This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874. Excerpt: ... ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED. A Writer who favoured you last week with an article upon "Eccentricities of the Flesh," had a far wider field open to him if he had considered at the same time eccentricities of the mind. We use this title as the former title is used, but the word hardly expresses the whole truth. Eccentricity is the mild term under which we favourably disguise a much more painful word. Many of the instances quoted of the "eccentricities of the flesh" would far more properly have been put down under the title of " diseases of the flesh"--that is, if we are to consider that any prolonged departure from the normal bodily sensations of mankind may be said to constitute disease. In the same manner, many mental eccentricities are only the forerunners of very serious mental disease, and are, indeed, recognised as such by the more intelligent and honest physicians. Just as the whirling straws in the road are the forerunners of a great storm, so some odd symptom will often indicate the approach of a terrible mental overthrow. Doctor Gregory, of Edinburgh, in his lectures, gave the following remarkable case in point. A gentleman, he tells us, came to him for his advice under the following singular circumstances. "I am in the habit," he said, "of dining at five, and exactly as the hour arrives, I am subjected to a very painful visitation. The door of the room, even when I have been weak enough to bolt it--which I have sometimes done--flies wide open; an old hag, like those who haunt the heath of Fores, enters with a frowning and incensed countenance, comes straight up to me, and, with every demonstration of spite and indignation which could characterise her who haunted the merchant Abudah in the Oriental tale, she rushes upon me, says somet...