Excerpt from...

A FAVORITE THEODORE BOOK

You may hunt for "The Maniac," by E. Thelmar, which the Observer reviewed favorably: "This study of an acute attack of mania is absolutely, even violently, convincing...The book is painfully interesting. Only an alienist can judge of its physiological value...Some points that the author makes as to the consciousness and unconsciousness of the insane, and as to the preservation of reason through all delusions, are extraordinarily interesting."

The book, published in Great Britain, had the following dedication: "To the Service of All Other Maniacs." The new edition's preface:

"During the last twenty years since this book was published...madness has not been fathomed, cured or eliminated. On the contrary, it has increased, and is still increasing at the most appalling rate. Even the statisticians are thoroughly alarmed."

And a sample from one of the first pages...

I do not know when I have ever felt so dead tired as I felt that night, when at last, long past midnight, I returned to my one-room lodging off the Marylebone Road.

The whole way back, during the drive, my brother had been talking about a legal matter that was, and had been for some time past, a continual worry to me.

That, and my utter fatigue of body and mind, and the chill loneliness of my lodging-room on my return that night, combined to make me too miserable for words or for tears. I longed to be quit of it all. I longed to get quit of my physical body altogether, by sheer effort of will. I longed with an intensity that made my head begin to feel quite queer and dizzy.

Then I undressed and went to bed.

The next day my head was curiously tired. All the former fatigue of my body seemed now concentrated in my head.

I had the greatest difficulty in going on with my work that day, and came to the conclusion that if I felt like that the following day I would ask for a week's leave.

My brain seemed like a cog-wheel that had stuck. It felt as if it would not go on, but when I had to write anything I seemed to make it go on. I seemed literally to push it and make it go on...

Instead of my horrors being over, the very worst of them were taking place as I lay there so silent and motionless. As I have said, I was fully aware, from that indescribable shattering of my brain-substance by those screaming voices, that I had gone out of my mind.

I lay there enduring this most frightful torment, physical and mental, and wondering to what asylum I had better go and give myself up the next morning."

LATER IN THE BOOK...

I thought, "I am hopelessly insane. I am not fit to be at large any longer. I must certainly go into some asylum...I thought hopelessly, "These people go on visits, they go out to dinner-parties, they rush about everywhere, amusing themselves, while I lie here week after week, enduring the most unutterable torments; and not one of them will walk one step, or lift one finger, to do the one small thing I asked them to do, and which is the only thing that will ever set me free from these torments."

LATER IN THE BOOK...

Those who have not themselves experienced such things will no doubt laugh at the foregoing and say it is simply like having a nightmare.

But would those persons feel inclined to laugh if, in the midst of some most frightful and terrifying nightmare, they woke up, and, when awake, found it to be no nightmare but a reality? A reality the truth and actuality of which every one of their waking senses, after most critical observation, confirmed? Would they laugh then? I think not.

Many a one of those who are laughing now would, in all probability, then, go mad or die of terror.