The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1873-11-20
nurinsities of Lunac1 .

There are cases where blows on tue
head have benefited the brain, and
produced extraordinary changes for the
better. MabilIon was almost an idiot
till, at the age of twenty-six, he fell
down a stone staircase, fractured his
skull, and was trepanned. From that
moment he became a genius. Doctor
Prichard mentions a case of three
brothers who were all nearly idiots.
One of them was injured on the head,
and from that time he frightened up,
and is now a successful barrister. Wal
lenstein, too, they say, was mere fool
till he fell out of a window, and awoke
with enlarged capabilities. A patient
in an asylum was the victim of many
delusions. He was paying off the ma
tional debt, going into partnership with
Baron Rothschild, and forming lodge
of female freemasons. One day an cpl
leptic patient, irritated at being per-
petually asked to buy imaginary shares,
gave him a tremendous blow on the
bridge of the nose. From that time he
improved rapidly, and acknowledged
that the blow had had a SOLDERING effect,
and had quite knocked the nonsense out
Of him.
There is no doubt that this was the
secret of that cruel old remedy for
madness, the circulating swing, NELL
toned favorably by physicians of the
last century. This horrible swing was
a small box fixed upon a pivot, and
worked by windlass. The ''infexible
| maniac, or the maniac expecting a pa
roxysm, was firmly strapped in a sitting
or recumbent posture. The box was
then whirled round at the average velo-
| city of hundred revolutions a minute,
and its beneficial effect was supposed to
be heightened by reversing the motion
every six or eight minutes, and by stop
ping it occasionally with a sudden jerk.
The results of this swing, which occa-
/ sionally brought on cOncussion of the
brain, were profound and protracted
sleep, intense perspiration, mental ex-
haustion, and a not unnatural horror of
any recurrence to the same remedy,
which left a moral impression that acted
| as a permanent restraint. That the re-
suits were often beneficial we have in
disputable evidence.
The cases of suspected consciousness
after brain injury are well worthy atten-
| ton. A man who awakes out of sleep
is conscious of a lapse of time, and can
generally even guess its duration ; but
the man struck on the brain is often I'M
conscious of any lapse. A man was
struck in the street, and was afterwards
delirious. He was unconscious after
the blow for fourteen days. He was
then delirious and maniacal for ten
weeks. When he became more tranquil
they brought him to the asylum in a
strait waist-coat. He soon recovered,
but when he became conscious he had
clean forgotten the fourteen days
trance, and the ten weeks delirium and
mania. At the battle Of the Nile an En-
| glish captain was struck on the head by
a shot and became unconscious. 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 rose
from his bed, and continued the orders
to the sailors which had been so abrupt
~ interrupted fifteen months before.
DR.. Abercrombie gives an analogous
case. A lady was struck with apoplexy
whilst sitting at the whist-tabIe. 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
first words were, "What are trumps ?"
The clock-work had stopped at that
point, and now the pendulum again
| commenced to swing.