Fifth annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1869.
- Inverness District Lunatic Asylum
- Date:
- 1869
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Fifth annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1869. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![36 A patient, four years ago, was admitted in the most abject and hopeless condition, weeping often, shrieking loudly, incessantly agitated, and shouting he was a lost soul. He spent his days in vain struggles to escape from those who endeavoured to protect him from himself. His nights were wretched and sleepless, and when visited he pointed to one of the corners of the room, in which there was represented to him, in fearful reality, all tine circumstances of our Lord’s sacrifice upon the Cross. For months he lived in this painful condition, and then passed into one in which, solitary and silent, he walked about the airing court, picking up the most minute objects, or stood by the fire leaning with his elbow upon the mantelpiece. Suddenly he broke through his reserve by putting the following question triumphantly to the officers—“Has not this house a middle and two ends, and how are the two ends to be joined]” He gesticulated at the same time violently, filliped at the noses of the persons he passed, laughed loudly and hysterically, and de¬ claimed incoherently on religious matters. After a brief interval he again became silent, and on being asked why this was the case, he replied, that as Christ was tempted forty days in the wilderness, so it was ordained that he should declare himself for the same length of time. His interval of silence, however, appears only to have been the period of incubation of still further excitement and the formulation of what now appears to be a permanent delusion. Somewhat suddenly his dress assumed a regular form, his hair, hitherto dishevelled, and his beard and moustaches, were combed, so as to hang perfectly straight, small brass chains he had procured in some unaccountable manner were put on as bracelets, and in a shrill harsh ringing voice, he paced the corridor proclaiming, I am what I am ; his existence from before the “ beginning,” and his expiatory sacrifice for the human family. It now appeared that he imitated, so far as the means within his reach permitted, the more conventional representations of our Lord, though, with the eqidvo¬ cation and sense of mystery so common in this class of the insane, lie refused to so acknowledge himself. To doubt this, however, was sufficient to rouse the patient, and in evidence of the truth of his personality he showed the marks of the five holy wounds and of the crown of thorns, and he even stripped to exhibit the cicatrix of the wound received in his side from the spear of the Roman soldier. At present, he apparently represents Christ triumphant, and if i I ( p I D * r it n P 1 H J'J 4 (C J -](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30316789_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
