Another World: Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah by Benjamin Lumley

Author:Benjamin Lumley [Lumley, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781406564709
Amazon: 1406564702
Goodreads: 11973924
Published: 2005-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

XXVIII.

THE YOUNG GIRL RESTORED.

MADNESS.

“A sleep of sorrow.”

Formerly, as before observed, many were pronounced mad who were perfectly sane, but madness itself was scarcely ever recognised until by violent actions or incoherent words the patient had excited fear in others. Numbers, afflicted with incipient madness, might have been easily cured had its presence been detected; but they were allowed to inflict great injury upon their neighbours. This they did the more effectually as their madness was not even suspected until the symptoms of the malady became too glaring to be disregarded.

I will relate to you a case which presented some remarkable features. A little girl about four years old fell down some stone steps, and received a violent blow across the nose, which swelled enormously. She probably was otherwise injured, but the injury on the nose was the only one then observed. After some time the effects of the accident were to all appearance completely cured.

As the girl grew in years, she gave signs of marvellous talent. But apparently unable to apply herself to any particular pursuit, she became wearied of one thing after another, and continually thirsted for novelty. This incessant love of change extended to everything, to friendship, love, dress, amusements; to the most serious and most trifling matters. She was happy and melancholy at intervals, and always in excess; nay, in her fits of extreme despondency she would even meditate suicide.

Though disliked by some for her wayward and capricious disposition, she was a great favourite with others. I should add that she was extremely beautiful, indeed lovely, very witty, highly gifted, and withal so fascinating that she never failed to charm every one at the first interview, the novelty of the excitement, and a natural desire to please giving impulse to her will. Although possessing so many gifts, she was very jealous and envious of others.

Many were the offers of marriage which she accepted in succession, abandoning one suitor after the other without any adequate reason or any feeling of compunction. At length she unexpectedly accepted a man of whom she had scarcely any previous knowledge.

The marriage, made at her request in a headstrong fit of impatience, took place a few days after the proposal had been made. A child was born, but long before its birth she had become tired of her husband. The child she loved passionately at first, but soon became weary even of this object of her tenderest affection, and looked upon it with indifference! All these events had taken place during the reign of my predecessor. Under my laws such a marriage would have been impossible.

At the age of twenty-six a frightful accident happened to this lady—she fell into a vat of scalding liquor—a beverage prepared with honey. We have a very effective remedy for scalds, and, though severely burnt, she was eventually cured, but the fright had sadly shocked her nerves; a violent fever seized the blood, she fell into a trance, her eyes were fixed and glassy, and she gave no signs of movement except by swallowing the little nourishment that was offered her in a liquid form.

This trance lasted some days. On awakening, the patient asked with the tone and manner of a child, how old she was? She was extremely calm, and a remarkable change had come over her. On the doctor’s asking why she inquired about her age, she replied that during her sleep she had been in what seemed a long, sad, and changeful dream! She then related some details of the injury she received when at four years old she fell down the stone steps. Those around her at first thought that her mind was wandering, but this notion was soon dispelled. She spoke of incidents of her life extending over many years, as though they passed in a dream; one incident of this dream being that she had given birth to a child, and suffered acute pain. At one moment she saw herself in a family of strangers

who were very kind, but she knew them not,—then she saw her family in great grief.

One of the impressions that this seeming sad dream made upon her was, that swarms of insects had followed and enveloped her on all sides, stinging and causing her excruciating suffering, which had extended over a series of years of more than lifelong duration.

Sometimes in moments of despondency she saw the beautiful form of an angel radiant with light, who spoke to her in soothing tones, and entreated her to be patient, assuring her that her sufferings were ordained for a good end, and that by patience and the sweetness of her nature, she would attain the power of casting from her the torments she endured, and that after doing much good during her mortal career she would, when her time came to quit the world, be placed high amongst myriads of angels. She said that whenever urged by despair to relieve herself from her pains by a desperate course, this bright and beautiful angel would stand before her and pour words of consolation and hope into her ear.

In relating the incidents of her supposed dream, her whole manner was so different from the former state of excitement, to which her friends had been accustomed, that all saw she was perfectly rational, although relating as a dream what had occurred during twenty-two years of her actual life. It seemed as though all the time that had elapsed since she was four years of age belonged as it were to another and differently constituted brain; and that she had now resumed the thread of her life from the time when she was four years old, the period of the first accident.

When the husband and child were brought to her she knew them not, though she had some vague notion of having seen them in her dream. The husband prayed her to return to him: she said she was not his wife, and could not accept him as a husband; that she felt no love for the child, and could not even like it as a playmate. She recollected her parents when they were twenty-two years of age, and could not understand how they could be so much changed.

In all her occupations and amusements she acted as a young child, but she gradually increased in understanding, and in sixteen years after her recovery she became a most accomplished person, without, however, possessing the varied

talent of former times. She lived seventy-two years after the trance (in all ninety-eight years) now a short life with us; but never, till the day of her death, could she understand that she had lived during the twenty-two years which filled up the space between the first and second accidents. Strange to say, during that interval, no one had suspected that her brain was affected. Nearly the whole period had elapsed before the commencement of my rule, or the evil would have been detected and remedied, not by confining the patient and driving her into madness, but by gentle means.

The medical officers had no doubt of her complete re-establishment: besides, shortly after her return to calmness they applied the tests recently discovered, and the result furnished conclusive evidence that the malady had been eradicated. On an examination after death there was indeed, as the doctors thought, an unhealthy absence of certain microscopic animalcula, the effects of whose continued presence in excess in one portion of the brain to the detriment of others, lead to madness. The substance of the brain was poor and watery, and it seemed as though at other times there had been more brain than was then found; the lining of the brain was coated with a substance in outward appearance not unlike the fur which sometimes accumulates on the tongue in a fever. The doctors had reason to believe that this fur was composed of the remains of the insects which, probably, had been killed at the time of the second accident, either by the shock or the fumes of the boiling liquid, and it was to this accidental circumstance that they were inclined to attribute the recovery of those parts of the brain which had remained, as it were, slumbering since the first accident.

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