File:On the writing of the insane - with illustrations (1870) (14779240981).jpg

Identifier: onwritingofinsan00baco (find matches)
Title: On the writing of the insane : with illustrations
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Bacon, G. Mackenzie
Subjects: Mental illness in literature Mental illness Mentally ill Penmanship Mental Disorders Literature Handwriting
Publisher: London : John Churchill and Sons
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

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e very strangely again, andhad some of his odd productions printed; yet all this time hekept at work, earned plenty of money, conducted his businessvery sensibly, and would converse reasonably. This is one of the letters he wrote at this time, after a visitfrom a medical man, who tried to dissuade him from writingin this way :— Dear Doctor, To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether^tis nobler in the mind to follow the visit of the great Ful-bourn^ with chronic melancholy^ expressions of regret (with-held when he was here) that, as the Fates would have it, wewere so little prepared to receive him, and to evince my humbledesire to do honour to his visit. My Fulbourn star, but aninstant seen, like a meteors flash, a blank when gone. The dust of ages covering my little sanctum parlour room,the available drapery to greet the Doctor, stowed awaythrough the midst of the regenerating (water and scrubbing—cleanliness next to godliness, political and spiritual) cleans- PI III,
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17 ing of a little world. The Great Physician walked, be-dimmed by the dark ages/ the long passage of WesternEnterprise, leading to the curvatures of rising Eastern morn.The rounded configuration of Lunar (tics) gardens lives anoershadowment on Britannias vortex/ &c. The coloured illustration facing the Title-page is anotherof his strange productions. It would require no little inge-nuity to conceive, and perseverance to execute, such a dia-gram, and the curious feature in the case is, that a man withsuch disordered ideas should concentrate his efforts sufficientlyfor such an undertaking. His industry in composition andthe odd illustrations by which he accompanied his writings,were marvellous, and on the whole his case was a very extra-ordinary one. The illustration in Plate III. and that forming the frontis-piece were, in the original, drawn on both sides of thesame small half sheet of paper, and the patient, as thoughanxious, in the exuberance of his fancy, to make the fullestus

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