Esquirol reports the case of a general suffering from mania, whose “delusions persist throughout the summer, with some lucid intervals, during which the patient writes comedies and vaudevilles which betray the incoherence of his ideas.... In spite of the confusion of his mind, the general conceives an idea for the perfecting of a certain weapon, draws designs, and manifests the desire of getting a model constructed.” One day, he went to the foundry, and, on his return, was seized with agitation and delirium. A while later, he paid a second visit to the foundry, and “the model having been executed, gave an order for fifty thousand. This order was the only act which gave the founder reason to suspect the general’s malady. His invention was afterwards officially adopted.” Thus, in the midst of general incoherence, an important series of ideas was maintained and carried out to the end. A writer not practised in mental disease, Esquiros whom we have already had occasion to quote, mentions the following facts, which are very significant:-- “Dr. Leuret,” he says, “related to us the history of a patient in the Bicêtre who, during his malady, had shown a remarkable talent for writing, though when in good health he would have been quite incapable of doing as much. ‘I am not quite cured,’ he said to the physician, who thought him convalescent. ‘I am still too clever for that. When I am well, I take a week to write a letter. In my natural condition I am stupid; wait till I become so again.’ The same observer also cites the case of a merchant whose affairs were in danger. During his illness, this man found means to re-establish them; the result of each of his attacks was the perfecting of some mechanism, or the invention of some means for facilitating his industry; and at the end of this invaluable insanity, he was found to have recovered both his reason and his fortune. “We have been shown at Montmartre, in Dr. Blanche’s establishment, traces of charcoal-drawings on a wall. These half-effaced figures, one of which represented the Queen of Sheba, and the other some king, were the work of a distinguished young author, who has since recovered his reason. This illness had developed a new talent, which was non-existent, or at least played a most insignificant part, while he was in health. “It is said that Marion Delorme met, in a madhouse, with the first man who conceived the idea of applying the forces of steam to the needs of industry, Salomon de Caus. Talents created by disease forsake the individual, for the most part, at the same time as the disease itself.”[296]