Essays on partial derangement of the mind in supposed connexion with religion / By the late John Cheyne ... With a portrait, and autobiographical sketch of the author.
- John Cheyne
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays on partial derangement of the mind in supposed connexion with religion / By the late John Cheyne ... With a portrait, and autobiographical sketch of the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![‘©J will confess a propensity which I am not al- ways able to resist; namely, to rise and lift a chair, and to thump with it on the ground a certain number of times, and then replace it m an exact line with the rest: nay, more, ] am some- times, as it were, impelled to subject a whole range of chairs to the same discipline. And when I overcome this fancy I experience dissatisfaction a sort of scruple which seems as if it belonged to the non-performance of a duty; and now, my dear sir, what is this but insanity?” And then he would force a laugh, at the same time that he blushed for shame. We were told of a lady by her friend and near relative, that when she returned from a party, even after midnight, she never failed to visit her drawing-room, nay, if we recollect, all her public rooms, and if she found any of the furniture dis- arranged, would herself, before going to bed, put every article in its allotted place, although she knew that before she arose in the morning all this would be done by the housemaid. ‘¢ Oh!” con- tinued her friend, ‘‘ she was, from her passion for order, the greatest plague that ever lived.” This infirmity of the mind—this habit of un- dertaking and studiously completing unprofitable labours, sometimes belongs to whole families. Most of the members of a family, in which the writer of these pages was intimate, lay under this](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33284179_0122.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
