The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 185

logy. Thoeo suffering from it•• o.bo.nilon their the dream (vor. 25, LXX.), we find," An,! homes o.ncl mo.ko for tho forests, that lhcy tho o.ngels of heaven shal I drive thee (a,~ mny consort with those they imagine to be !ov-ra{ cr,) seven yenrs, and tbou shal t nr,t their kincl; they u.llow their ho.ir o.n<l no.ile to be seen nor speak with any man; an,! t,.,m grow; they cnrry their imitntion so fu.r o.s shalt cat grnAs as an ox, and thy pastnro to becomo ferocious, o.nd mutilo.te o.n<l even shall be from the herb of the field." Again to kill o.nd devour children." Here we (vers. 27, 28, LXX.), "I was bound for .seven must observe thu.t the neglect of the perAon, yenrs, and they fed me with grass a.s n n ox, with the result of he.ir cmcl no.ils growing, and my hairs be-ea.me like eagles' foat:,crs, is not peculio.r to that form of mfulness, but and my nails like lions' claws, an,! my Jl<-sh is really common to many vo.rieties of mental and my heart were changed, and I walked disease. The two other cho.racterietics aro naked among the beasts of the earth." more special-the endeo.vour to consort with The more I studied this, the less I was o.nimn,ls of the species to which the patient satisfied with the e.11-bnt universal decisiun imo.gincs himself to belong, o.nd the de- that Nebuchadnezzar suffered nncler lycan- structive ferocity tho.t in the form of wolf- thropy. Having e. friend a. specialist in mo.dness, Tycanthropy, properly so ce.lled, led mental disease, I submitted the ce.se to him, to co.nnibo.lism. Of neither of these symptoms giving him, in addition to what he found in ho.ve we any indubito.ble evidence in the his English Bible, the version of the Septua- narrative. In regard to the first, of N ebu- gint. He is eminently qualified to juclge chadnezzar it is certainly ea.id (vers. 15, 23) a.II questions of mental disea.ae. David that" his portion" should" be with the beasts Yellowlees, Esq., M.D., is head of one of of the field;" ver. 25, " Thy dwelling she.II the largest lunatic asylums in Scotland, be with the beasts of the field; " but here Gartnavel, near Glasgow. He has been there is nothing to indicate the.t N ebuche.d- President of the Medico-Psychological nezze.r did this out of a mad overmastering Association of Great Britain ; is Lecturer longing. Rather, the very opposite is im- on Insanity in the University of Glasgow; plied by tho statement (vers. 25, 32), "They and has ha.cl over thirty years' experience shall clrive thee from men, o.nd thy dwell- in the treatment of mental disease. He ing," etc. So in ver. 33 it is said," And he kindly wrote me the following, which he wo.s driven from men." The question may ha.a permitted me to publish ;- be said to turn on the force of the word " N ebuchadnezzo.r's illness was not ly- "they." It certainly may mean tho.t the canthropy; it was an attack of acute man fa, angels of God, as o.venging spirits, might which recovered, as such attacks usuo.lly do drive Nebuchadnezzar from men, and that if 11Dcomplico.ted, in seven months. his longing to consort with animals may have "Acnte mania., in its extreme forms, ex- been the scourge that drove him, but that hibits all kinds of degraded ho.bits, such as is not so.id or implied. It may have been stripping off o.nd tearing of clothes, ea.ting the members of his own household that EO filth and garbage of all sorts, wild nnd drove him forth directly, or it may have violent gesticulations, dangerous assaults, been the indirect result of the cruel treat- howling noises, and utter disregard of per- ment intended to be curative. It may be sonal decency. The patient often is liker a urged that the statement, "Let a beast's wild nnimal than 11, human being. These heart be given him," implies this longing symptoms merely show the completeness of to cons~rt with animals. In the first place, the aberration. and do not at all indicate a "heart," ::i:;i'? (l•bab), among the Shemites hopeless condition. On the contr:i.ry, they does not, as ·among Occidental&, mean the are seen most frequently in the co.see which longing appetitive pa.rt of our nature, but recover. really the spirit. In the next place, the "The king was apparently treated as rending in the Septungint is quite different; kindly as the enlightenment of the times it is not the "heart," ::i::i'? (l'bab), but the permitted-bound when injuring himself or others, taken to a desert place e. way from "body," croiµa,ree.ding ,~~-(b'sar) instead of other men, and allowed a maJ. freedom, ::i:;i7 (l'bab). • in which his attacks found relief and indeed, when we tum to the Septuo.gint, eventual recovery." we fin,! 11, total wo.nt of all this appearance In another communication, Dr. Yellowlees of abancloning house o.nd home. In the says, "The • seven times' certainly did not statement of the dream (ver. 11, LXX.), mean seven years for recovery from that "And it [the tree] wns dragged o.nd torn form of insanity, that is, a.cute mania out, and in brazen fetters nnd shackles was wc-u!d be most unlikely after so long n time. it bound with them." Agnin, in the inter- f'l .iven months is a far more likely period." pretntion (ver. 18, LXX.), "And they shall 2. This leads us to consider the secund put thee in guo.rd, and send thco to a desert question-1.he length of time cluring which pince." When we turn to the fulfilment of N ebucho.dnezzo.r was under this malady. 148 THE BOOK OF DANIEL. [cu. 1v. 1-37.