| Description Of Item | Illustration from the collection of Alexander Morison. Plate 29 of Morison’s 'The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases' (1840). Unsigned [Alexander Johnston].
'M. S. P. aged 22, an unmarried female, educated as a governess — had an hereditary tendency to insanity.
She was naturally of a very chaste and modest disposition; her Catamenia had been obstructed for six months, about three years ago, and she became insane. Her insanity assumed a religious character, she conceived herself to be 'the Virgin Mary; that she had received spiritual birth on a certain day, for she then felt joy by the Holy Ghost,' she was quite cured after the disease had existed about a year, and she remained well for two years and a half.
She now labours under a second attack, and has been two months insane ; she expresses her love for the clergyman whom she has attended ; her eyes are red and brilliant, her face is flushed and her ideas are amatory, for she expresses a wish to be kissed — talks of being pregnant with something holy, and of marriage; but she does not farther transgress the bounds of decency in looks or discourse.' |