“During the ten latter months of the year 1790 I had experienced several melancholy incidents which deeply affected me, particularly in September, from which time I suffered an almost uninterrupted series of misfortunes that affected me with the most poignant grief. I was accustomed to be bled twice a year, and this had been done on the 9th of July but was omitted to be repeated at the end of the year 1790. I had, in 1783, been suddenly taken with a violent vertigo, which my physicians attributed to obstructions in the fixed vessels of the abdomen brought on by a sedentary life and a continual exertion of the mind. This indisposition was successfully removed by means of a more strict diet. In the beginning I had found the use of leeches applied to the arms particularly beneficial, and they were afterward repeated two or three times annually when I felt congestions in the head. The last leeches which had been put on previous to the appearance of the phantasms of which I am about to speak, had been applied on the 1st of March, 1790; less blood had consequently been evacuated in 1790 than was usual with me, and from September I was constantly occupied in business which required the most unremitted exertions, and which was rendered still more perplexing by frequent interruptions. “I had, in January and February of the year 1791, the additional misfortune to experience several extremely unpleasant circumstances, which were followed on the 24th of February by a most violent altercation. My wife and another person came into my apartment in the morning in order to console me, but I was too much agitated by a series of incidents which had most powerfully affected my moral feelings to be capable of attending to them. On a sudden I perceived, at about the distance of ten steps, a form like that of a deceased person. I pointed at it, asking my wife if she did not see it. It was natural that she should not see anything; my question, therefore, alarmed her very much, and she sent immediately for a physician. The phantom continued for about eight minutes. I grew at length more calm, and being extremely exhausted, fell into a restless sleep which lasted about half an hour. The physician ascribed the appearance to violent mental emotion, and hoped there would be no return; but the violent agitation of my mind had in some way disordered my nerves and produced further consequences which deserve a more minute description. “At four in the afternoon the form which I had seen in the morning reappeared. I was by myself when this happened, and being rather uneasy at the incident, went to my wife’s apartment, but there likewise I was accompanied by the apparition, which, however, at intervals disappeared, and always presented itself in a standing posture. About six o’clock there appeared also several walking figures which had no connection with the first.