* Annales Medico-Psycho., t. iv. p. 34.

† Histoire (Tun Fou gueri deux fois malgre les Medecins et une fois sans eux.

All ideas and preoccupations may be transformed into hallucinations; and, consequently, be as various as the individuals; we will restrict ourselves to a few examples of lesions of this function of most common recurrence. There are some halluci-nists who see the police-officers seeking for them. One, to escape them, jumps, almost naked, from the window. Others tremble at the sight of the scaffold, the executioner, and gen-darmes. Melancholy monomaniacs, who imagine that they are pursued, see none but enemies around them. Women frequently have visions of angels and devils. Spectres, phantoms, and menacing countenances appear very frequently in some kinds of insanity. Cats, dogs, serpents, etc., are also of frequent occurrence. Cardinal do Brienne asserted that his bed was filled with scorpions, which attempted to devour him.

In erotic ideas, the apparitions of angels, men, and beautiful women, are frequent. Madame C------sees four men enter her room every night, who allow her no rest. Another thinks that the young men who enter her door deserve all the punishments under heaven. In educated minds, hallucinations may be composed of subjects of study. Blake, of Bedlam, received visits from every great historical character. The poet Harrington saw bees, flies, and birds constantly exuding from his skin. Hallucinists frequently have no recollection of persons or things which they see. A man told us that he saw three strange men, who, after making grimaces at him, climbed up the stove-pipe and disappeared. Under some circumstances long processions and figures of all kinds pass in review. An old lady of eighty, expressed the great pleasure she derived at the sight of the large company assembled. The thousands who composed it, in full dress, passed and repassed with their wives and children, partaking of the amusements of the fete. Another lady received company, who played, took tea, and conducted themselves like characters in real life.

Visions are frequently the painted reflex of the occupations of the hallucinated. A student in theology insists that the devil enters him and takes up his abode in his brain. A learned Englishman, Ben Jonson, passed a whole night in watching ancient nations engaged in battle around his arm-chair. Luther is surrounded with flaming torches, and fights against the devil, who wears the black gown of a proctor. Zimmerman sees enemies everywhere. Cardan, whose son is implicated in a plot which will lead to his death, is struck by the sight of a bloody mark on his finger, which increases during fifteen days. Ravaillac relates that he saw victims flying before him, and found on a statue the head of a Moor whom he had seen in the studio of an artist.

Many criminals have been pursued by the spectres of those whom they have assassinated; some are horrified at seeing the ghost of a father, mother, or child, notwithstanding the fact that these beings are living and present with them.

Hallucinations of sight, which reproduce the objects that are the most interesting to, and make the greatest impression on the multitude, have excited general attention in a very high degree; they are also discussed in a number of works under the name of visions.

This belief in visions was formerly so universal, that there was neither castle, churchyard, house, secluded spot, or street which was not haunted by one. Everybody was the hero of an apparition; and hallucinations, heretofore occurring singly, appeared as an epidemic; thus, during the plague in Neocesarea, spectres were seen to enter the houses; likewise in Egypt, in the time of the Emperor Justinian, black men, without heads, were seen to row on the sea in boats of brass. During an epidemic which depopulated Constantinople, demons were seen running from house to house, and striking the inhabitants with death.

In the consideration of 177 cases of hallucination, we found the proportion as follows: -

Out of these 177 cases of hallucinations, 25 were combined with illusions.

According to this abstract, hallucinations of sight will be found to occupy the foremost rank, those of sight and hearing the second, and those of hearing the third.*

The sensorial phenomena of hallucinations of sight are more interesting than those of hearing; because the images can be followed out in detail and described with clearness and precision. In the hallucination of the medical student mentioned by Chardel, the figures were bright as silver, the eyes had a sinister expression, the robes were of grayish white; the ecclesiastic who subsequently appeared with a book in his left hand, was pale, and full of dignity, etc. Burdach, speaking of the fantastic images which precede sleep, describes them as "sometimes simple outlines, sometimes shadowy figures; now the images are luminous and colored, and now appear light on a dark background." Instead of being thus clear, apparitions are indefinite, confused, as if seen through a gauze veil; of a whitish vapory appearance, the shadows of a shade; hence, evidently, the forms ascribed to spectres, phantoms, and spirits; and the reason of this is, because the ideas being incompletely formed in the brain, are consequently but imperfectly clothed in their material forms.

* The statistics which we give relate principally to persons of sane minds.

To this cause must be added the influence of darkness and silence; occasionally, figures and objects are only half formed. Hallucinists see only a portion of a body - the head, or the limbs; sometimes they see it reversed, or divided in half. Moreover, an apparition may only consist of an arm, a hand, or an eye. A woman told us, long since, that she constantly saw a head in profile, the eye of which was always looking at her. This variety explains the stories told of heads which haunt criminals, and of a vengeful eye ever gazing on a culprit. We have given the case of an hallucinated female, who saw her eye leave its socket and roll on before her.*