grief. The length of time during which some patients weep is
astonishing, as well as the amount of tears which they shed. One
melancholic girl wept for a whole day, and afterwards confessed to Dr.
Browne, that it was because she remembered that she had once shaved off
her eyebrows to promote their growth. Many patients in the asylum sit
for a long time rocking themselves backwards and forwards; and if
spoken to, they stop their movements, purse up their eyes, depress the
corners of the mouth, and burst out crying. In some of these cases,
the being spoken to or kindly greeted appears to suggest some fanciful
and sorrowful notion; but in other cases an effort of any kind excites
weeping, independently of any sorrowful idea. Patients suffering from
acute mania likewise have paroxysms of violent crying or blubbering, in
the midst of their incoherent ravings. We must not, however, lay too
much stress on the copious shedding of tears by the insane, as being
due to the lack of all restraint; for certain brain-diseases, as
hemiplegia, brain-wasting, and senile decay, have a special tendency to
induce weeping. Weeping is common in the insane, even after a complete
state of fatuity has been reached and the power of speech lost. Persons
born idiotic likewise weep;[609] but it is said that this is not the
case with cretins.
Weeping seems to be the primary and natural expression, as we see in
children, of suffering of any kind, whether bodily pain short of
extreme agony, or mental distress. But the foregoing facts and common
experience show us that a frequently repeated effort to restrain
weeping, in association with certain states of the mind, does much in
checking the habit. On the other hand, it appears that the power of
weeping can be increased through habit; thus the Rev. R. Taylor,[610]
who long resided in New Zealand, asserts that the women can voluntarily
shed tears in abundance; they meet for this purpose to mourn for the
dead, and they take pride in crying in the most affecting manner.
A single effort of repression brought to bear on the lacrymal glands
does little, and indeed seems often to lead to an opposite result. An
old and experienced physician told me that he had always found that the
only means to check the occasional bitter weeping of ladies who
consulted him, and who themselves wished to desist, was earnestly to
beg them not to try, and to assure them that nothing would relieve them
so much as prolonged and copious crying.
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