Tobacco : its history, nature, and effects on the body and mind ... / By Joel Shew.

  • Joel Shew
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco : its history, nature, and effects on the body and mind ... / By Joel Shew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/136 (page 43)
    where the drug has. had nothing to do in the matter, it never having been used. All I claim is, that tobacco is one of the many causes of this most singular disease.* * No persons are more to be pitied than those who suffer from hysteria. That this statement is true, will appear from the following facts : “ Ina late. number of the American Journal of Insanity, we find the following remarks made by Dr. Bricuaw, one of its editors, and physician of the New York State Lunatic Asylum near Utica. We need hardly add, that the doctor is a learned and able man, and well qualified to give opinions on medical subjects. The remarks were made in giving evi- dence in the case ‘The People vs. John Johnson, indicted for the mur- der of Betsey Bolt,’ tried at Binghamton, May 7th, 1846. On the cross- examination, Dr. B.’s testimony was as follows: «* Persons subject to hysterics for years, have a tendency to insanity ; and hysterical women do the most strange things of any class of persons, sane or insane. I speak from my own observation, and history attests its correctness. . Hysterical women will deceive their friends, and frequently their physicians, by inventing stories, with little if any regard to truth ; and. will, in carrying on the deception, submit to painful operations, by the physician or surgeon, and ] am not prepared to say but that they do in fact deceive themselves. Ido not attribute their false statements to moral obliquity, theologically speaking, as the obliquity is produced by disease. They are apparently sincere, and I have never known one to own the deception. It isa diseased state of the nervous system, and I think the subject is irresponsible. [The doctor here enumerated m- stances where males and females pretended to be strangely affected, and submitted to painful and unpleasant operations, and some of those affected in this manner have succeeded in carrying out the deception so adroitly as to deceive the attending physician, the clergyman, and indeed the whole neighborhood.] Insane persons often inflict injury upon them- selves in order to charge others with the commission of an offence; and cases have occurred where insane persons have admitted themselves to be guilty of crimes committed by others. Hysterical females see visions and dream dreams, that are so vivid that they take them for realities. There is a person at Utica who, a year after he had recovered from his insanity, could not rid himself of the fancies conceived by him when in- sane. Nervous persons sometimes feign fits in order to obtain medical advice, and when. one hysterical. person alleges she is affected in a par- ticular manner, another hearing of it, is very apt to be exercised in the same way. Hysterical and neryous women will perform the most. mar- velous and mysterious things imaginable. They will cut their flesh, and do other things, and with apparent monontt and sincerity, charge their commission upon others.’