Part 11

[Footnote 24: The reader may be here reminded of the well-known case of the confessor to the French King. He was long under the delusion of being a cock; he tried to fly, perched upon cross rafters, picked minced meat out of a wooden trencher, and crowed regularly every morning.--ED.]

"There are two dozen of these beneath her," said the woman. "Lord ----'s gamekeeper brought them in to her four days ago, to serve for food to her. I saw her go out for the straw, and she borrowed the tub from me. She built her nest on the night afterwards, and she commenced sitting there immediately when it was completed, so that she has already sat three days and nights. We heard the 'cluck' through the partition; and, upon coming in, found her as you now see her."

"Has she got any food?" said I, with a still graver aspect, as I saw my informant watching for a smile to repay her for her extraordinary information, and keep her in countenance.

"Nothing but some peas of barley," replied the woman, with something of seriousness assumed with great difficulty. "See here."

And she pointed to a small cup placed by the side of the tub, in which some of the grain mentioned was contained, and alongside of it a small vessel of water.

The truth was now fully apparent. A false conviction of as extraordinary a nature as I had yet witnessed had taken entire possession of the invalid's mind. It was not difficult, on ordinary and vulgar data, to account for the peculiar turn of the malady in the case of this woman, because all her life had been spent among fowls; yet I must bear my professional testimony to the fact, that, among the many instances of false conceptions of identity I had previously witnessed, and have since seen, I never knew a case where the peculiarity of the conviction had any relation whatever to the prior habits of mind or body of the invalid. The deranging power, whatever it is, has often no respect to pre-existing habits or associations; but, on the contrary, seems to delight in a capricious triumph over all the ordinary acts of the mind, and delights to introduce an imagined form and character as widely opposed as the antipodes to the prior conceptions of the unfortunate individual. The case before me was, therefore, in this respect interesting; for, as to the grotesque conditions of the fancied change, though calculated to produce an extraordinary effect on vulgar minds, I looked upon them, philosophically, as only another instance of the endless variety of melancholy changes to which our frail natures are exposed.

I proceeded to ask my informant if any means had been taken to draw the invalid from her position, and got for answer, that several of the neighbours had come in and endeavoured to prevail upon her to renounce her charge; but that, having failed in their efforts, they had on several occasions removed her by force, and in opposition to strenuous struggles, and extraordinary sounds of mixed anger and pitiful sorrow. No sooner, however, were their backs turned, than she _flew_ to her seat, and manifested the greatest satisfaction by peculiar noises, at being again reinstated in her charge of her inchoate brood, which she was terrified would, by growing cold, be deprived of the principle of vitality she was busy in communicating to them. I tested, by my own efforts, her instinctive force of affection, by taking her by the arms and endeavouring to remove her; but she sent up such a pitiful cry, mixed with her imitative cluck and cackle, that I let her go, as much through a sudden impulse of fear as from an inability to lift her by the power of my arms. I then put down my hand to remove some of the eggs, but was in an instant attacked as fiercely as if the invalid had in reality been the creature she fancied herself to be; and the manner of the attack was so true to the habits of the feathered mother, that, even in the midst of my philosophy and concern for the unhappy being, I trembled for my professional gravity. She had fancied that the protuberance on her face was a beak, and used that organ with such effect, that, on missing my hand, she darted the fancied organ of defence on the corner of the tub, and produced a stream of blood, which I required to quench by the vulgar but effectual mode of placing down her back the key of the door. During all the struggle, the "cluck, cluck" was kept up, accompanied with a shaking of her clothes, as if she had been raising the feathers to evidence farther for her instinctive anger.

I now left this unhappy individual to the charge of the woman, with a recommendation (I could do nothing more) to endeavour to get her weaned from her situation and habit. Two or three of my brother practitioners having heard the circumstances, visited her during that afternoon, and witnessed, as they informed me, the same symptoms that had been seen by me. Two days afterwards, I visited her again, having, in the meantime, written to Lord ----'s steward an account of the state of the family's poor _protege_, with some advices as to how she ought to be disposed of. I found her still in the same position, and if possible more determined to defend her brittle charge. I expressed to the attendant some surprise that a human being should have been allowed to remain so long in a predicament which seemed to throw some discredit upon our vindicated superiority over the lower animals; but she answered me by stating that the patient had become so fierce and vindictive, when an attempt was made to remove her from the tub, or to take the eggs from under her, that every one was afraid to go near her. A prejudice had, moreover, taken possession of the neighbours, that she was under the power of some evil spirit; and those who ventured to look at her, as she sat clucking over her charge, gratified their intense curiosity by putting their heads in at the door. As I approached her, I saw plainly that a fiercer spirit had taken possession of her, probably from the attempts that had been made to displace her, and overcome her extraordinary instinct. Her eyes glanced as if fired by the impulse of strong anger, and her "cluck" sounded with a wilder and more unearthly sound than when I saw her before; but she spoke not a word, and, indeed, since ever she had betaken herself to the nest, she had been heard to utter no other sounds than those that are peculiar to the bird she personated. These symptoms imparted to her a most impressive and terrific aspect, altogether incompatible with any feeling of the ludicrous. I have seen mad people in every mood; and, although I have observed them assume attitudes and looks more suggestive, of course, of the terror of personal injury, I am quite free to confess, that I never saw any one whose appearance was so productive of those indefinable feelings of pity, fear, and awe, so often roused within the walls of an asylum. Nature was not only changed--it was overturned; human feelings represented the instincts of the brutes that perish; and the organs, motions, and attitudes of our species, were made to subserve, with an intense anxiety that was painful to behold, the impulses of creatures in the lowest grade of creation. I confess that my feelings were, on this occasion, harrowed; and, if I were to search for any feature in the spectacle before me, more than another, that tended to produce in me this effect, I would say that it was the hideous intensity of the instinctive anxiety that beamed in her dull sullen eye, as I proceeded forward to the place where she covered and defended her charge, aided by the horrid interminable cluck that ground my ears with its unnatural sound.

I was obliged to leave her again, still in the same predicament; for the woman declared that she, for her part, would not again meddle with her, unless assisted by her neighbours; and they, possessed of the terror of the evil spirit, would not approach her. I got her, however, to promise to give her some meat; but this, she said, was of no easy accomplishment, for the invalid was possessed of the idea that nothing ought to be eaten by one in her "particular situation," but what a hen might pick up in its bill and swallow. She had discarded broth and butcher-meat; and the few crumbs she had picked up off a platter that had been placed before her would not suffice to keep in her life.

That same evening, an extraordinary scene took place in the house of this demented creature. I had not been informed that she had any near relations; but it happened that, when she was still in the same extraordinary position, an only son, a fine open-hearted fellow, a sailor, who had been absent from her for seven years, arrived, buoyant with hope, and fired with desire to see his mother happy and well. Good heavens! what a sight was presented to him! I witnessed not the harrowing meeting; but the old neighbour was present, and attempted an inadequate description of it to me. She did not know her son; and when he approached her, to greet her with a son's love, she exhibited the same symptoms of fury, and clucked the dreadful sounds of her defensive anger in his agonised ear. What he saw, and what he heard, opened up to him the hideous mystery. He rushed out of the house, and had not again returned.

Next day, the butler of the family who took charge of her called on me. I accompanied him to the house, when one or two of the neighbours were prevailed upon to lend their assistance in getting her removed by force. The scene that followed was an extraordinary one. She resisted them to the last; as the struggle increased, her eye became more fiery, and her unearthly screams more loud and discordant--passing through all the notes of an incensed hen-mother, and attaining, at times, to the harsh scream which one may have heard from that feathered biped, when separated from her brood, and pursued by a band of urchins. The task of mere removal was not a difficult one, and was soon accomplished. Some curious observer examined the eggs, and found that not one of them was broken, so carefully had she performed her supposed duty of incubation. If she had sat the requisite time, there is not a doubt they would have been duly and legitimately hatched.

Such are the details of this extraordinary case. It is needless to say that it may transcend human belief. That is nothing, because belief is too much regulated by experience. I waited on the poor woman afterwards. The idea haunted her for about two months, and then gave place to some other wild conceptions, that in their turn gave way to others of a more rational character. Her son returned, and saw, with pleasure, the change that had taken place upon his parent. Latterly she became perfectly rational; but, if any one alluded in the remotest degree to her position in the tub, she shuddered with horror, and evaded the subject, as if it had terrors too dreadful to be borne.

THE ARTIST.

In the course of my practice, I have paid some attention to the effects of the two great stimulants, whisky and tobacco, on the bodies and habits of the votaries of excitement. There is a great difference in the action of the two substances; and I know no more curious subject for the investigation of the metaphysical physician, than the analysis of the various effects upon the mind produced by all the stimulating narcotics which are used by man, for the purpose of yielding pleasure or mitigating pain. I have myself committed to paper some thoughts upon this subject, which may yet see the light; and many of the conclusions I have deduced from my reasoning and experience, may be found to be curious, as well as instructive. I have found, for instance, that people of sanguine temperaments are greater drinkers than smokers; and those of a dull, phlegmatic cast are greater smokers than drinkers. A man that smokes will almost always drink; but a man that drinks will not always, nor indeed often, smoke. The two habits are often found combined in the same individual; but it is, notwithstanding, a fact, that, if the smoker and drinker could always command the spirit, he would very seldom or ever trouble himself with the other. I am led into these remarks by a case that occurred in my practice not very long ago, where the two habits joined in an extraordinary manner their baneful influences in closing the mortal career of one of those unfortunate votaries.

I was first called to William G----, a very ingenious artist, when he lay under a severe attack of what we call _delirium tremens_, or temporary insanity, produced by, or consisting of (for the proximate cause is often the disease itself), highly irritated nerves, the consequence of a succession of drinking fits. I found that he had been "on the ball," as they say, for three weeks, during which time he had drunk forty-two bottles of strong whisky. Like many other people of genius, whose fits of inspiration (for artists have those fits as well as poets) make them work to excess, and leave them, as they wear out, the victims of ennui and lassitude, he was in the habit of applying himself to his business with too much assiduity, for the period, generally, of about a month. Exhausted by the excitement of thought and invention kept up too long, he fell regularly down into a state of dull lethargy, which seemed to be painful to him. He felt as if there was a load upon his brain. A sense of duty stung him, after a few days' idleness, poignantly; and, while he writhed under the sting of the sharp monitor, he felt that _he could not_ obey the behest of the good angel; and yet could not explain the reason of his utter powerlessness and incapacity for work. If he had allowed this state, which is quite natural, and not difficult of explanation, to remain unalleviated by stimulants for a day or two, he would have found that, as the brain again collected energy, he would have been relieved by the _vis medicatrix_ of nature herself; but he had no patience for that; and drink was, accordingly, his refuge and relief. The first glass he took was fraught with the most direful power--it threw down the floodgates of a struggling resolution; the relief of the new and artificial impulse raised his spirits: another application inflamed his mind; and then bottle after bottle was thrown into the furnace, until the drink-fever laid him up, and brought upon him the salutary nausea which overcame the rebellious desire. This system had continued for more than ten years. He had been gradually getting worse and worse; and, latterly, he had resigned himself to the cognate influence of the narcotic weed.

When I got an account of this young man--for he was still comparatively young--and saw some of the exquisite pieces of workmanship, both in sculpture and painting, he had executed, I felt a strong interest in his fate. He was, indeed, one example out of many, where I had contemplated, with tears that subdued my professional apathy, genius, commonly supposed to be the rarest, if not the highest gift of mortals, working out, by some power inherent in itself, the ruin of the body, mind, and morals of its possessor. This victim I saw lying under the fell power of one of the most frightful of diseases, brought on by his own intemperance; and not far from his bed lay a half-finished Scripture-piece--a work which, if finished, would have brought him money and fame. He presented the ordinary appearances of his complaint. Emaciated and pale, he laboured under that union of ague and temporary madness which _delirium tremens_ exhibits. All the motions of his nerves seemed to have been inverted; those servants of the will had got a new master, which kept them, by his diabolical power, in continual action. His arms were continually in motion, aiming at some object present or ideal; but, instead of making direct for it, vibrating in sudden snatches backward and forward; his legs were also in continual agitation, kicking up the bedclothes, then being stretched forth, as if held by a spasm; and his eyes, red and fiery, seemed to fly from object to object, as if the vision of a thing burned the orbs, and made them roll about for a resting-place. Thousands of _muscae volitantes_, or the imaginary flies that swarm round the heads of victims of this complaint, tormented him by their ideal presence, and kept his snatching, quivering hands in continual play, till, by seizing the bed-posts, he seemed, though only for a moment, to get a relief from his restlessness. He knew no one; and sudden burning thoughts flashing upon his heated brain, wrung from him jabbering exclamations, containing intensive words of agony or mirth. The rest of his convulsed muscles was only purchased at the expense of such a morbid increase of the sense of hearing, that the scratch of a pin on the wall pained him as much as if the operation had been performed on his brain--a symptom often so strongly marked in regular brain-fever, and often detected in this last stage of the drunkard's disease. The sense of the pupil of the eye was of the same morbid character. A stream of light produced in him a scream, suggesting the analogy of the sound of the night-bird, the owl, when light is suddenly let into a nest among the young brood. The delights of life, sunbeam and sound, were transformed into poisons; so that his own vivid pictures, or the most melodious of songs, would have produced a convulsive spasm. Food was nauseous to him, and water swallowed by gulps, in the intervals of spasms, was all that could be taken without pain, to quench the burning fires within.

Such is a faithful picture of a disease produced by ardent spirits. I recommend it to the votaries of intemperance. The moment I saw the patient, I knew his disease; and the particulars furnished to me by an old woman who kept his house only corroborated my opinion. The remedies in such cases are well known to us, and were instantly applied. He remained in the same state nearly all the next day; but began to show symptoms of recovery on the morning following. Nature prevailed, and he got gradually better; having, while his weakness was on him, a strong _antipathy_ to ardent spirits--a symptom of the drunkard I have often observed. The interest I felt in him made me call often; and I had a long conversation with him on the philosophy and _morale_ of his intemperance. He went himself to the very depths of the subject; and I found, what I have often done in regard to other drunkards, that no one knew better the predisposing causes, the resisting energies, the consequences--everything connected with the fearful vice; but all his philosophy ended, as these often do, in the melancholy sentence, that "there are powers within us greater than reason or philosophy."

After the fearful attack he had had, he remained sober for about a month, and got a great length with his Scripture-piece. I called often to see his progress, to inspirit him in a continuation of his efforts, and support him in his self-denial. Matters seemed to be progressing well, and I hinted as much to his housekeeper; but she shook her head, and replied, calmly, "that she had seen the same scene acted, ten times a-year, for ten years." She added, "that he would break out again in a day or two;" and accordingly, on the next day, I discovered he had begun to lag in his work, to draw deep sighs, and to exhibit a listlessness, all premonitory signs of a relapse. Knowing that he was at times a smoker, I suggested to him the trial of tobacco, at this critical period. He said he had tried that remedy before; but acknowledged that perhaps he had not carried it far enough. I therefore set him agoing; advising him to keep to it steadily, for I had succeeded once before, in a very extreme case, in drawing out the one vice by the other--undoubtedly a lesser. So he began well, and persevered for about a week, during which time he had also got pretty well on with his work, having finished in that time two of the most difficult heads in the whole piece.

I had now some greater hopes of him, and told the housekeeper to do what she could to aid me in my efforts. Two days afterwards I called, and met the old woman at the door. She shook her head ominously as I passed her. I opened the door, and went in. On a chair opposite to his picture sat the artist, with his pallet in his left hand--the brush had fallen from his right--his head was hung over the back of the chair, and his cravatless neck bent almost to breaking. Beside him sat a bottle empty; there was no glass beside it. I took up the vessel, and smelled it. It had been filled with whisky. I now looked at the picture. It was destroyed. His burin had been drawn over it like a mop, and dashed backwards and forwards, as if he had taken a spite at it, and been determined to put an end in one moment to the work of six months!

There was now no occasion for a doctor; a drunkard fairly broken out is far beyond our help or care. I left him, and told the housekeeper to call and tell me when the fit was over. She did so; and I called again. I found him sitting on the same chair, perfectly sober, but so thin and wan, that he seemed like one taken from that place "where one inheriteth creeping things, and beasts, and worms." His languid bloodshot eye was fixed on the picture, and tears were stealing down his white cheeks. When I entered, he held his hands up to his face, to cover the shame that mantled on his cheek, and deep sobs heaved his bosom. I was moved, and sat down beside him without speaking a word.

"O God!" he exclaimed, "what am I to do with myself? Is there no remedy against this vice?--has the great Author of our being thus left us with an inheritance of reason, and a power that sits like a cockatrice on our brains, and laughs at the God-sent gift? See--see the fruit of six months' hard labour! I expected fame from that, and money. I would have got both. The fiend has triumphed. When I awoke from my dream, I heard his laugh behind the canvas. I am undone."

And he wrung his hands like a demented person, and sobbed bitterly. I was still silent; for any words I could have uttered would have destroyed the impressiveness of the scene before me. When I had allowed the sensation of remorse to sink deeper into him, I spoke:--

"I am glad that you have wrought this destruction," said I. "You have produced an antidote to your own poison--let it work. I have no medicines in my laboratory that have half the efficacy of that once splendid emanation of your genius--now the monument of your folly, and to be, as I hope, the prophylactic to save you from ruin and death."

"Ah, God help me! it is a dear medicine," groaned he. "I feel that I never can produce such a work again."

And he hung down his head, as if the blackest cloud that covers hope had thrown over him its dark shadow. I again observed silence, and he remained with his head on his breast for several minutes, without exhibiting a symptom of life beyond the deep sigh that raised his ribs.

"You must hang that picture upon the wall," said I. "It is the most valuable you ever painted. Look at it daily, and, before the sun goes down, begin another on the same subject."