Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    furnish similar instances from their own expe- rience. What it is important for us to bear in mind in regard to these persistent dream-images is that, in the mental confusion of the moment, they may lead to respondent actions. There are on record well- authenticated cases in which persons who have been aroused from a frightful dream, in which they im- agined that their lives were threatened, have vio- lently attacked those who have awakened them, having seen in them the enemies from whom they dreamed they were in danger. Marc reports the following remarkable case of Bernard Schedmaizig, who awoke, suddenly at night, and saw, as he be- lieved, a frightful phantom. He twice called out, Who is that ? and, receiving no answer, and imagining that the phantom was advancing upon him, he seized a hatchet which was beside him, attacked the spectre, and killed his wife. A some- what similar case has been recorded :—A constable heard in the middle of the night a distressing cry of Save my children! proceed from a house. Hastening into it he met a woman in her night- dress, who was in the greatest confusion and excite- ment. Everything in the room was in disorder, and two children cowered in one corner. Their mother cried repeatedly, Where is my child ? Have you caught him ? I must have thrown it out of the win- dow. She had thrown it through one of the panes of the window, without opening it. She had dreamed that her children cried out to her that the house
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