HALLUCINATIONS.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12766, 7 February 1910, Page 1

HALLUCINATIONS.

"It is quite conceivable," said Dr. Ernest Jones, Victorian inspectorgeneral of the insane, to a Press representative when seen regarding the statement that Dr Cook, the Polar explorer, suffered from hallucinations, "that an Arctic explorer, undergoing privations and spending a long timo in solitary irastes, might become possessed of an hallucination. Shackleton, you will remember, spoke of the extraordinary influence of polar desolation. I have experienced something of the same sort when standing on the top of a glacier in Norway. A mind continually dwelling on. and anticipating some achievement might como to an erroneous perception of what has happened." Given an hallucination to start with, are there examples of it being bolstered up by diary entries, or anything of that sort? "Oh! yes. I remember the case of a man who believed himself to be the Almighty, He was talking to me one day, when he suddenly broke off, and said, 'Did you see that?' 'Did I see what?' I asked. 'That flash of light. Ah! I must make an entry of that.' With that ho produced a sheet of paper, and wrote that tho heavens had opened, and a voice. had proclaimed him." Can patients act rationally and ensibl" oven while proceeding on an hallucination? "I can give you a well known case of that. A mathematician of gre.it abilit" became insane. He was possessed of the idea that two and two added together made more than four. Apparently he had somo sort of idea that the adding together of two quantities must produce, by their conjunction, something more than their sum. On this basis he proceeded to work out masses of calculations, with the idea of correcting the whole world in its arithmetic, algebra, and so on. He was harmless enough, it is truci, but he became antisocial. Tie neglected to earn his living, or to care for himself in any way, and he had to be confined. He "worked away for years in the asylum, and at his death )cqueathed a huge collection of calculations to thn city of Edinburgh."