MEDICINE
MEDICINE 327
serum on or into the brain. When in the disturbed
condition of brain which followed his drunken
bout the churl was excited to passion by the story
of his wife’s pouerosiiy: some vessel probably gave Ἵ
way in his brain, and he became comatose (ν. 7 ‘as a stone’), lingering in that state for ten days until he died. The death of Alcimus (1 Mac 9°) was a typical case of apoplexy (see Jos. Ant. XU. x. 6).
he arteries τ the brain in a man addicted to drink, and in other conditions of weakness or senile decay, are liable to atheromatous disease, which diminishes their resisting power; and if in this condition the heart’s action be increased in force, as by a fit of passion, rupture of one of these vessels is not unlikely to occur. It has even been conjectured that the sudden deaths of Uzzah (2S 67) and of Ananias and Sapphira (Ac 5510) may have been apoplectic in their nature also. The great surgeon John Hunter died suddenly of an apoplectic attack, the result of severe mental emotion.
There are several terms used to describe varying forms of abnormal psychical conditions, of insanity and allied mental diseases. The state of trance or deep profound sleep is described in connexion with the tradition of the making of Eve (Gn 2”). A similar sleep fell on Abraham (15), and Saul in the cave (1S 26%). In this last case it was the profound sleep of exhaustion; the phrase ‘deep sleep from the Lord’ is merely a Hebrew superla- tive. Sisera’s deep sleep of fatigue was of the same nature (Jg 4"), and other examples are those of Jonah (1°), and our Lord in the boat during the storm (Mt 8%, Mk 488), The ecstatic condition of the prophet described by Balaam (Nu 24*-*) was a condition of mental exaltation believed to be due to possession by the Divine Spirit, a state in which individual will becomes paralyzed, and the person becomes subject to more or less violent emotion by suggestion. Hence a ag were called [not necessarily disrespectfully, see vol. ii. p. 564 note *] ‘mad fellows’ (2 K 9"), and Isaiah speaks of the false prophets as those that peep and mutter (8.5). See also the use of the word y2p méshugg@ or ‘raving,’ for the utterances of prophets (Jer 29%, Hos 97). Saul is a singular study in mental pathology; naturally a shy, self- conscious man (1 ὃ 9-8 10”), easily exalted into the condition of ecstasy (10%), and te his exaltation puffed up to tyrannical self-satisfaction (15'*), then filled with an irresistible impulse towards homicide (184), turning even against his own son (20*-**) ; but liable, under conditions suggesting it, to return to the ecstatic state (19%), then falling into despondency (28), and dying by suicide (31°). To such a one of weak judgment, violent passions, and great susceptibility, the influence of music is a powerful agency to calm and soothe. The cause of his madness is ascribed to an evil spirit from God (18), and the raving consequent on it is called ae hesying’ in AV and RV (x233n:, imperf. Hithpae of nada’) His case is a typical one of recurrent paroxysmal mania rather than of melan- cholia. Perhaps it was the object-lesson of Saul’s insanity which prompted David to feign madness before Achish (1 5. 21%), the lunatic pean a sacred person in the eyes of the Oriental (Stanley’s Lect. li, 52). The symptoms he imitated were change of behaviour, raging to and fro, as they tried to hold him with their hands, like a man in acute mania. He scratched or made marks on the doors Qm; but the LXX and Vulgate have ἐτυμπάνιζεν and impingebat, as if the Heb. were 4m) ‘and he beat on’), and he defiled his beard by letting his saliva fall upon it. This in itself showed loss of all self-respect, as to spit on the beard of an enemy would be a deadly insult (see Dt 25°, Job 8010), The malingering was so successful that the
king regarded him as genuinely affected with piy:¢ or ‘frenzy.’ Madness was one of the plagues threatened for disobedience to the law (Dt 2855).
Another striking instance of insanity is presented νυ the (?Haggadic) story of Nebuchadnezzar (Dn 4). Putied up by an overweening self-conceit, he was smitten with mania, cherishing the delusion that he was a beast, and so was driven from his throne until his recovery at the end of seven years. Instances of a monomania in which the chief delusion is that one is an animal have been often recorded, and most alienist physicians of ex- perience have met with such cases. Virgil (Zel. vi. 48) describes the daughters of Proetus as believing themselves to be cattle, and while each of them collo timuisset aratrum, et sepe in levi quassisset cornua fronte, they filled the fields with counterfeit lowings. From monomaniacs of this kind have probably arisen the legends of lycan- thropy or were-wolves (see Hertz, Der Werwol/, 1862). There is no need to invoke totemism to account for them, nor to believe with some of the Rabbins that Nebuchadnezzar was miraculously transformed into an ox. According to Ader (p. 32) the Gadarene demoniacs were of this kind.
In the NT there are probably several cases of insanity and of allied diseases of the nervous system included among those who are said to have been possessed with devils. This is especi- ally the case with regard to those spirits called dumb in Lk 114, or blind and dumb in Mt 1233, Stammering (μογιλάλος, adj.) is in Mk 733 associ- ated with deafness. LXX uses this word in Is 35° as the tr. of 05s ‘dumb.’ The Heb. word has in it the idea of binding (see Gn 37’), as though dumb- ness were due to the constraint of the tongue by bands, the idea embodied in the account of the case of the stammerer in Mk, ἐλύθη ὁ δεσμὸς τῆς γλώσσης. Stammering, 2y?, as in Is 28" (cf. 33%), means rather babbling, speaking gibberish, than actual stuttering from defect (Ld φαυλισμὸς, ‘contempt’). The same meaning is conveyed by aby in Is 324, but LXX has here al γλῶσσαι al ψελλί- fovea, the word used of Demosthenes (Libanius, iv. 319. 4) for inarticulate or infantile speech. Moses in Ex 4? (J) is said to have been 1333 75°73 jw> “heavy of speech and heavy of tongue,’ LXX ἰχνόφωνος καὶ βραδύγλωσσος, ‘lame in speech and slow in tongue,’ not neceomdly ‘stammering.’ Temporary aphasia has been often observed in cases of sudden terror or other emotion, as in the ease of Zacharias (Lk 13), and St. Paul’s com- panions (Ac 97. The speechlessness of the man without the wedding garment (Mt 22") was not aphasia, but due to the fact that he had no excuse to offer.