Case CLXIV

One of those horrible dramas which terrify humanity, is thus related by the Brussels papers: -

"A deplorable event yesterday morning horrified the inhabitants of the Quartier du Marche au Fromage, in this city. Madame X. (a French woman, aged thirty-two), married, and having a pretty little girl of eighteen months, inhabited a chamber in this quarter.

"Her husband, a professor, had been absent for several days at Tirlemont, where he expected a situation in a school; his wife, whose religious ideas had for some time been very much excited, and had even on several occasions taken the form of hallucinations, was attacked during the night with a fit of homicidal monomania; she thought she saw angels, who commanded her to kill her child in order that it might become an angel likewise; her husband also appeared to her, crowned with white roses; he was wounded, and held weapons in his hands. In this state, he informed her that he had destroyed himself in order to enter paradise, and invited her to kill her child and herself in order to rejoin him in the abodes of bliss.

"This unfortunate woman soon executed the dreams of her diseased brain; she smothered her child with her hands, after having vainly attempted to choke it with crumbs of bread. The poor little victim being dispatched, she endeavored to commit suicide, and stabbed herself in several places under the left breast with a small pocket-knife; but pain, and the instinct of self-preservation, doubtless, struggled against her monomania, and made her abandon this weapon. She then lay down by the corpse of her child, hoping that God would not long delay to call her to himself, and reunite her to her child.

"In this melancholy situation she was discovered on Saturday morning. As soon as the authorities heard of it, the king's attorney, one of the justices of the peace, and Drs. Jolly and Vanderlaer visited the spot, and having decided on the mental state of this unhappy mother, she was conveyed to St. John's Hospital.

"By a singular coincidence, the husband arrived unexpectedly at the very moment when his maniac wife and the corpse of his child were being conveyed to the hospital."

These two examples, selected from many others, will serve as an introduction to the study of hallucinations considered in their relation to medical jurisprudence and civil institutions.

The importance of this study has already been implied in its symptomatology and the specific cases given. It is beginning to be understood that a number of those strange acts, placed heretofore in the annals of crime, are referable to insanity, and, above all, to hallucinations.

The subject is so highly interesting that we must enter fully upon its developments. We shall examine, first, the influence of hallucinations on the conduct, waking and sleeping; secondly, that of illusions under analogous circumstances; and, thirdly, inquire at what point hallucinations demand sequestration and commission of lunacy, and whether this state of mind does not require the acts of the person under examination to be considered invalid.

Hallucinations may be the cause of many reprehensible and dangerous resolves. Some madmen commit suicide, in order to escape the vision which haunts them; others steal, because a voice constantly insists that the object they take belongs to them. Some are incendiaries; and a great number utter insults and menaces, strike, and even commit murder.

A man may be found in a secluded spot with evident marks of having met with a violent death. The first thought that occurs to the mind is, that a crime has been committed; but it may have been a suicide, and this unhappy termination may have been the result of a false sensation. A clerk, believes that he sees the gendarmes surrounding him, to seize and bear him away to the scaffold. Wishing to save his wife from dishonor, he stands a whole night, whilst she sleeps, with an open razor at her throat. Fortunately his idea takes another direction, and he casts the weapon from him. On the following day, still tormented by the sight of his persecutors, and unable longer to support it, he drowns himself. A merchant, who had hitherto enjoyed the esteem of all who knew him, heard voices which reproached him with an evil action. These voices did not leave him an instant of repose. His family and friends endeavorefl to comfort him. He appeared to have obtained calmness of mind, and went up stairs to go to rest. A few minutes afterwards it was discovered that he had hong himself.