Port Royal commercial and Beaufort County Republican. [volume] (Port Royal, S.C.) 1873-1874, 1873-11-20
CuriOsitics OF Lunacy.


There are cases where blows on the
head have benefited the brain, and pro-
duced extraordinary changes for the
better. Mabillon was almost an idiot
till, at the age of twenty-six, he fell
down stone staircase. fractured his
skull, and was trepanned. From that
moment he became O genius. Doctor
Prichard mentions case OF three
brothers who were nearly all idiots.
One of them was injured on the head,
and from that time he frightened up,
and is now a successful barrister.
Wallenstein, too, they say, was mere
fool till he fell out of window, and
awoke with enlarged capabilities. A
patient in an asylum was the victim OF
many delusions. He was paying off the
national debt, going into partnership
with Baron Rothschild, and forming a
lodge of female Freemasons. One day
an epileptic patient, irritated at being
perpetually asked to buy imaginary
shares, gave him tremendous blow on
the bridge of the nose. From that
time he improved rapidly, and acknowl-
edged that the blow had had SOLDERING
effect, and had quite knocked the non
sense out of him.
There is no doubt that this was the Sc
cret of that cruel old remedy for mad
ness, the circulating swing, mentioned
favorably by physicians of the last
century. This horrible swing was a
small box fixed upon a pivot, and
worked by windlass. The infiexi-
BILE maniac, or the maniac expecting a
paroxysm, was firmly strapped in sit
ting or recumbent posture. The box
was then whirled round ut the average
velocity of a hundred revolutions q
minute, and its beneficial effect was
supposed to be heightened by reversing
the motion every sir or eight minutes,
and by stopping it occasionally with a
sudden jerk. The results of this swing
(Which occasionally brought on concus-
sion Of the brain) were profound and
protracted sleep, intense perspiration,
mental exhaustion, and not unnatural
horror of any recurrence to the same
remedy, which left moral impression
that acted as a permanent restraint:
That the results were often beneficial
we have indisputable evidence.
The cases of suspended consciousness
after brain injury are well worthy at:
tention. A man who awakes out OF
sleep is conscious of lapse of time,
and can generally even guess its dura-
tion but the man struck on the brain
is often unconscious of any lapse. A
man was struck IN the street, and was
afterward delirious. He was uncon-
scious after the blow for fourteen days.
He was then delirious and maniacal for
len weeks. When he became more
tranquil thay brought him to the asylum
in q strait-waistcoat He soon recover
ed, but when he became conscious he
had clean forgotten the fourteen days
trance, and the ten weeks dellrlum
and mania. At the battle of tie Nile
an English captain was struck on the
head by shot, and became uncon-
scious. He was taken home with the
wounded, and remained in Greenwich
Hospital fifteen months deprived OF
sense and speech. At the end of that
period an operation was performed, and
the brain relieved from the pressure.
He instantly arose from his bed, and
continued the orders to the sailors
which had been so abruptly interrupted
fifteen months before. DR.. Abercrombie
gives an analogous case. A lady was
struck with apoplexy while sitting at
the whist-table. 1t was Thursday
evening when she fell, and she lay in
stupor all Friday and Saturday. On
Sunday she suddenly recovered her
consciousness and her fsrt words
were, "What are trumps ?" The clock.
work had stopped at that point, and
now the pendulum again commenced to
swing.