Tales of Classical Madness

HISTORIES OF CERTAINE MELANCHOLIKE PERSONS, WHICH HAVE HAD STRANGE IMAGINATIONS

The pleasantest dotage that ever I read, was of one Sienois a Gentleman, who had resolved with himselfe not to pisse, but to dye rather, and that because he imagined, that when he first pissed, all his towne would be drowned. The Phisitions shewing him, that all his bodie, and ten thousand more such as his, were not able to containe so much as might drowne the least house in the towne, could not change his minde from this foolish imagination. In the end they seeing his obstinacie, and in what danger he put his life, found out a pleasant invention. They caused the next house to be set on fire, & all the bells in the town to ring, they perswaded diverse servants to crie, to the fire, to the fire, & therewithall send of those of the best account in the town, to crave helpe, and shew the Gentleman that there is but one way to save the towne, and that it was, that he should pisse quickelie and quench the fire. Then this sillie melancholike man which abstained from pissing for feare of loosing his towne, taking it for graunted, that it was now in great hazard, pissed and emptied his bladder of all that was in it, and was himselfe by thar means preserved.

Andre du Laurens, A Discourse ofthe Preservation of the Sight (1599)

Henry Crofts Rutter, thirty-six, single, snuff manufacturer, Protestant: 'says that he is an extraordinarily strong man; that he has copulated 300 times with a woman in one night; and that if his parts fail him, it is his intention to get a little steam-engine and insert it up his anus to help him on'.

Ticehurst House records, vol. 26 (c. 1840)

We have at Charenton a monomaniac, thirty years of age, who is persuaded that he is conducted every night into the vaults of the opera. There, and even sometimes without leaving his chamber, they pierce him with knives, plunge poniards into his back and breast, and take off now an arm, now a thigh. They even cut off his head. When it is remarked to this unfortunate man that his head is upon his shoulders, that he preserves his members, and that his body presents no wound nor cicatrix, he replies with animation: 'These are the wretches, the magnetizers and freemasons, who have the secret of readjusting the limbs, so that no evidence of their amputations shall appear.' If we insist: 'You have an understanding', he replies,' with these monsters and brigands. Slay me, slay me! I cannot resist the sufferings which they cause me to endure, nor their cruelty.' The father of this monomaniac, and his former partner, are especially accused by him as the chiefs of all the villains who nightly torture him.

J.-E.-D. Esquirol, Mental Maladies: A Treatise on Insanity (1845)

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