An essay on demonology, ghosts and apparitions, and popular superstitions : also, an account of the witchcraft delusion at Salem, in 1692 / by James Thacher.

  • Thacher, James, 1754-1844.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on demonology, ghosts and apparitions, and popular superstitions : also, an account of the witchcraft delusion at Salem, in 1692 / by James Thacher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ILLUSIONS. The following observations are from t)r Rush, found in his Treatise on Diseases of the Mind. ' By this term, (Illusions) I mean that disease, in which false perceptions take place in the ears and eyes in the waking state, from a morbid affection of the brain, or of the sense which is the seat of the illusion. It may be considered as a waking dream. Persons af- fected with it fancy they hear voices, or see objects that do not exist. These false percep- tions are said, by superstitious people, to be premonitions of death. They sometimes indi- cate either the forming state, or the actual ex- istence of disease, which being seated most commonly in a highly vital part of the body, that is, in the brain, now and then ends in death, and thus administers support to super- stition. They depend, like false perception in madness, upon motion being excited in a part of the ear or the eye, which does not vibrate with the impression made upon it, but com- municates it to a part upon which the impres- sion of the noise heard, or of the person seen,