The Philosophy of Mystery · 27 of 35

Imitative Monomania

“Men, wives, and children, stare, cry out, and run,

As it were doomsday.”

Julius Cæsar.

There are other very curious analogies of somnambulism, which are marked by a power of action that appears preternatural. And here again we witness the irresistibility of motion, which seems to subvert the laws of gravitation and the principles of mechanics. The involuntary twitchings and contortions of St. Vitus’s dance present the slighter form of these eccentric actions, which, in the intense degree, become like the fury of a raving maniac.

In young girls there often is a proneness to be excited by slight causes,—to be startled by mere trifles.

Savarry tells us of a man who, at two o’clock each day, was irresistibly impelled to rap at doors and make very odd noises, and felt intense pleasure in doing this. If this had occurred in the night, it would have been termed somnambulism.

Gall also relates of a young man at Berlin, who, after rolling about in his bed for some time, and jumping out and in repeatedly in his sleep, at last started up awake, astonished at the crowd around his bed. And Dr. Darwin writes of a boy, nine years old, who went through a course of gymnastics, with an occasional song between the acts. At length he seemed bursting, and soon sank down in a stupor.

Astr. I have read, (I think in Mezeray,) of an epidemic mania of this sort, in which the creatures tore off their clothes, and ran naked through the streets and churches, until they fell breathless on the ground. Some of them swelled even to bursting, unless they were bound down by cords. The disease was referred to the agency of demons, and treated by exorcisms; they even tore their flesh to free themselves from their possessing devils. I have seen also a confident story of some nuns, who jumped so high during an hysteric ecstacy, that they were at length seen to fly; in imitation, perhaps, of the Corybantes, the priests of Cybele, who, in the celebration of their mysteries, leaped and raved, like madmen in the midst of their shrieks and howlings.

Ev. All these eccentricities amount to complete monomania for the time they last, and they are marked often by a very violent imitative propensity; like the delirium which came upon the Abderites, on witnessing the performance of the “Andromeda” of Euripides, by Archelaüs. Of such nature was the “ dancing mania ” of the middle ages; the tarantula of Apulia, in which melancholy was succeeded by madness; the feats of the Jumpers of Cornwall, and the Convulsionnaires of the Parisian miracles.

Yet with all this apparent violence, there might be a power of control by management. On some sudden and extreme mental influence, there was in the Maison de la Charité, at Haerlem, an infectious convulsion of this nature, so that the troop of little scholars, girls and boys, were a mere legion of dancing maniacs; and nothing appeared to relieve them, until a ruse of the physician Boërhave put to flight the illusion. With a solemn voice he pronounced, in the hearing of the little creatures, his decision that each of them should be burned to the bone of the arm with a red hot iron. From that moment the mania subsided.

Dr. Hecker, in his account of the Dance of the middle ages, notices two forms of this national monomania:—“ Tarantulism,” and the “ Danse de Saint Guy.”

The first was marked by all sorts of illusions, demonomania, obscene dancing, groaning, and falling down senseless.

The persons who believed themselves bitten by the tarantula became sad and stupid. The flute or guitar alone could give them succour. At the sound of its music they awoke, as if by enchantment; their eyes opened, their movements, which at first slowly followed the music, gradually became animated, until they merged into an impassioned dance. To interrupt the music was disastrous:—the patients relapsed into their stupidity, until they became exhausted by fatigue. During the attacks, several singular idiosyncracies were manifested, contrary to what occurred in Germany. Scarlet was a favourite colour, though some preferred green or yellow. A no less remarkable phenomenon was their ardent longing for the sea; they implored to be carried to its shores, or to be surrounded by marine pictures; some even threw themselves into the waves. But the dominant passion was for music, though they varied in their particular tastes. Some sought the braying sound of the trumpet, others the softer harmony of stringed instruments.

There was once a woman of Piedmont who was charmed by the “capriccio,” played by the leader of an orchestra, into an ecstatic dance. In her, the sensations, as she expressed them, were so “strangely mingled,” as powerfully to illustrate the fine line of distinction between pleasure and pain. She gradually became weaker, and the memory of the music was so intense, that, while she was irresistibly impelled to this maniacal dance, her expressions were those of acute pain, and her cries were constantly of those “horrid sounds.” In six months, this unhappy creature died exhausted.

The Tigretier, of Abyssinia, is believed in Africa to be the effect of demoniac influence. Indeed there is in this strange state a complete metamorphosis of features, and voice, and manner. In the hearts, even of the women, the affections of nature and of attachment seem to be annihilated, and they seem overwhelmed by some oppressive weight, which is dissipated only by almost preternatural exertion, excited by the charm of music; in which wild dance the female is dressed in ornaments of silver, like the chiefs of battle. This maniac movement is often, I believe, kept up from early morning until sunset, ere the accumulation of energy is exhausted; and even then the woman will start off suddenly and outrun the fleetest hunter, until she drops as if dead. But it seems the climax of the cure is not complete, until she drops all her ornaments, and a matchlock is fired over her, when she owns her name and family, both having been previously denied. She is taken to the church and sprinkled with holy water, and then the spell is broken.

There is another strange monomania, an incitement to suicide, evinced in that loathsome disease of the Lombard and Venetian plains, Pellagra. The prevailing fashion is drowning; so that Strambi has termed this monomania, water-madness.

Others are driven on by still more horrible fancies. Thus Grenier wrapped himself in a wolf-skin, and murdered young maids that he might devour them. And, among ourselves, the desire to change the infant into a cherub, has led the wild fanatic to the murder of the innocents!

Astr. This, I suppose, is Lycanthropy, or wolf-madness, on which old Burton so funnily expatiates; and to which the author of the old play of “Lingua” also points, alluding to the

“Thousand vain imaginations,

Making some think their heads as big as horses,

Some that they’re dead, some that they’re turned to wolves.”

In the woods of Limousin, in France, the belief in the power of changing from men to wolves is still prevalent. The Loup-garoux, or Wehr-wolf, was thought to have been in league with Satan.

In my wanderings through Poictou, these monsters seemed to me to confine their unholy powers to midnight prowling, and the wolf-howl. Yet Marie, in the “ Lai du Bisclavaret,” endows them with the cannibalism of the goul and the vampire:

“So Garwal roams in savage pride,

And hunts for blood, and feeds on men;

Spreads dire destruction, far and wide,

And makes the forests broad his den.”

Ev. The extraordinary effects of the instinct of imitation in spreading these epidemics, is but an example on the grand scale of what we see daily instances of in yawning, hiccoughing, coughing, and other similar acts, and in the propagation of hysteria and epilepsy. Some persons, again, possess an irresistible tendency to imitate others in mere trifling things. Tissot relates a case of a female, who never could avoid doing every thing she saw any one else do. She was obliged to walk blindfolded in the streets; and, if you tied her hands, she experienced intolerable anguish until they were loosened. There was another girl, that was seen by Dr. Horn, at Salzburg, who sat cross-legged, like a hog. She had been brought up in a sty.

Even during the Commonwealth, the religious fanaticism of the Quakers carried the proselytes to such a pitch, that the preachers were thrown into excessive convulsions, and seemed possessed of demons. The churches were broken into, and the ministers insulted and attacked in the pulpits. Chains, and locks, and the pillory, which were inflicted on these mad people, failed, as it might be expected, in restoring their senses, although they bore them with the most astonishing fortitude. In their worshipping, the same eccentricities were seen: after a deep and long silence, a number of the devotees rose at once, and declaimed. The presumptuous imitation of the Saviour was a favourite illusion; and the forty-days’ fast sometimes terminated in death. Naylor, convinced of his divine identity, rode in procession on a mule, while his deluded proselytes spread their garments, and sang Hosannas to him. Nay, the purity of the female mind was so grossly perverted, that a Quakeress walked naked into a church, before Cromwell, as a sign to the people!

There was a letter in an “Aberdeen Herald,” dated Invergordon, Sept. 9, 1840, from which I quote this story:

“I had the curiosity to go to the church of Roskeen, last night, to observe the workings of a revival. I was prepared for something extraordinary, but certainly not for what I saw. The sobs, groans, loud weeping, fainting, shrieking, mingled in the most wild and unearthly discordance with the harsh cracked voice of the clergyman, who could only at intervals be heard above the general weeping and wailing. I was struck by the cries being all from young voices; and on examining a little more closely, I found that the performers were almost wholly children—girls, varying from five to fourteen years of age; a few young women, perhaps a dozen, but not a single man or lad. I stood for nearly half an hour by three girls, the eldest about twelve years of age, who were in the most utter distress, each vying with the other in despairing cries. Their mother came to them, but made no exertion to check their bursts of—I don’t know what to call it. In the church-yard there were lots of children in various stages of fainting. One poor girl seemed quite dead, and I insisted on one of the old crones, who was piously looking on, to go for some water, or to attempt something to give her relief, but was told, ‘It was no’ a case for water; it was the Lord, and he would do as he liked with her. She was seeing something we didna see, and hearing something we didna hear.’ She was lying on the ground, supported by her father. Indeed the poor ignorant parents have been worked upon until they believe they are highly honoured by the Lord, by having such signs of the Spirit manifested in their families. The service, if it may be called so, was in Gaelic.”

In the reign of the second George, Count Zinzendorf came from Germany and established the principles of the Hernhutters, or Moravians. These were debased by ceremonies, which they misnamed worship, of the most licentious character.

Like Mahomet, Zinzendorf proclaimed himself a prophet and a king, and in his presumption of an immediate appeal to, and answer from, the Saviour, in all matters of doubt, made a host of proselytes.

Ida. In our own day, another delirious profanation of the holy name of the Saviour has been exhibited, in the imitative monomania of Sir William Courtenay (as he was called), in Kent. In May, 1838, this wild enthusiast (whose beauty of feature and expression closely resembled the paintings of Christ by Guido and Carlo Dolce, and who, to heighten this resemblance, wore his hair and beard in a peculiar form, and clothed himself in a robe) gained by his art numerous disciples in Kent, who implicitly believed his divine nature and mission. His career was, however, soon closed in a very awful and bloody tragedy—the death of himself, of many of his followers, and of the military who were called out to secure him. His disciples, to the last, not only believed in his divine nature, but even after his interment were watching in implicit belief of his approaching resurrection!

The mania of the “unknown tongues” has almost equalled this delusion. If we presume to analyse, on the principles of philosophy or reason, those religious eccentricities, which seem, even in the mind of the fanatic, to spring from sincerity or conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be termed maniacal, and this without the slightest profanation of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while we deplore its immediate effects, we must not hope to reveal its origin or its end.

At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the Millennium chapels, the wife of Caird, who was then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this unknown language, which paralysed some, and threw into convulsions many others of the congregation. A young French lady among them instantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, after some infliction of self-torture, became delirious and died in a hospital.

We learn from Plutarch, that in Milesium there was once a prevalent fashion among the young girls to hang themselves; while the same mania once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to drown themselves in the Rhone. The Convulsionists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted self-torture, but in their wild delight solicited the bystanders to stone them.

The commission of a great or extraordinary crime to this day produces, not unfrequently, a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. I have known incidents, falsely called religious, to occasion similar events; and what is remarkable, the scene or place of the first event seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before the gate of the convent of St. Genevieve, such a number of similar occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police was compelled to post a peremptory notice on the gate, prohibiting any individual from working miracles on the place in question. When the locality was thus shut up, the thaumaturgia ceased. It is not long since we witnessed in Paris two events of a similar character. About four years ago, at the Hotel des Invalides, a veteran hung himself on the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. No suicide had occurred in the establishment for two years previously, but in the succeeding fortnight five invalids hung themselves on the same cross-bar, and the governor was obliged to shut up the passage. During the last days of the empire, again, an individual ascended the column in the Place Vendome, and threw himself down and was dashed to pieces. The event excited a great sensation; and in the course of the ensuing week, four persons imitated the example, and the police were obliged to proscribe the entrance to the column. The same mania was almost induced by the suicide of a foolish girl, who leaped from the balcony of our own city column on Fish-street Hill. Indeed Monseigneur Mare, of Paris, alludes to a society enrolled for the mere purpose of suicide; and there was an annual ballot to decide which of these miserable creatures should be immolated as the suicide of the year!!

Dr. Burrows, I remember also, relates cases analogous to these. They occurred in the ranks of some army on the continent, in which there was an epidemic propensity to suicide, until the general began to hang the soldiers on trees as scarecrows. The mania, as you may believe, very soon subsided.

Ev. Your curiosities eclipse mine, Ida. But the natural leaning to the marvellous, will, without mania or fanaticism, by the mere sympathy of intercommunicating minds, spread wide these illusions, even in the most simple instances. Some time since, a very large assemblage were watching with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies, at Northumberland House. They were unanimous in the conviction that he was swinging his tail to and fro; a false impression, of course, which had gradually accumulated from this solitary exclamation of a passenger: “By heaven, he wags his tail!” Of this sort of illusion I was myself a witness. Beneath the western portico of St. Paul’s, a crowd of gazers were bending their eyes on the image of the saint, who was nodding at them with a very gracious affability. Curiosity had risen to the pitch of wonder at a miracle, when suddenly a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets of the saint, and the illusion vanished.

These eccentricities, you will perceive, occurred spontaneously; and it is a most interesting study to note the analogies between these diseased actions, and those resulting from the influence of certain gases and vegetable juices.

I have known the seeds of stramonium, when swallowed by children, produce a temporary delirium, and a state of chorea, singing, dancing, laughing, and other mad frolics, which could not be controlled. And in the “History of Virginia,” by Beverly, it is recorded, that during the rebellion of Bacon, at James Town, some soldiers, after eating the young leaves of stramonium for spinach, enacted “a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days. One would blow up a feather into the air, another would dart straws at it with much fury, another, stark naked, was seen sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, grinning and making mouths.” In this frantic condition they were confined for safety. In eleven days they recovered, but had no memory of the delirium. Such also is the effect of large quantities of black henbane. Dr. Patouillet, of Toucy, in France, in 1737 witnessed a mania of this sort in nine persons, who had eaten of that root. It was marked by the strangest actions and expressions. In these also there was no recollection of the illusion.

But the closest analogy, in point of concentrated energy, to eccentric somnambulism, is the effect of the inhalation of the “gaseous oxide of azote,” or “protoxide of nitrogen,” the laughing-gas. So intense is its impression on the nerves and blood of the brain, that it effects a perfect metempsychosis. This gas contains a greater relative proportion of oxygen than common air, and it is inhaled through a tube from a bladder or silk bag. After a little giddiness and headache, the breather soon begins to feel a very delicious thrilling; the eyes are dazzled by even common objects, so much are the senses excited. Pride and pugnacity are quickly developed: we think ourselves grand seignors, and elevated far beyond the common class of mortals. We expect from all a salaam, and, with all the proud dignity of papacy, wonder that the people do not fall down and kiss our toe. We turn a deaf ear to all which is addressed to us; in short, we are dissociated from all around us. Sir Humphrey Davy, as the effect was wearing off, seemed to have been charmed into the combined philosophy of Berkley and Hume. He writes, “with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, I exclaimed: ‘Nothing exists but thoughts; the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.’ ”

This brilliancy is probably the effect of scarlet or highly oxygenized blood, acting on the brain and nerves of the senses.

The duration of this gaseous influence is usually from five minutes to a quarter of an hour. It is not, however, always so transient.

From the record of Professor Silliman, it seems to have converted an “Il Penseroso” into a “L’Allegro.” A man of melancholy became a man of mirth: and, although before his inhalation he had no sweet tooth in his head, he began to eat little except sugar and sweet cakes, and to swallow molasses with his meat and potatoes.

Although sparring is the grand amusement of the gas-breather, yet we can often decide on the shades of character, however studiously they may have been concealed from us in sane moments.

A gentleman among my fellow-students threw himself forcibly on his back, by his attempts to spout Shakspere with dignity and effect.

Another threw himself prostrate in the snow, and rolling himself over and back across the quadrangle at Guy’s, turned himself into an immense cylindrical snowball.

Another snapped his fingers in defiance, and walked with a most pompous strut, and without his hat, to the middle of London Bridge, ere he was brought to his senses.

Indeed these experiments seem so replete with the ludicrous, that I wonder Cruikshank and Hood have not often caught a fact, as a theme for their brilliant fancy.