The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-05-18
Insanity-Notable Cases from History.

l0Bb0lly-NOLdDle cases from EtlblOEys
Insanity is as old as literature, and how much
older We know not. A recent French writer has
devoted book TO demonstrate that the demon
OF Socrates was nothing else than a state of
ecstaCy and intermittent insanity, which came
over the philosopher now aud then, and seemed
to HIM an esoteric monitor ana guide Some
of the earliest theologians of the Christian
Church, as well as majority of the hierarchs
thereof, have been charged with insanity.
George Rex, Jacob Behmen, Emanuel Sweden
borg, John. Bunyan Ann Lee, and founders of
sects and petist-, too numerous 10 mention, had
clearly developed traces OF insanity,
Even the rugged Luther, when he threw his
inkstand at the devil, must have had at least a
passing lunacy upon him. Among philosophers
Kant is the most eminent name known TO have
been overtaken by madness. This occurred in
his later years and there has lately been dis
covered IN Germany a manuscript volume which
he composed during that period.
Leland, the celebrated English antiquarY, was
an enthusiast, who exhausted the finer faculties
OF his mind in prodgous nocturnal labors, until
he was seized, at the age of forty, with frenzy
ahd ids penetrating intellect became a melan-
Choly rum.
Nathaniel Lee, dramatist of the seventeenth
century, whose compositions are praised by
Addison, and who il now remembered only by
the misquoted lines of his Alexander the
Great'-"When Greeks Joined Greeks then was
the tug OF war was so eXtravagant madman
that he had to be incarcerated in bedlam at the
age OF thirty. One evening while composing a
drama in his cell, a cloud, passing across the
moon, by whose light he wrote, the insane
author suddenly cIied out, "Jove, snuff the
mOOnw
Christopher Smart, the able translator of
Horace who won brilliant honors at Cam
bridge, was soon after attacked by insanity, and
Ehut up ia a lunatic asylum, in 1854. Here,
although deprived OF pen, ink, and paper he
composed a poem OF a hundred stanZas, ia
honor of King David, which he wrote with a
key on the walls OF his cell.
In 1928, a curious work on ''rhe Anatomy of
Language appeared at Florence. Its object
was to prove that apes possessed the power OF
speech, but carefully concealed the gift from
the human race The work was written by one
Joseph Bernardo, while an inmate OF a lunatlc
asylum. He asserted that in the early editions
of Marco Polo it had been well established that
apes had the faculty Of singing and Of speech.
A jesuit named Cremoni wrote q refutation,
maintaining that the doctrine was contrary to
the teachings of the Scripture, and consequently
could not be true.
One of the most remarkable of literary luna
tics was John Stewart, commonly known al
"Walking Stewart who died in London II
1922 Attacked IN early LIE by the mania to
travelling he soon traVersed, on tOOt, grea
portion OF the globe. He then began TO writ
books, of which he printed upwards OF tWens,
at his own expense, which he distributed eau
tiOusly among his friends so that they have nov
become rare. They were chiefly devoted to wha
he calls "Ihe Polarization OF Moral truth" H
was haunted with the notion thar the kings Q
the earth would one day combine to destroy hi
writings and 50 he begged those who receive
the precious deposits to envelop them carefully
and bury them six or eight feet undergoing
being careful TO disclose only ON their deatf
bed and on a pledge Of secrecy, the spC
where they we're entom bed.