lucinatio
maniacalis. This hallucination of one of the senses is often produced in an
instant, and generally becomes gradually weakened in process of time, by
the perpetual stimulus of external objects, or by the successions of other
catenations of ideas, or by the operations of medicines; and when the
maniacal hallucination ceases, or is forgotten, the violent exertions
cease, which were in consequence of it, and the disease is cured.

Mr. ----, a clergyman, about forty years of age, who was rather a weak man,
happened to be drinking wine in jocular company, and by accident swallowed
a part of the seal of a letter, which he had just then received; one of his
companions seeing him alarmed, cried out in humour, "It will seal your
bowels up." He became melancholy from that instant, and in a day or two
refused to swallow any kind of nourishment. On being pressed to give a
reason for this refusal, he answered, he knew nothing would pass through
him. A cathartic was given, which produced a great many evacuations, but he
still persisted, that nothing passed through him; and though he was
frightened into taking a little broth once or twice by threats, yet he soon
ceased intirely to swallow any thing, and died in consequence of this
insane idea.

Miss ----, a sensible and ingenious lady, about thirty, said she had seen
an angel; who told her, that she need not eat, though all others were under
the necessity of supporting their earthly existence by food. After
fruitless persuasions to take food, she starved herself to death.--It was
proposed to send an angel of an higher order to tell her, that now she must
begin to eat and drink again; but it was not put into execution.

Mrs. ----, a lady between forty and fifty years of age, imagined that she
heard a voice say to her one day, as she was at her toilet, "Repent, or you
will be damned." From that moment she became melancholy, and this
hallucination affected her in greater or less degree for about two years;
she then recovered perfectly, and is now a cheerful old woman.

Mrs. ----, a farmer's wife, going up stairs to dress, found the curtains of
her bed drawn, and on undrawing them, she believed that she saw the corpse
of her sister, who was then ill at the distance of twenty miles, and became
from that time insane; and as her sister died about the time, she could not
be produced to counteract the insane hallucination, but she perfectly
recovered in a few months.

Mrs. ----, a