Innumerable are the diseases that arise from our busy fancy. We are all subject to the tyrannic sway of imagination’s empire. Under this mighty influence man displays energies which lead him boldly to dare danger and complicated sufferings, or he is reduced to the most degraded state of miserable despondency. These diseases are the more fearful, since they rarely yield to physical aid, and it is seldom that moral influence is sufficiently persuasive to combat their inveteracy. It is idle to tell the timid hypochondriac that he is not ill; the mere circumstance of his believing himself sick, constitutes a serious disorder. His constant apprehensions derange his functions until an organic affection arises. The patient who fancies that he labours under an affection of the heart disturbs the circulation, which is ever influenced by our moral emotions, till at last this disturbance occasions the very malady which he dreaded. These aberrations of the mind arise from various causes,—mental emotions, constitution, climate, diet, hereditary disposition, education. Tertullian called philosophy and medicine twin sisters; both may become powerful agents in controlling our imagination.

The ancients have variously endeavoured to determine the seat of this faculty. Aristotle placed it in the heart, which, from the sense of its oppression observed in acute moral sufferings he considered the origin of our nerves, or sensorium. Avicenus and other philosophers located imagination in the anterior portion of the brain, which he called the prow; memory in the posterior part, which he denominated the poop, and judgment in the centre of the organ, or what mariners would term mid-ship. The notions of Gall and Spurzheim had long since been anticipated by philosophers and physicians, both in regard to the division of the cerebral organ, and the external appearance of the cranium, which denoted their preponderancy. That temperature exercises a powerful influence over our mental faculties is evident. In warm climates we find a greater exaltation of the mind, more enthusiasm and vivid emotion, than in northern latitudes. The East is the land of fancy, illustrated by their wondrous tales of fiction, and their vivid and fantastic imagery, displayed in the chimeras and the arabesques of their palaces and temples. In these regions all the passions are uncontrollable and wild. Love is characterized by furious or dark jealousy, according to the rank and power of the lover; and ambition is signalized by bloodthirsty and promiscuous barbarity. No opposition can be brooked: man is either a ferocious tyrant, or an abject slave; subjection alone preventing the oppressed from being as sanguinary as the oppressor. Government is despotism, and religion fatality and fanaticism. In northern climes, on the contrary, every thing is cold and calculating. The almighty passion of love may prevail; but its demonstrations are morose, concentrated, although not less ferocious than under a southern sky. In the one country, man seeks the dark shelter of the forest, and the solitude of the mountain, to ponder over his grievances, or soliloquise on his sufferings; in the other he courts the roseate bower and the orange grove, to lull him into a soft repose which may calm his feelings by temporary oblivion, to be roused again to action by the stimulus of opium, tobacco, and a burning sun. The ancients were so fully convinced of this influence of the amorphous constitution, that Lucianus tells us that the Abderites (a people so remarkable for their stupidity and sluggishness that Abderitica mens was proverbial), having witnessed the performance of one of Euripides’s plays under the fierce solar rays, became fired with such enthusiasm, that they ran about the streets in a wild phrensy, repeating aloud his sublime verses, until the coolness of the evening restored them to reason and to their native torpor. So predominant are these feelings, which owe their character to climate, that they regulate our ideas of a future state, as well as our conduct on earth. The paradise of the Mohammedan is a blessed region of everlasting pleasure and sensual enjoyments; beauteous houris await the soul, which is to luxuriate in corporeal voluptuousness; and the purple wine, forbidden to the living, is to flow in delectable streams, to delight the dead, who may, in the seventh paradise inhabit a land where rivers of wine, and milk, and honey, are ever flowing; where evergreen trees bend under luxurious fruits, whose very pips are transformed into lovely maidens, so sweet—to use their own metaphorical language—that the ocean would lose its bitterness if they did but condescend to spit in its briny waters; and all these enjoyments are secured to the true believer by hosts of guardian angels, who have seventy thousand mouths, and seventy thousand tongues, to praise God seventy thousand times each day in seventy thousand languages: and such is their horror of earthly heat, that in the other world one of the greatest rewards is the delight of being able to sleep under the cool shade of a tree each leaf of which is of such an expanse that a man might travel fifty thousand years under its benign protection. How different is the paradise of Odin! There, it is true, the soul of the departed dwells in magnificent palaces; but what are his enjoyments compared to those of the sensual Asiatic! Instead of soft music, the din of war is constantly to resound in his ear, while he luxuriates in drinking strong beer and hydromel, poured by the fair Valknas, the houris of the Vahalla paradise, into the skulls of his enemies. Their God is called the god of crows; and two of these sable familiars, Hugin, who represents the mind, and Nunnin, or memory, are constantly perched upon his shoulders, until they take flight to seek information for their master.

To this day it is said that the Tartars fancy, that, in their future abode of bliss, their reward will be a sort of Platonic affection, and a perpetual and undisturbed state of meditation; in short, a celestial far niente. So convinced were the ancients of this effect of peculiar temperature, that the morose Heraclitus maintained that the power of the mind arose from a dry splendour; that all things were created by solar heat; and when ill himself, he sought health by endeavouring to dispel watery accumulations by the heat of a dunghill. Ptolemy and Posidonius assert, that southern climes engender genius and wit, and are better calculated for the study of things divine; and Plato, Hippocrates, and Galen, on the same principle, affirm that stupidity and forgetfulness are produced by cold and humidity. The celebrated Descartes, in his younger days, states that he felt his enthusiasm moderated by the damps and cold of Holland; and that he ever experienced more facility in pursuing his philosophic studies in winter than in summer. Poets, on the contrary, court the glowing rays of an inspiring sun, and their Phoebus and their Apollo is the conductor and the inspirer of the Muses:

Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit.

That the energies of our intellectual faculties are under the influence of our food, is a fact long since observed. The stupidity of the athletÆ, who lived upon coarse bread (coliphium) and underdone meat, was proverbial; even Hercules laboured under the imputation of a mind somewhat obtuse. Our genius, our energies are all affected by our mode of living. The rule of Sanis omnia sana, of Celsus, is applicable to very few individuals; and all our faculties may be rendered more keen or less vivid by temperance or excesses. As the nature of our ingesta influences the functions of our digestive organs, so do these organs in their turn influence our moral powers when our physical energies are elevated or depressed. Our courage, our strength of mind, our religious and our moral train of thinking, are under the control of diet. Fasting has ever been considered as predisposing to meditation and ascetic contemplation. Tertullian tells us, that we should approach the altars fasting, or having eaten nothing but dry substances. All the religious ceremonies of the Egyptians were preceded by abstinence, and their sacrificators were allowed neither animal food nor wine. Indeed, the Egyptian priesthood were remarkable for their abstinence and self-denial, fearful, according to Plutarch, that “the body should not sit light upon the soul.” Similar precautions were observed with animals, and the ox apis was not allowed to drink the waters of the Nile, as they were considered of a gross and fattening nature; even upon festive days they observed a similar moderation. It was customary, on the 9th day of the month Thoth, for every one to eat fried fish at their doors—the priests only conformed to the custom by burning theirs at the appointed time. In general they abstained from most sorts of pulse, especially beans and lentils, onions, garlic, leeks, mutton, pork; and on certain days of purification, even salt was forbidden. Many of their fasts lasted from seven to forty-two days, during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and the indulgence of any passion. Similar privations were observed by all those who attended the mysteries of Juno and Ceres. In Holy Writ we find that it was after abstinence that Divine inspiration illumined the elect. The angel appeared unto Daniel after he had been three weeks without tasting flesh, or wine, or “pleasant bread.” In the Acts, x., we find that the vision appeared to Peter, “when he had become hungry and would have eaten.” Moses fasted forty days on Mount Sinai. We find in Jonah, that even cattle were frequently subject to this mortification, when he proclaimed in Nineveh that neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, should taste any thing; “let them not feed nor drink water.” Congius Ripensis tells us, that the same restriction was imposed by the LacedÆmonians on their Helots and all domestic animals. Fasting was considered by the early Christians as an essential rite. St. Anthony prescribed to his disciples one meal of dry bread, salt and water, in the day without any food on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the monastery of Mocham, in Egypt, a monk of the name of Jonas was beatified for having lived until the age of eighty-five, working hard in the garden, and without any other food than raw herbs and grass steeped in vinegar; this abstemious cenobite added to his claims to canonization by always sleeping in his chair. St. Hilarius only ate fifteen figs and six ounces of barley bread per diem. St. Julian Sabus retired to a cavern, where he only luxuriated once in the week on millet-bread, with salt and water; and St. Macarius resolved to outdo him by restraining his sustenance to a few cabbage-leaves every Sunday. Not only did these gastric martyrs attribute their holy visions to abstinence, but they considered it as the source of their longevity. Thus, St. Anthony lived to the age of one hundred and five; St. Paphinus to ninety on dry bread; and St. Paul the Hermit thrived for one hundred and fifty-nine years upon dates. It is not derogatory to their supposed divine mission to say that all these men were as enthusiastic as the fakirs of the east.

So acceptable to the Deity was starvation considered, that at various periods it was enforced by penal laws. Charlemagne denounces the punishment of death on all those who transgressed in this respect; and, by an old Polish edict, any sinner who ate on a fast-day was sentenced to have all his teeth drawn. However, monkish ingenuity endeavoured to elude these severe enactments, by interpreting the letter instead of the spirit; and we find, in the regulations of a German monastery, the following accommodation, “Liquidum non frangit jejunium,” by which, on days of penance, the monks only took rich soups and succulent broth. In latter days, being permitted to eat fish in Lent, they saw no reason why fowl should not be included, on the authority of Genesis, that the waters brought forth every winged fowl after his kind. This relaxation in culinary discipline called forth loud indignation from many prelates. St. Ambrosius attributes the profligacy of the monks to these excesses; and Tertullian considers the fall of the Israelites as the punishment of their neglect in this respect. Our Shakspeare illustrates this belief in the influence of fasting as preparatory to inspiration.

Last night the very gods shew’d me a vision—
I fast and pray’d for their intelligence.

Not satisfied with this mystification in food, we find some austere monks endeavouring to reduce carnal appetites by other means, such as by blood-letting, monialem minuere; and claustral flesh was brought down by phlebotomy and purging at regular periods. To this day we find that well-behaved Turks, during the Ramasan, make it a godly point never to swallow their saliva.

This digression on fasting was somewhat necessary, to show how much our diet tends to modify our being. It is well known that troops will display more activity and courage when fasting than after a meal; and an ingenious physician of our day is perfectly correct when he attributes a daring spirit or a pusillanimous feeling to the influence of our stomach.

Intellectual weakness, frequently brought on by excesses, has proved a rich source to empiricism; hence the belief in mystic and supernatural agencies, and the power of certain nostrums. Coloured fountain water and bread pills have made the fortune of various quacks, when imaginary cures have relieved imaginary diseases. In our days, numerous have been the recoveries attributed to Hohenloe’s prayers. Trusting to mystic numbers, three, five, seven, or nine pills have produced effects, when other numbers less fortunate would have failed. To this hour mankind, even in enlightened nations, are fettered by these absurd trammels. Credulity, and superstition her twin sister, have in all ages been the source whence priestcraft, and quackery have derived their wealth. Next to these rich mines we may rank fashion. The adoption of any particular medicine by princes and nobles will endow it with as great a power as that which was supposed to be vested in regal hands in the cure of scrofula, hence called king’s evil; and we have too many instances of such cures having been effected by a monarch’s touch to doubt the fact. The history of the potato is a strong illustration of the influence of authority: for more than two centuries the use of this invaluable plant was vehemently opposed; at last, Louis XV. wore a bunch of its flowers in the midst of his courtiers, and the consumption of the root became universal in France. The warm bath, so highly valued by the Romans, once fell into disrepute, because the Emperor Augustus had been cured by a cold one, which for a time was invariably resorted to. Thus Horace exclaims,

——Caput ac stomachum supponere fontibus audent
Clusinis, Gabiosque petunt et frigida rura.

Unfortunately, the means which had relieved Augustus killed his nephew Marcellus; and the Laconicum and the Tepidarium were again crowded with the “fashion.”

Persecution and its prohibitions have also been most powerful in working upon our imagination. Rare and forbidden fruits will always be considered more desirable than those we can easily obtain. The history of tobacco is a striking instance of this influence of difficulty upon the mind of man. Pope Urban VIII. prohibited its use in any shape, under the penalty of excommunication. It was afterwards forbidden in Russia, under the pain of having the offender’s nose cut off. In some cantons of Switzerland the prohibition was introduced in the decalogue, next to the commandment against adultery. Amurath IV. ordered all persons taken in flagranti delicto smoking tobacco, to be impaled, on the principle that its use checked the progress of population. The denunciation of our James I. may be considered as a masterpiece of the imaginary horrors attributed to this obnoxious weed. “It is,” he says, “a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that is bottomlesse.” During the reign of this monarch such a restriction might have been necessary, unless the consumption of tobacco enriched the exchequer: for it appears that some amateurs consumed no less than £500 per annum in smoke. Surely we should reap some flourishing revenue from fashion and credulity, when we find our government awarding £5000 to a certain Johanna Stephens for her discovery of certain medicines for the cure of calculi! The same imaginary hope induced many a credulous creature to minister to the necessities of another Johanna, for certain expectations. Alas! how this indefinite sense exhibits the infinite folly of poor humanity!

A morbid imagination, although frequently the source of much misery, will prove in many cases the fountain-head of many noble qualities; its exaltation constitutes genius, which is, in fact, a natural disposition of individual organization sometimes bordering upon insanity. “Non est magnum ingenium sine mixtur dementiÆ,” says Seneca; and Montaigne observes, “De quoi se fait la plus subtile folie que de la plus subtile sagesse? il n’y a qu’un demi-tour À passer de l’une À l’autre.” Aristotle asserts that all the great men of his time were melancholy and hypochondriac. The ancient and eastern nations entertained a singular idea regarding men of innate genius, and possessed of more than common attributes; they fancied that they were the first-born, and the offsprings of illicit love: Zoroaster, Confucius, Mahomet, Vishnou, were born of virgins; and Theseus, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, and Romulus, were all illegitimate.So prone is a lively imagination to a derangement of the intellectual harmony, that the greatest care should be taken during the youthful development to resort to a sound and proper exercise. The constant tendency to wild and supernatural visions, the disregard of every daily and vulgar matter of fact consideration, soaring in regions of fiction, should engage our incessant vigilance, such a state of mind, as Abercrombie justly observes, “tends in a most material manner to prevent the due exercise of those nobler powers which are directed towards the cultivation both of science and of virtue,” and Foster has thus beautifully illustrated this subject in his essays.

“The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will accompany the mind into the most serious speculations or rather musings, on the real world, and what is to be done in it and expected; as the image which the eye acquires from looking at any dazzling object, still appears before it wherever it turns. The vulgar materials, that constitute the actual economy of the world, will rise up to its sight in fictitious forms, which it cannot disenchant into plain reality, nor will ever suspect to be deceptive. It cannot go about with sober, rational inspection and ascertain the nature and value of all things around it—in that paradise it walks delighted, till some imperious circumstance of real life call it thence, and gladly escapes thither again when the avocation is past. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been enjoyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficial institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen in that happy region, could have been imported into this terrestial place!—what a delightful thing the world would have been to awake each morning to see such a world once more!”

Of the miseries the hypochondriacs experience the following extract of a letter to a physician will afford a specimen: “My poor body is a burning furnace, my nerves red-hot coals, my blood is boiling oil; all sleep has fled, and I am suffering martyrdom. I am in agony when I lie on my back; I cannot lie on either side; and I endure excruciating torture when I seek relief by lying on my stomach; and, to add to my misery, I can neither sit, stand, nor walk.” The fancies of hypochondriacs are frequently of the most extraordinary nature: one patient imagines that he is in such a state of obesity as to prevent his passing through the door of his chamber or his house; another impressed with the idea that he is made of glass, will not sit down for fear of cracking; a third seems convinced that his head is empty; and an intelligent American, holding a high judicial seat in our West Indian colonies, could not divest himself of the occasional conviction of his being transformed into a turtle.

The most melancholy record of the miseries of hypochondriacism is to be found in the diary of Dr. Walderstein of Gottingen. He was a man much deformed in person, and his mind seemed as distorted as his body. Although of deep learning and research, and convinced of the absurdity of his impressions, yet he was unable to resist their baneful influence. “My misfortune,” says the doctor, “is, that I never exist in this world, but rather in possible combinations created by my imagination to my conscience. They occupy a large portion of my time, and my reason has not the power to banish them. My malady, in fact, is the faculty of extracting poison from every circumstance in life; so much so that I often felt the most wretched being because I had not been able to sneeze three times together. One night when I was in bed I felt a sudden fear of fire, and gradually became as much oppressed by imaginary heat as though my room were in flames. While in this situation, a fire-bell in the neighbourhood sounded, and added to my intense sufferings. I do not blush at what might be called my superstition any more than I should blush in acknowledging that my senses inform me that the earth does not move. My error forms the body of my judgment, and I thank God that he has given it a soul capable of correcting it. When I have been perfectly free from pain, as is not unfrequently the case when I am in bed, my sense of this happiness has brought tears of gratitude in my eyes. I once dreamt,” adds Walderstein, “that I was condemned to be burnt alive. I was very calm, and reasoned coolly during the execution of my sentence. ‘Now,’ I said to myself, ‘I am burning, but not yet burnt; and by-and-by I shall be reduced to a cinder.’ This was all I thought, and I did nothing but think. When, upon awaking, I reflected upon my dream, I was by no means pleased with it, for I was afraid I should become all thought and no feeling.” It is strange that this fear of thought, assuming a corporeal form in deep affliction, had occurred to our poet Rowe, when he exclaims in the Fair Penitent, “Turn not to thought my brain.” “What is very distressing,” continues the unfortunate narrator, “is, that when I am ill I can think nothing, feel nothing, without bringing it home to myself. It seems to me that the whole world is a mere machine, expressly formed to make me feel my sufferings in every possible manner.” What a fearful avowal from a reflecting and intelligent man! Does it not illustrate Rousseau’s definition of reason—the knowledge of our folly.

Dr. Rush mentions a man who imagined that he had a Caffre in his stomach who had got into it at the Cape of Good Hope, and tormented him ever since. Pinel relates the case of an unfortunate man who believed that he had been guillotined, but his innocence having been made complete after his execution, his judges decided that his head should be restored to him, but the person intrusted with this operation had made a mistake, and put on a wrong head. Dr. Conolly knew a man who really believed that he had been hanged, but had been brought to life by galvanism, but he maintained that this operation had not restored the whole of his vitality.

Jacobi relates the case of a man confined in the lunatic asylum at Wurtzburg, in other respects rational, of quiet, discreet habits, so that he was employed in the domestic business of the house, but who laboured under the impression that there was a person concealed in his stomach, with whom he held frequent conversations. He often perceived the absurdity of this idea, and grieved in acknowledging and reflecting that he was under the influence of so groundless a persuasion, but he never could get rid of it. “It was very curious to observe,” adds our intelligent author, “how, when he had but an instant before cried what nonsense!—is it not intolerable to be thus deluded? and while the tears which accompanied these exclamations were yet in his eyes, he again began to talk, apparently with entire conviction about the person in his belly who told him that he was to marry a great princess. An attempt was made to cure him, by putting a large blister on his abdomen, and the instant that it was dressed, moving from behind him a dressed-up figure, as if just extracted from his body. The experiment so far succeeded that the patient believed in the performance, and his joy was at first boundless in the full persuasion that he was cured; but some morbid feeling about the bowels, which he had associated with the insane impression, still continuing, or being again experienced, he took up the idea that another person similar to the first was still left within him, and under that persuasion he still continues to labour.”

A nobleman of the court of Louis XIV., fancied himself a dog, and would invariably put his head out of window to bark aloud. Don Calmet relates the case of some nuns in a convent in Germany, who imagined that they were transformed into cats, and wandered about the building loudly mewing and spitting at and scratching each other.

One of the strangest aberrations of a disordered state of mind was exhibited by some impudent fellows who fancied themselves virtuous and modest females. Esquirol relates the case of a young man of 26 years of age, handsome and of a good figure, who had been in the habit of occasionally putting on woman’s attire to perform female parts in private theatricals, and who had actually fancied himself a woman. In his paryoxysms he would put off his male clothes, and equip himself like a nymph,—the greater part of his day was spent before his looking-glass, decorating his person and dressing his hair—he was incurable!