, 1790-1894
Young, Rosalind Amelia
Bounty Mutiny, 1789; Pitcairn Island
It was during this same year, 1880, that an unusual and very peculiar
visitation appeared among the community, affecting only the younger
members, eleven or twelve young persons in all having been subject to
it. The disease, if such it may be called, was temporary insanity, the
case that lasted the longest not extending over two years. The first
symptom of the attack was a strange hallucination of the mind, the
person affected seeing some object which greatly terrified him, or
hearing voices calling to him, then gradually losing all recollection
of former events, until the mind became an utter blank. One peculiar
feature of the disease was a distorted vision, that transformed every
object into something different to what it was, as, for instance, a
full-grown man or woman appeared as but a child, while a mere baby
would assume the full proportions of a man. In almost every case the
patient was calm and quiet; the power of speech seemed taken away,
while the vacant stare showed that the mind had lost control over
itself.
[Illustration: GIRLS IN BATHING COSTUME.]
One case was that of a youth who had been shipwrecked, and whose stay
was prolonged on the island. This was in 1881. One morning he declared
that during the night he saw his mother’s coffin pass above him out of
the window, and nothing could persuade him that it was a delusion. A
few hours afterwards he became oblivious to everything that was going
on around him, and in the very first stage of the disease was entirely
deprived of the power of speech. When speech returned after a few days,
he employed himself searching from house to house for some fancied
friend who was unjustly condemned to prison, and whom he was sparing no
effort to release. On one occasion he wandered away during the night
to the opposite side of the island, where he was found by a party who
went in search, sleeping under an overhanging rock, wrapped up in his
scout’s blanket, for at that stage of his derangement he declared that
he was Davy Crockett out on an Indian trail. Davy Crockett was only
one out of the many different characters whom he personated in the
different stages of the disease.
Many and various were the phases that the disease assumed, each patient
being acted upon in a different manner. There has never been any
satisfactory explanation of the cause that produced it. The case above
mentioned as being of longest duration was that of a young girl whose
mind became affected in April, 1884, and was restored in the early part
of the year 1886. Since that time the peculiar disease has not made its
appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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