The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
strength and activity which quite knock up men younger by forty
years.
When I was reading Dr. Forbes Winslow's book, already named, a very
painful idea was impressed upon me. Dr. Winslow gives us to understand
that madness is for the most part a condition of most awful suffering.
I used to think that though there might be dreadful misery on the
way to madness, yet once reason was fairly overthrown, the suffering
was over. This appears not to be so. All the miserable depression
of spirits, all the incapacity to banish distressing fears
and suspicions, which paved the way to real insanity, exist in
even intensified degree when insanity has actually been reached.
The poor maniac fancies he is surrounded by burning fires, that
he is encircled by writhing snakes, that he is in hell, tormented
by devils; and we must remember that the misery caused by firmly
believing a thing which does not exist, is precisely the same as that
which would be occasioned to a sane person if the things imagined
were facts. It seems, too, that many insane people are quite aware
that they are insane, which of course aggravates what they have to
endure. It must be a dreadful thing when the mind passes the point
up to which it is still useful and serviceable, though unsound, and
enters upon the stage of recognized insanity. It must be dreadful
to feel that you are not quite yourself; that something is wrong;
that you cannot discard suspicions and fears which still you are
aware are foolish and groundless. This is a melancholy stage, and
if it last long a very perilous one. Great anxiety, if continued
for any length of time, is almost certain to lead to some measure
of insanity. The man who night and day is never free from the
thought of how he is to pay his way, to maintain his children, is
going mad. It is thoroughly evil when one single thought conies to
take entire possession of the mind. It shows the brain is going.
It is no wonder, my friendly reader, that so many men are mentally
screws! There is something perfectly awful in reading what are the
premonitory symptoms of true insanity. Read this, my friend, and
be afraid of yourself. Here are what Dr. Winslow says indicates
that insanity is drawing near. Have you never seen it? Have you
never felt it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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