The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-08
DRIVEN TO MADNESS.
1IMES WHEN AN EXCESS OF JOY IS
 LINKED WITH INSANITY.

some of the Saddest cases of Lunacy
 are Those Where tAe Mind is Unable
 to stand the Shock Of snddon Good
 Tidings.
 It is no exaggeration to assert, said an asylum doctor of long and varied . experience that there are scores of men and women in our asylums who have literally been sent there through excess of joy. Many of these cases which are, in my opinion, the saddest of all, have come under my own observation,
 l remember in the very first asylum with which l was connected one of the patients was a strikingly handsome and very well educated man, who was as sane as you or I except on one point. He was really man of considerable wealth, but his delusion was that he was pauper, and he would tell the most pitiful tales of his Restitution, begging, with tears in his eyes, for a few coppers with which to buy bread.
 According to the story told me, he was the only son of a wealthy mer- chant. In his youth he had fallen among evil companions and had led such a dissolute life that his father not only threatened to disinherit him. but forbade him ever to enter his house again. After that he seems to have sunk into the lowest depths of poverty until he was glad to earn a few coppers by selling papers or matches in the streets.
 It was at this last and lowest stage ] that news came to him that his father had died intestate and that he was heir to all his vast fortune The sudden news completely turned the mans brain and brought on such a condition of eX- citement that he had to be sent to an asylum, and when he calned down again he had lost all recollection of his good fortune and nothing can shake his delusion that he is on the verge of Starvation.
 Another patient in the same asylum was young man and in his lucid mo- ments a most intelligent fellow, whose
 brain was turned, as the saying is, on learning that he had passed an eXami- nation. He had sat for the matricula- tion examination al the University of London, on passing which he had set his heart and had asked friend in London to wire the result as soon as the names were screened at Burlington House.
 About three weeks later came a fatal telegram, "Failed-sorry," which sent the young man into the lowest depths of despair for he was too old to sit o crni iy Ia CT, came another telegram, Passed honors-very sorry crush so great did not see name this morning." The re- vulsion of feeling was so great that the students reason gave way, and he be- came so violent in his excitement that he had to be confined. Fortunately he was not with us long and is now, am glad to know, doing very well as a so- licitor.
 Disappointed love sends many people to asylums, but it Is very seldom that ! success in wooing drives a man mad. It hau this strange effect, however, on ! one of my late patients. The girl he | loved had gone out to India to keep { house for her brother before he had [ screwed up his courage to the point of 1 proposing to her, but an offer followed | by mail very quickly after her.
 Weeks and months passed, and no an- swer came to the impatient lover until after waiting two years in despair, he became engaged to a girl who had noth- ing but her money bags to recommend her and for whom he had not q particle of love. Scarcely, however, was his fate sealed than he received the long de- spaired of letter from India, accepting his offer and explaining that the girls brother had received and mislaid the letter, which had only just been found and had come into her hands
 Within an hour of the receipt of this i letter the man was raving maniac, and although his condition is improved Isdoubt whether he will ever recover his reason.
 In another remarkable case it was the joy at seeing her husband again that robbed a lady patient of her reason Her husband was the captain of mer- chant ship which was reported to have gone down with all hands. The widow had deeply mourned her husband for nearly year, when one day on return ing from q walk she found him sitting in the drawing room as hale and robust as ever.
 With a shriek she fo,l unconscious on the floor, and when she recovered her reason was gone. It seems that her husband, after foa ting for some time had been picked un by a passing and had been landed on the west coast of Africa, from which he had home by the first available yessel-Lonrlon Tit-Bits.