Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/474

456 3. We may now pass to the most important group of facts—namely, instances of men of genius who have suffered from fully developed mental disease.

In certain cases this disruption of the organs of mind shows itself in old age, and here, it is evident, we have to distinguish what is known as senile dementia from the impairment of faculty incident to old age. A clear instance of cerebral disease is afforded by the botanist Linnæus, whose faculties gave way after a stroke. The mental stupor into which the poet Southey finally sank was a similar phenomenon. Swift's fatal disease, the nature of which has only recently been cleared up by science, was cerebral disorganization brought on by peripheral disease in the organ of hearing. Zimmermann, the author of the work on "Solitude," who had been a hypochondriac from the age of twenty, ended his life in a state of melancholy indistinguishable from insanity. The final collapse, under the pressure of pecuniary anxieties, of Scott's cerebral powers, is too well known to need more than a bare mention.

Besides these instances of senile collapse, there are several cases of insanity showing itself in the vigorous period of life. Sometimes, as in the instance of Richelieu, who had shown himself an erratic being from his childhood, the madness appeared as a sudden and transient fit of delirium. In other cases the disorder took a firmer hold on the patient. Charles Lamb, Handel, and Auguste Comte suffered from insanity for a time, and had to be put under restraint. Tasso, whose whole nature was distinctly tinged with the "insane temperament," had again and again to be confined as a madman. Donizetti was also for a time insane and confined in an asylum. Among those who became hopelessly insane were the poets Lenau and Holderlin and the composer Schumann, the latter of whom had long been the victim of melancholy and hallucinations, and had before his confinement attempted to drown himself in the Rhine.

I have preferred to dwell on the physical aspect of the relation between genius and disease. But no adequate investigation of the subject is possible which does not consider the physical aspect as well. No one now, perhaps, really doubts that to every degree of mental disturbance and mental disorganization there corresponds some degree of deterioration and disorganization of the nerve-centers. Psychical disturbance and disruption proceed pari passu with physical.

This being so, it is pertinent to our study to remark that men of genius have in a surprising number of cases been affected by forms of nervous disease which, though not having such well-marked psychical accompaniments as occur in states of insanity, are known to be allied to these.

4. To begin with, it seems certain that a number of great men have died from disease of the nerve-centers. Among other names may be mentioned Pascal, who had all his life been the victim of nervous