Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-03-19
latlrdster ttlteil:Cenrer.
SATURDAY EVENING. MARCH le, 1881
The TOuchst0ne Of CraZiness.

The suicide OF General Upton has coca
stoned the greatest surprise among those
who knew him, and who declare him to
have been the last man they would have
of such an act. The nearly
unanimous conclusion is that he was in
sane when the deed was done. although
he never was before suspected of such
mental malady. One of his acquaint-
ances, however, has adopted another
theory, and plausible one, too. He says
that Upton was in the constant habit Of
sleeping with a revolver in easy reach,
and he believes that he seized upon it
while in dream, and in pursuance of
an apparently needful purpose conceived
in that troubled state of his mind. 1t
will be seen, on little reflection, that
these two theories are not so diverse as
they at first appear. The mind may be
disordered for the time in q dream as
greatly as it would lie in any other tenn
pOrary state of mental distress or un-
sOundEeSs. In this case Of General Up
ton, it would seem that the seizure, of
whatever kind it was, was sudden, and
of the night on which the fatal deed was
done. since the day before nothing
unusual had been noted in his demean
or. Then, it is said that he was subject
to physical ailments that may have
caused him enough pain to render him
temporarily irresponsible, Or that may
have thrown him into distressing dream.
Nearly everybody has, in his own ex-
perience, that which will cause him to
believe almost any strange tale that may
be told as done in dream. Sleep walk
ing feats are too common to excite sur
prise, whatever DO their nature. Why
then may we not credit that a man may
kill himself in dream? It is not even
necessary to believe that he has done it
purposely; it may have accidentally Oc-
CURED to General Upton that shot in
tended for an antagonist was directed
against himself. Or it may have been
purposely done in obedience to some di-
rection in the dream which appeared to
justify and require it. II we admit the
physical possibility that a man in pos
session of a pistol may shoot himself
while dreaming, as we cannot avoid ad-
mitting, we are equally forced to admit
that the impulse to the act may be
given in dream.
Only a day or two ago Il fellow-citiZen
was relating to us Il recent experience of
his own. He dreamed that he was as
sailed by great giant /; appalled, ut the
odds against him he quickly determined
that his best chance laid in disabling the
giant with q powerful kick. The con-
cussiOn awOke him he found that he
had kicked hole in the window shutter
beside his bed and torn off the entire
nail from his great toe. Fortunately his
wife was on the other side of him or next
morning there might have been Il core
ncr's inquest and some big newspaper
headlines describing horrible wife
murder.
The stomach is generally responsible
for these physical outbreaks that are
laid upon disordered mind, for it is
therein the mind gets its ugly twist.
The lower organ has been held to be the
seat of the mind and it is certainly re-
Sponsible for most OF mans evil deeds. 4
sound mind exists only when the body is
sound, anj. the body is only sound when
its digestive functions are all right.
The undue f!Ow of blood to the brain
under the mali gin action Of the stomach
pr0vokcS those fits OF anger which drive
men to murderous deeds. From the
same cause come dreams, which can
often be traced to in,liscretion in eat
ing.
4 great deal of discredit has been
thrown upon the defense of temporary
and emotional insanity as accounting for
and eNcusing crime. But there can
hardly be a fair doubt that it is respon-
sible for very great deal of violent ac-
tion. 1t cannot be otherwise: every
man knows how difficult it is to subdue
the angry passions that rise TO an i'll
disposition, and he can easily imagine
that what he does with difficulty to-day he
may not be able to do at all again should
his impulse to evil then be much stronger.
We are convinced that great deal of
the crime of the day is involuntary and
should be treated in Il hospita! rather
than punished in prison. See the case
which we now have in this man PEeifer,
who killed his cellmate and left a confess
sion of other brutal murders. Scarcely
doubt remains that he was insane. Yet
the doctors examined him and pro-
nounced him sane, declaring that his
crazy conduct was simulated. This man
was probably not one of the cases of
emotional insanity of which we have
been speaking. His mind would seem
to have been permanently affected so as
to entitle him to be called insane: under
which name are usually placed those
whose minds have been disordered for
considerable period of time, or at least
more than momentarily; though we pro-
test our inability to define insanity.
nearly everybody being more or less
afflicted by it, in some degree at some
time. Pfeifer had been crazy for years
and it is not to the credit of the doctors
that they did not find it out. His case
serves our present purpose in showing
how really insane man may pass even
medical inspection as sane and gives
rise to the query as to how many abso-