Most singular too, the while, is the state of his mind. His power of thought is keen, bright, and fertile beyond example, and his imagination swarms with pictures of beauty, while his sensitiveness to impressions and emotions of every kind is so excessively keen that the tears spring to his eyes on the slightest occasion. He is a child in sensibility, while a youth in the vividness, and a man in the grasp, the piercingness and the copiousness of his thoughts. He can not write down his thoughts, for his arm and hand are unnerved; but in conversation or before an audience he can utter himself as if filled with the breath of inspiration itself.
INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE.
The account which follows is abridged from advance proof-sheets of a narrative, written for separate publication, by Dr. L. Barnes, of Delaware, Ohio, by whose courtesy a portion of his article appears in these pages.
In the afternoon of Saturday, January 25th, 1868, Rev. G. W. Brush, of Delaware, a clergyman of estimable character and more than respectable talents, was found to have committed suicide. Sixteen or seventeen years previous to this fatal act, morphine had been prescribed to Mr. Brush for occasional disorder in the bowels and for a dormant cancer of the tongue. But something else which had not been prescribed--an unrelenting necessity to go on as he had begun--was also developed in his nature, which in time bore its matured and inevitable fruit. Mr. Brush made his case known for the first time to Dr. Barnes in November, 1866, when his habitual consumption of morphine varied from twelve to fifteen grains daily, with an occasional use of double this quantity.
At this time, in the language of Dr. Barnes, he appeared greatly depressed, mourned over his life as a failure, and said he had been tempted to end it. He had once made a serious effort to abandon the habit, but the effect was so prostrating, and diarrhea, pouring like a flood, had borne him so near the gates of death, that he was compelled to resume the drug in order to save his life. But he was determined to make another attempt, and wished my professional services against the consequences which he well knew must follow.