The Philosophy of Mystery · 9 of 35
Phantasy from Sympathy with the Brain
“My eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses.”
Macbeth.
Astr. I marvel not, lady, that those pencilled brows do frown upon the ruthless scholar, who thus dares to dismantle the fair realm of poesy, and bind the poppy, and the cypress, and the deadly nightshade, with the myrtle and the laurel.
We shall have, ere long, a statute of lunacy against the poet and the seer; or hapless, he will imprison thee, fair creature, within a cloven pine: and like Prospero, I must break my wand and bury it certain fathoms in the earth; and, deeper than ever plummet sounded, drown my books. The pages of Ptolemy, and Haly, and Agrippa, and Lily, will be but bygone fables: and the metaphysics of the mighty mind will be controverted by the slicing of the brain and marrow with the knife of these anatomists. Nay, we must devoutly believe what they so learnedly give out, that frontal headaches in the locality of form, colour, and number, and forsooth in the organ of wonder too, often accompany spectral illusions, and that white or grey ghosts result from excited form and deficient colour!!
Martin Luther, who was a believer in special influence, quarrelled with the physician, who referred its mystic signs to natural causes. I am not so uncourteous, yet express my wonder, Evelyn, at the confidence with which you presume to the discovery of a material reason and a cause, for all the phenomena of our mysterious intellect.
Ev. And why should I not, dear Astrophel, if I search for and discover it in the studies of that sublime science, the meditation on which inspired Galen with this pious sentiment: “Compono hic profecto canticum in Creatoris nostri laudem.”
Is it more profane to think that the Deity should speak to us through the medium of our senses, than by the agency of a spirit? Recollect, I have presumed neither to enter deeply into metaphysical reasoning, nor to describe, minutely, the condition of the brain; and I have alluded but slightly to the supposed function of its varied structures. Lord Bacon has observed: “He who would philosophize in a due and proper manner must dissect nature, but not abstract her, as they are obliged to do who will not dissect her.” Dissection, however, in its anatomical sense, has not, perhaps cannot, elucidate the coincidence of symptom and pathology in cases which so seldom prove fatal, and the causes of which may be so evanescent. Still, it is only by a combination of metaphysical argument and anatomical research, with the essential aid of analogy, that the phenomena and disease of mind can be fairly investigated.
In the important question of insanity, there is an error among the mere metaphysicians that is fraught with extreme danger—the abstract notion of moral causes being the chief excitement of mania. This error has led to that melancholy abuse of the coercive treatment and excitement of fear in a maniac; as if a savage keeper possessed the wondrous power of frightening him into his wits. Hear what the magniloquent Reil writes on this point: “The reception of a lunatic should be amid the thunder of cannon; he should be introduced by night, over a drawbridge, be laid hold of by Moors, thrust into a subterranean dungeon, and put into a bath with eels and other beasts!”
And Lichtenberg, another moral philanthropist, sanctioned by the divine axiom—“the rod helps God,” urges the employment of coercion and cruelty for this sublime psychological reason: that under the infliction of the lash and the cane, “the soul is forced to knit itself once more to that world, from which the cudgels come!” Think ye that these moralists, if not hood-winked by false metaphysics, would have so closely copied the malevolence of an inquisitor or a devil?
We must believe that each illusive representation is marked by some change in some certain portion of the brain, the function of which bears a reference to the subject or nature of the illusion: it may be so minute as not to be recognized by our vision. Indeed, if the bodily sensations of every human passion be faithfully analyzed, it will be proved that there is an unusual feeling in some part, when even a thought passes through the mind, under these definitions:— a thrill, a creeping, a glow, a flush, a chill, a tremor,—nay, even fainting, convulsion, death.
Now the brain feels, and thinks, and wills; but the blood is also essential to these faculties. If part of the brain is changed, or its circulation deranged, in that instant an effect unlike health is produced: and such is the illusion of the ghost-seer. Or if the substance of the organ of sense, as the eye, be altered, its function is deranged, and an illusive spectrum appears to float before it. Nay, we are assured by Tiedeman and Gall, (opinions of high value,) that they have known patients who (smile as you please) were mad only on one side of the brain, and perceived their madness with the other; and I may assure you, too, that there have been persons who really thought with half the brain only.
I will again claim the courtesy of these fair dames, while I offer another glimpse of the dull cold region of physiology.
Recollect the illustrations I have adduced in allusion to those classes, on whose privacy the ghost has the privilege of intrusion. I will now offer illustrations of those remote influences which work these seeming mysteries in the sensitive or diseased brain.
A patient of Dr. Gregory, at the hour of six, one hour after dinner, was daily visited by a hag, or incubus, which confronted him, and appeared to strike him with a crutch. Immediately on this he would fall from his chair in a swoon. This gentleman was relieved by bleeding and abstinence.
The Abbé Pilori, in Florence, invariably saw the phantom of scorpions around him, after he had partaken of luncheon.
There was a gentleman in Edinburgh, learned in fourteen languages, of the age of seventy-six. In 1819, he began to see strange faces, in old dresses, like paintings, and his own face changing from young to old; and these phantoms came at his call. Wine drinking increased especially these spectres, during the twelve years that the illusion continued; yet his mental faculties were not much impaired. When eighty years old, he came to London to dine with the Knights of the Bath, and went back at the rate of a hundred miles a-day. His language latterly was a patois of fourteen. One night he saw his dead wife’s shadow, and jumped after her out of the window, and ran after her through the conservatory; yet he remembered, when told that his wife was dead, and was then quiet. Disordered digestion aggravated his case extremely. Mr. Gragg’s opinion was, that “his thinking was correct, but the expression of thought wrong.” On examination, the dura mater was found adherent to the skull: in parts there was a thick effusion and vascularity over the brain, and the carotids were partially ossified.
In a mind excited or exhausted, the natural sympathy between the brain and the stomach is wrought up to an extreme. And in the two most interesting cases of spectral illusion on record, this instance is beautifully illustrated. The bookseller of Berlin, Nicolai (whose phantasms are become so hackneyed a tale in the records of Psychology), had been thus mentally excited. It were long to repeat the circumstantial and scientific detail of his waking visions: of his ghosts of departed friends, and of strangers to him, and of the groups of shadowy figures which glided through his chamber at these spectral levees; and how his philosophic mind distinguished the intrusion of the spectre at the door and the real friend to whom its opening gave admittance; and how they disappeared when he shut his eyes, and came again as he opened his lids; or how he was at last amused by his analysis of all these illusive spectra. But the sympathy to which I have alluded will be efficiently proved by one quotation from the Prussian’s recital. During the time leeches were applied to his temples, his chamber was crowded with phantoms. “This continued uninterruptedly till about half-past four o’clock, when my digestion commenced. I then fancied that they began to move more slowly: soon after, their colour began to fade, and at seven o’clock they were entirely white: then they seemed to dissolve in the air, while fragments of some of them continued visible a considerable time.” On other occasions, they attempted to re-appear, and changed to white, more and more faintly as his health improved.
There is equal interest, both for science and curiosity, in the illusion of Mrs. A. (as told by Brewster, in his “Natural Magic”), and which sprung from the like causes. The sympathetic sensitiveness of this lady was so acute, that an expression of pain in another produced it in the corresponding part of herself. And she, too, was intruded on by spectres of men and women, and cats and carriages, and by corpses in shrouds peering over her shoulder at her toilet-glass, and ghastly likenesses of gentlemen in grave-clothes, sitting unceremoniously in arm chairs in her drawing-room. And yet the perfect restoration of the lady’s health was coincident with her complete freedom from these spectral visitations.
You will read in the Anatomie of Melancholy, that “Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions and revelations, by reason of much fasting.” In exhaustion, too, or on the approach of vertigo, if we shut our eyes, we seem as if turning round ourselves, and if we open them, then this whimsical movement is referred to the chairs and tables in our chamber.
These, then, are the remote sympathies with the organs of digestion; and this chiefly by the derangement of the circulation of the blood, between the brain and the heart.
In the case of an enlarged heart, Dr. Kelly discovered that a dark spectrum was perceived synchronous with the systole, or contraction of its ventricles; so that the patient could count his pulse merely by watching the motion of this illusive shade on the white ceiling of his room.
The study of these false perceptions, which result from derangement or disease of the eye, are replete with interest. You are aware that the function of a nerve of sensation is so deranged by disease, that in some cases of paralysis cold bodies will appear heated. So, by analogy, is the function of a nerve of sense deranged, if its fibrillæ be disordered.
We have Myopia, or short sight; Presbyopia, or long sight; Chrupsia, or coloured vision. We have night-blindness, or dim vision, and day-blindness, or intolerance of light,—as in the albino, or owl. I had, and I have now, a second relative, whose vision is insensible to certain colours; and the chemist, Dalton, we know, could not distinguish blue from pink.
In a Glasgow Medical Journal, I read this statement by a patient:—“No colour contrasts to me so forcibly with black as azure blue, and as you know that the shadows of all objects are composed of black, the forms or objects which have acquired more or less of this blue hue, from being distant, become defined and marked by the possession of shadows, which are invisible to me in the high-coloured objects in a foreground, and which are thus left comparatively confined and shapeless masses of colour.”
The eye may be curtailed of half its object. Mr. Abernethy and Dr. Wollaston were both often in this dilemma of a sense, so that only one-half of a person or a name, on which they were looking, was visible to them. Mr. Abernethy, in his facetious way, referring to his own name, told us he could see as far as the ne, but could not see a bit of the thy. This illusion is at once explained by anatomy. The optic nerve, at one point, interlaces some, and crosses other of its fibres: thus one nerve chiefly supplies one-half of both eyes. Disease of nerve may thus paralyse one-half of each retina: the other half only perceiving half the object or word.
In many cases of disordered sensibility of the retina, it is influenced by the minute villi or vessels in the tunics of the eye. In the case of exhausted energy of this retina, usually accompanied by night-blindness, where there is no vision but in a strong light, floating specks termed muscæ volitantes often become so numerous, as to impart a notion of films floating in the watery humour of the eye, or before the cornea. It is a curious question, in what portion of the retina the spectra of muscæ volitantes are excited. They appear in or near the axis of vision; but as they do not interrupt the visual rays from material objects, it is possible they may arise on that spot considered to be destitute of vision, with regard to external impression. Or they may be produced by detached parts only of the objects, which impinge on the retina, reaching the brain. If the integrity of certain of its fibres, which by converging form the optic nerve, be destroyed, distorted or imperfect objects will be presented. This speck may be a musca volitans.
Astr. The original impressions in all cases are, I presume, from without: how is the internally excited idea presented as a prominent image before the eye?
Ev. That form of disordered vision to which I allude, occurring so often in nervous persons, or resulting from close application to study, does not often appear to depend on a turgid condition of the vessels of the choroïd coat or retina. It is usually relieved more by tonics than by depletion; and very strange illusions of sight will sometimes be produced merely by depressing medicines, especially the preparations of antimony. Yet these dark specks appear to be floating before, and often at some distance withoutside the eye. Therefore we may believe that excited images or more perfect forms may also appear before the retina, palpable. Between the first impression and its recurrence, a long period may have passed (memory being unlimited); and it is sufficient that one sole idea be excited to produce a succession; as a spark of fire will ignite a train of gunpowder; or as an electric spark will discharge a whole battery.
In the curious case of photopsia, or suffusio scintillans, we have a series of illusive spectra, in the forms of “lucid points,” and “yellow flames,” and “fiery veils,” and “rings of light.” In some cases of ophthalmia, and in acute inflammation of the brain, the candles and other bright objects in the chamber will look like blood. Beguelin, as we read in the “Berlin Memoirs,” by straining his eyes on a book, always saw the letters red.
There is a story in Voltaire, that the Duke of Florence threw the dice with a field-officer of his enemy. The spots on the dice seemed, to his excited brain, like drops of blood: he instantly ordered a retreat of his army. And this is not wonderful; it is but excited sensibility, of which many analogies indeed may be artificially produced, as the flash of light from the pricking of the retina with a fine needle, and the beautiful iris which is formed by pressure on the globe of the eye. In the very interesting history of the prisoner in the dungeon of the Chatelet at Paris, the phosphorescence of the eye was itself the source of light, in this instance so powerful as to enable the prisoner to discern the mice that came around him to pick up the crumbs, although the cell was pitchy dark to others.
There are many curious illusions resulting from over-straining or over-excitement of the eye.
Dr. Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, vol. iii. says, “If in a fine dark night we unexpectedly obtain a glimpse of any object, either in motion or at rest, we are naturally anxious to ascertain what it is, and our curiosity calls forth all our powers of vision. Excited by a feeble illumination, the retina is not capable of affording a permanent vision of the object; and while we are straining our eye to discover its nature, it will entirely disappear, and afterwards re-appear and vanish alternately.”
A friend of Buffon had been watching the progress of an eclipse through a very minute aperture. For three weeks after this there was a perfect spectrum of the lucid spot marked on every object on which he fixed his eyes.
Dr. Brewster had been making protracted experiments on some brilliant object, and for several hours after this a dark spectrum, associated with intense pain, floated constantly before his eye.
In the third volume of his Physiology, Dr. Bostock thus concludes the account of his own ocular spectra: “It appeared as if a number of objects, principally human faces or figures, on a small scale, were placed before me, and gradually removed, like a succession of medallions. They were all of the same size, and appeared to be all situated at the same distance from the face. After one had been seen for a few minutes, it became fainter, and then another which was more vivid seemed to be laid upon it, or substituted in its place, which in its turn was superseded by a new appearance.”
Coloured vision may arise from permanent defect or from acute disorder: from some peculiar refraction of a ray of light on the lens of the eye, or by the optical laws of the accidental colours.
The ray of white light consists of the three prismatic or primitive colours. Now, if the eye is fatigued by one of these colours, or it be lost, mechanically or physiologically, the impression of two only will remain, and this accidental or complementary colour is composed of the two remaining constituents of the white ray. Thus, if the eye has been strained on a red colour, it is insensible to this, but perceives the blue and the yellow, the combination of which is green. So, if we look long on a green spot, and then fix the eye on white paper, the spectrum will be of light red. A violet spot will become yellow; a blue spot orange-red: a black spot will entirely disappear on a white ground, for it has no complementary colour; but it appears white on a dark ground, as a white spot will change to black.
By this law I may explain the impression made by black letters on the red ground of a play-bill, which appear blue. The accidental colour of orange-red is blue; that of black is white. By looking on this, the black letter first becomes white, and the accidental colour of the red— blue, is transferred to the white ground of the letters.
Astr. Then, as D’Agessau recommended the parliament of Paris to leave the demoniac of our times to the physician and not the divine, you would delegate the management of all those, to whom the mysterious world of shadows is unfolded, to the sapient leech with his phials and his lancet.
Ev. Nay, I presume not to so potent a faculty. Many of the slight imperfections of vision are, as I have confessed, merely exaggerations of romantic ideas floating in the memory; and this is not a novel notion, for Plato and other philosophers held it long before our time.
Muscæ volitantes are usually, though not always, substantial: i.e. depending on points or fibres in the axis of vision, on congestions, or varicose states of the vessels of the choroïd or retina, or of atoms floating in the humours. These specks, which do not appear alike in the eyes of all, and the brilliant beams in the suffusio scintillans, so varied and so whimsical, might be readily moulded into human form, by the imagination of an enthusiast, or the feelings of the ghost-seer, who is usually morose and melancholy, in a state of longing for a ghost or a mystery.
But when many of the more confirmed illusions are depending on structural disease in the membranes and humours of the eye, I am confident in the resources of our science to relieve, if not to remove. Coleridge indeed has expressed his belief, that by some convulsion of the eye, it may see projected before it part of its own body, easily magnified into the whole by slight imagination. If this be true, the whole mystery of the Death-fetch is unravelled.
The nerves and their ganglia are often diseased, when we least suspect: and calcareous and scrofulous tumours, pressing on the optic axis, in the brain, or on the pneumogastric nerve above its recurrent branch, and disease in the bronchial glands around the cardiac plexus, may exist, with the very slightest sensations of pain. Even in extreme disorganization of the brain, there may be remissions of painless repose; and in other cases, where pain is synchronous with illusion, the illusion may subside although the pain remains; an indication, or proof, indeed, of structural cause for the phantasy. And this discrimination, Astrophel, of the line of distinction between sanity and derangement, is often of a hair’s breadth; and the law confesses here the high value of pathology, seeing that, in cases of suicide or of idiocy, and other states which involve the rites of sepulture, the conveyance of entailed estates, or personal responsibility, the judgment of the physician is held to be oracular.