Preface
1 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Papa Pio II), I Commentarii, I, ed. L. Totaro (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1984), p. 1056.
Introduction
1 See Eaton, W. W., Romanoski, A., et. al., ‘Screening for psychosis in the general population’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 179(11), 1991, pp. 689–93. This epidemiological point referenced originally by Daniel Freeman in A History of Delusions, BBC Radio 4, tx. 2018.
2 Mary Ann Lund, Andrew Scull and Adam Phillips interviewed for A History of Delusions, BBC Radio 4.
Chapter I
1 Capgras, J., and Reboul-Lachaux, J., ‘L’Illusion des “sosies” dans un délire systématisé chronique’, Bulletin de la Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale, 11, 1923, pp. 6–16. My translation.
2 Ibid. Translation used herein is by Willis, H. D., Whitley, J., and Luauté, J.-P., as it appears in ‘Delusional Misidentification: The three original papers on the Capgras, Frégoli and intermetamorphosis delusions’, History of Psychiatry, 5(17), 1994, pp. 117–46. Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux also published ‘L’Illusion des “sosies”’, in Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 81(13), 1923.
3 ‘Der Doppelgänger’, Psychoanalytic contributions to Myth research. Collected studies 1912–1914 (Leipzig and Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1919), pp. 267–354.
4 ‘The Uncanny’, 1919, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (SEXVII), trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1925).
5 Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux, ‘L’Illusion des “sosies”’.
6 Sérieux, Paul, and Capgras, Joseph, Les Folies raisonnantes: Le Délire d’interprétation (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1909).
7 See Postel, J., and Allen, D. F., ‘Joseph Capgras 1873–1950’, Psychopathology, 27(3–5), 1994, pp. 121−2; Capgras, J., ‘Crimes et Délires Passionnels’, Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 12(1), 1927, pp. 32–47.
8 Crocq, L., ‘La psychiatrie de la Première Guerre mondiale. Tableaux cliniques, options pathogéniques, doctrines thérapeutiques’, Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 163(3–4), 2005, pp. 269–89. See also Gruselle, Günther, ‘Les Troubles Psychiques de la Grande Guerre’, conference paper for Memorial de Verdun: Le Service de Santé dans la Grande Guerre (Brioude: Éditions Italiques, 2009); Derrien, Marie, ‘La tête en capilotade. Les soldats de la Grande Guerre intérnes dans les hopitaux psychiatriques français de 1918 aux années 1980’ (Ph.D. thesis, Lyon: L’Université Lumière, 2015).
9 See Warner, Marina, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 27–8.
10 L’Annuaire statistique de la France, vol. xvii, 1897, p. 7.
11 Illustrated London News, 6 November 1920, p. 729. John Ptak found a vintage print copy of the edition containing the story in his bookshop and brought it to public attention in 2014.
12 Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux, ‘L’Illusion des “sosies”’.
13 In a Bulletin de la Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale, 12, 1924, pp. 210–17.
14 Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux, ‘L’Illusion des “sosies”’, trans. in ‘Delusional Misidentification’, History of Psychiatry, 5(17), 1994, p. 128.
15 Kahlbaum, K. L., ‘Die Sinnesdelirien’, Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 23, 1866, pp. 56–78.
16 See Berson, R. J., ‘Capgras’ syndrome’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 140, 1983, pp. 969–78, for other cases.
17 See Draaisma, Douwe, Disturbances of the Mind, trans. Barbara Fasting (English edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 314–15 for these cases; Beers, Clifford, A Mind that Found Itself, an Autobiography (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910), p. 25.
18 Postel, J., and Allen, D. F., conference paper ‘The Delusionsal Misidentification Syndromes: Joseph Capgras (1873−1950)’, Psychopathology, 27(3−5), 1994, pp. 121–2.
19 Thébaud, François, ‘La Grande Guerre: La triomphe de la division sexuelle’, Histoires des femmes en Occident, eds Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot (Paris: Plon, 1992), pp. 31–74.
Chapter II
1 La Justice, Paris et Départements, Monday 10 February 1890. Translated from French by Kate McCrickard.
2 London Gazette as quoted in Staffordshire Advertiser, 12 November 1796.
3 Haslam, John, Illustrations of Madness (London: G. Hayden, 1810), The Wellcome Collection, pp. 52–55.
4 Haslam, Illustrations of Madness, pp. 19–21.
5 To-day, the popular illustrated magazine, vol. I, 5 April (Maclean Stoddard and Co., 1873), pp. 428−9.
6 See Ellenberger, Henri, Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 64.
7 Clarke, Arthur C., first published in a letter to Science magazine, 19 January 1968.
8 The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Part I (London: 1750), p. 128.
9 Esquirol, Jean-Étienne, Des maladies mentales considérées sous leur rapport medical, hygiénique et médico-légal (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1838).
10 Pinel, Philippe, Traité medico philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale ou la manie (Paris: Richard, Caille et Ravier, Year IX [1800]).
11 Gale, Colin, Presumed Curable: An Illustrated Casebook of Victorian Psychiatric Patients in Bethlem Hospital (Petersfield: Wrightson Biomedical, 2003).
12 Maher, B., ‘Delusional thinking and Perceptual disorder’, Journal of Individual Psychology, 30, 1974, pp. 98−113.
Chapter III
1 Unless otherwise specified, I am referring throughout to the Everyman’s Library edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy (London: J. M. Dent, 1968; first published 1932). The text, edited by Holbrook Jackson, follows the sixth edition, published posthumously in 1651 but accompanied by Burton’s last instructions, collated with the fifth edition of 1638, the last in Burton’s lifetime. Burton’s Latin phrases have been translated and some spelling modernised for clarity.
2 Burton, Robert, ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1 (London: Everyman’s Library, J. M. Dent, 1968; first published 1932).
3 Wood, Anthony à, Athenae Oxonienses, II, col. 653 (London: Thomas Bennet, 1691).
4 ‘Account of the Author’ in Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London: William Tegg, 1863), p. x.
5 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), vol. 1, p. 130.
6 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, II, col. 653.
7 Burton, ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, p. 18.
8 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
9 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, II, col. 653.
10 Hearne, Thomas, Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, XI, 1731–1735 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), p. 299.
11 Burton, ‘Causes of Melancholy: Fears of the Future’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, p. 366.
12 Ibid., ‘Causes of Melancholy: Stars’, p. 206.
13 Ibid., ‘Causes of Melancholy: Fears of the Future’, pp. 364–5.
14 Bodleian Library, 4oR.9Art. See O’Connell, Michael, Robert Burton (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1986), p. 2; Bamborough, J. B., Robert Burton’s Astrological Notebook, vol. XXXII, issue 127, August 1981; Kiessling, N., ‘Two Notes on Robert Burton’s Annotations’, Review of English Studies, New Series, 36(143), 1985.
15 Oxford Council Acts 1583–1626, ed. Revd H. E. Salter (Oxford: Clarendon Press for Oxford Historical Society, 1928), pp. 153–4; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, James I, 1603–10, p. 35.
16 Burton, William, Descriptions of Leicestershire, W. Whittingham, published by subscription, 1777, University of Leicester Special Collections.
17 Gowland, Angus, The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 5.
18 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, pp. 39–46.
19 Galen, On The Affected Parts, trans. Rudolph E. Siegel (Karger: New York, 1976).
20 Arateus the Capadoccian, The Extant Works, ed. and trans. Francis Adams (London: The Sydenham Society, 1856).
21 Quoted in Zilboorg, G., and Henry, G. W., A History of Medical Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1941), p. 77.
22 Burton, ‘Love-Melancholy’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 3, p. 7.
23 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 226, fol.125r. Simon Forman left his casebooks to his astrological protégé Richard Napier and they became part of the Ashmole Collection. I have also accessed the invaluable digital archive of the Forman casebooks, the work of a team of scholars at University of Cambridge who have transcribed and photographed the paper archive: Kassell, Lauren, et al., The casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier 1596–1634, a digital edition.
24 Traister, B. H., ‘New Evidence about Burton’s Melancholy?’ Renaissance Quarterly, 29(1), 1976, p. 69. Traister cites a letter Burton wrote from Oxford to his brother William, who was living in London in 1605.
25 See Kassell, L., ‘How to read Simon Forman’s Case Books; Medicine, Astrology and Gender in Elizabethan London’, The Society for the Social History of Medicine Prize Essay, 1999. Kassell cites William Lilly’s Christian Astrology (London: 1647).
26 Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, Ashmole MS 226, fol. 125.
27 Ibid., fol. 131v.
28 Ibid., MS 226, fol. 156.
29 Ibid., MS 226, fol. 187v.
30 Ibid., MS 226, fol. 231.
31 Burton, ‘Progress of Melancholy’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, pp. 406–7.
32 Homer, The Iliad, trans. R. Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, 2011).
33 Apollonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of Argo, Book 4, trans. E. V. Rieu (London: Penguin, 1959), 817ff.
34 Nonnus, ‘Dionysiaca’, Loeb Classical Library, vol. II, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 113ff.
35 Aeschylus, The Complete Greek Tragedies, trans. H. W. Smyth, Loeb Classical Library, ed. R. Lattimore, 1985ff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
36 Burton, ‘Democritus to the Reader’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, p. 18. The second sentence in the passage, ‘Preferment I could not get…Diogenes to his tubbe’, is from earlier editions and was replaced in the 1628 edition and thereafter.
37 Lilly, William, Portrait of his Life and Times (London: 1715), pp. 43−4, 168.
Chapter IV
1 Bacon, Nathaniel, A Relation of the Fearefull Estate of the Francis Spira, in the yeare 1548 (first published London: Printed by I. L. for Phil. Stephens and Christoph. Meredith, St Paul’s Churchyard, 1638), p. 14. The 1672 edition is referred to throughout, printed by Ratcliff, T., and Thompson, N., for Thomas, E., at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain.
2 Burton, ‘Religious Melancholy’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 3, p. 407. Burton mistakes 1545 for 1548, probably because he had copied the mistake made in a translation of a French version which had been translated back into English: Admirable and Memorable Histories containing the wonders of our time. Collected into French out of the best authors. I. Goulart. And out of French into English by Ed. Grimeston (London, 1607). Burton asserts wrongly about Spira in the Anatomy that ‘Springer, a lawyer, hath written his life’, probably copying another mistake made in the course of back-and-forth translation. ‘Springer’ was probably a corruption of ‘Skrymgeour’ the Scot, who had his account of Spira included in the Curione collection of 1550. See ‘Lamb, Burton and Francis Speira’, Notes and Queries, 11(3), 1911, pp. 61–2.
3 Bacon, A Relation of the Fearefull Estate, p. 23.
4 See Overell, M. A., ‘The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 26(3), 1995.
5 Gribaldi, Matteo, Historia de Quodam (F. Spira), quem hostes Evangelii in Italia coegerunt abicere agnitam veritatem (1549) was probably the first published account. It was also published in England as A Notable and Marvellous Epistle, trans. Edward Aglionby (Worcester: 1550), and included in the collection of accounts of Spira’s death, probably edited by Caelio Secundo Curione and published in Basel in 1550 as Francisci Spierae qui quod susceptam semel Evangelicae Veritatis professionem abnegasset, pp. 33–56, English trans. Anne Jacobsen Schutte, Vergerio, p. 241; Philippe Arles, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (London: Peregrine, 1987), pp. 303–4; also Gribaldi, Matteo, A notable and marueilous epistle of the famous doctour, Matthewe Gribalde, Professor of the lawe, in the Vniuersitie of Padua: co[n]cernyng the terrible iudgemente of God, vpon hym that for feare of men, denieth Christ and the knowne veritie: with a preface of Doctor Caluine (London: Imprinted by Henry Denham [and J. Kingston?] for William Norton, 1570), pp. 2, 11, 12.
6 For Martyr’s time in England, see McNair, Phillip, ‘Peter Martyr in England’ in Peter Martyr Vermigli, ed. Joseph C. McLelland (Waterloo, Ontario: Sir Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1980), pp. 85–105. Also Anderson, M., ‘Rhetoric and Reality: Peter Martyr and the English Reformation’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 19(3), 1988, p. 453. The lectures were published: Pietro Vermigli, In Epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos commentarij doctissimi (Basel: P. Perna, 1558), and then translated into English by Sir Henry Billingsly, Most Learned and Fruitfull Commentaries upon the Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes (London: John Daye, 1568).
7 Seaver, Paul S., Wallington’s World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 202.
8 Letter to Harding as reported in the Epistle of the Ladye Jane (John Day, 1554). See Overell, Muriel Anne, Italian Reform and English Reformations c.1535−1585 (first published Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008; London: Routledge, 2016), p. 146.
9 Bunyan, John, Grace Abounding for the Chief of Sinners and The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. Roger Sharrock (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 51.
10 See Overell, ‘The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera’.
11 Interrogation of Spira, May and June 1548; De Leva, Eretici, pp. 32–9, as cited in Camponetto, Salvatore, La Riforma Protestante nell’Italia del Cincequento (Turin: Claudiana, 1992), p. 64. See Overell, ‘The Exploitation of Francesco Spira’ for all references to the Interrogation.
12 De Leva, Eritici, p. 39; Schutte, Vergerio, pp. 239–40. Others also bear witness to the idea that there may have been money-grabbing, especially Henry Scrymgeour whose account is abbreviated in Simon Goulart’s Admirable and Memorable Histories (London: 1607) pp. 187–96, where Spira is ‘a wise and very rich man’, p. 187.
13 Burton, ‘Religious Melancholy’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 3, p. 407.
14 Burton, ‘Causes of Melancholy: Fears of the Future’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 1, pp. 365–6.
Chapter V
1 His father King Charles V lists crystal in his inventory of his own possessions and debts towards the end of his reign. See Miskimin, H. A., ‘The Last Act of Charles V: The Background of the Revolts of 1382’, Speculum, 38(3), 1963, pp. 433–42.
2 Pius Secundus Pontifex Maximus, The Commentaries of Pius II, Book VI, trans. Florence Aiden Gragg, Smith College Studies in History, 35, 1951, pp. 413–816, 425.
3 La Chronique du Religieux De Saint-Denys, Contenant Le Règne de Charles VI, de 1380–1422, published in Latin for the first time and translated by M. L. Ballague (Paris: Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1844).
4 Les Chroniques de Sire Jean Froissart, Book IV, ed. J. A. C. Buchon (Paris: Au Bureau du Panthéon Littéraire, 1852).
5 Dodu, G., ‘La Folie de Charles VI’, Revue Historique, 150(2), 1925, pp. 161–88.
6 See account in Pope Pius II, Commentarii rerum memorabilium quae temporibus suis contigerunt (Rome: Dominici Basae, 1584), p. 164.
7 Cited in Hainsworth, G., ‘La Source du “Licenciado Vidriera”’, Bulletin Hispanique, XXXII, 1930, pp. 71–2.
8 Howell, James, Familiar Letters or Epistolae Ho-Elianae (London: J. M. Dent, 1903), p. 62.
9 Speak, G., ‘El Licenciado Vidriera and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe’, Modern Language Review, 85(4), 1990, pp. 850–65.
10 See Ford, Jeremiah G. M., and Lancing, Ruth, Cervantes, a Tentative Bibliography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), as cited by Engstrom, A. G., ‘The Man Who Thought Himself Made of Glass, and Certain Related Images’, Studies in Philology, 67(3), 1970, pp. 390–405.
11 Alfonso Ponce de Santa Cruz, physician to Philip II Spain, in his book on melancholy, written c.1614. This royal is also described by Santa Cruz’s friend André du Laurens, the chief physician to Henri IV of France in Discourses of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age, trans. Richard Surphlet (Shakespeare Association Facsimiles no. 15, 1938). See Amerzúa y Mayo, A. G., Cervantes, Creador de la novela corta Espanola (Madrid: C.S.I.C, 1956–58), p. 161.
12 Du Laurens, André, A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old age, trans. Richard Surphlet (London: Imprinted by Felix Kingston for Ralph Iacson, St Paul’s Churchyard, 1599), pp. 101–3.
13 For comprehensive examples, see Engstrom, ‘The Man Who Thought Himself Made of Glass’.
14 Court chronicler José Pellicer de Tovar in his news notice for 16 April 1641: see Pellicer de Tovar, José, Avisos Históricos 1640–1641, held at National Library Spain, Madrid.
15 Tomkin, Thomas, Lingua (London: 1622) first published in A Select Collection of Old English Plays, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 4th edn (London: Robert Dodsley, 1744; repr. London: Reeves and Turner, 1874–76), p. 350.
16 Huygen, Constantijn, ‘’t Costelick Mall’ (1622), lines 103–8, in De Gedichten van Constantijn Huygens, ed. J. A. Worp (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1892–99).
17 Descartes, René, A Discourse on Method: Meditations and Principles, trans. John Veitch, 1901 (London: J. M. Dent, 1969).
18 Dupré, Ernest, Achalme, Pierre Jean, and Bourget, Paul, Pathologie de l’imagination et de l’émotivité (Paris: Payot, 1925).
19 Dupré, E., ‘La Folie de Charles VI, Roi de France’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 60(4), 1910, pp. 835–66.
20 Baring-Gould, Sabine, The Book of Werewolves (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865), pp. 145–6, as cited in Engstrom, ‘The Man Who Thought Himself Made of Glass’.
21 Le Licencié Vidriera: Nouvelle traduite en Français, ed. R. Foulché-Delbosq (Paris: Librairie H. Walter, 1892), p. 32.
22 James, William, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1890) II, 114f; see also Beveridge, A., ‘Voices of the mad: patients’ letters from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1873–1908’, Psychological Medicine, 27(4), 1997, pp. 899–908.
23 Pottier, C., ‘Perturbations de l’image corporelle dans un cas de psychose hallucinatoire chronique’, Annales Médico-Psychologiques CII (1944), 1870–90, as cited in Engstrom, ‘The Man Who Thought Himself Made of Glass’.
24 Anon., ‘Turkey: the Impatient Builder’, Time magazine, LXXI, No. 5, 3 February 1958, p. 20.
25 Heller, Erich, The Ironic German, a Study of Thomas Mann (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958), p. 286.
Chapter VI
1 London Gazette Extraordinary within the Scots Magazine of August 1786.
2 Ibid.
3 Hereford Journal, 10 August 1786.
4 Anon., Authentic Memoirs of the Life of Margaret Nicholson (London: James Ridgeway, 1786); followed by Anon., The Plot Investigated (London: E. Macklew, 1786).
5 ‘The Examination of Margaret Nicholson’, 42/9/455-456, Public Record Office, Kew.
6 Hereford Journal, 17 August 1786.
7 Chelmsford Chronicle, 11 August 1786.
8 Ipswich Journal, 26 August 1786.
9 Hereford Journal, 17 August 1786.
10 Belfast Evening Post, Dublin Evening Post, 28 August 1786; Caledonian Mercury, 30 August 1786.
11 The Parish Registers of Stokesley, Co. York, 1571−1750, ed. John Hawell (Leeds: Yorkshire Parish Register Society, 1901), p. 227.
12 Knollys, William, in a letter to the Countess of Banbury, 30 August 1786, National Archives, ref: 21M69.
13 ‘The Examination of George Nicholson’, HO 42/9/457, Public Record Office, Kew.
14 Old Bailey proceedings, 30 May 1781.
15 Scots Magazine, 12 August 1786.
16 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, vol. XIV, eds A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907−21).
17 Sophie in London, 1786, Being the diary of Sophie von La Roche, trans. Clare Williams (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), pp. 166–71.
18 Cambray, Jacques, De Londres et de ses environs (Amsterdam: 1788), ii, pp. 12–13.
19 Anon., Sketches in Bedlam (London: Sherwood, 1823), pp. 253–8.
Chapter VII
1 See Pinel, Philippe, ‘Tableau general des fous de Bicêtre’, in Weiner, Dora, Comprendre et soigne: Philippe Pinel (1745–1826), la médecine de l’esprit (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 143, as cited in Murat, Laure, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
2 For all references to clockmaker case see: Pinel, Philippe, Treatise on Insanity, trans. D. D. Davis from the French 1801 (London: Caddel and Davies, 1806), pp. 69–72, as cited in Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon.
3 Pinel, Philippe, Traité medico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale ou la manie (Paris: Richard, Caille et Ravier, 1800), pp. 50–51; cf. Pinel, Treatise on Insanity, p. 52.
4 According to the actor François-Joseph Talma, Memoire de J-F Talma, 1849 (Montreal: Joyeux Roger, 2006), p. 219.
5 Pinel, Philippe, letter to his brother, 8 December 1778, Lettres de Pinel, p. 37. See Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon.
6 Pinel, Traité, pp. 66–70.
7 Goldstein, Jan, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 78−9.
8 ‘Registre d’observations médicales hommes et femmes’, Charenton, 1827. See Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon, for details on all these cases.
9 Borden, Mary, The Forbidden Zone (London: William Heinemann, 1929), p. 159.
Chapter VIII
1 ‘Registre d’observations médicales hommes et femmes’, Charenton, 1831, ADVDM, 4X699, fol. 77; see Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon.
2 See Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon. Murat cites Alphonse Esquiros quoting Dr Voisin in his survey of Paris, Paris, ou les sciences, les institutions et les moeurs au XIXe siècle (Paris: Au comptoir des Imprimeurs Unis, 1847), vol. 2, p. 118.
3 Nineteenth-century medical records in the Département de la Seine for the major asylums of the Greater Paris Area.
4 Stompe, T., et al., interviewed more than 1,000 people with delusions looking into cultural influences on delusions for ‘The pathoplastic effect of culture on psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia’, World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review, 1(3–4), 2006, pp. 157–63.
5 Patient admitted 16 June 1852; transferred 20 July 1856. See ‘Registre d’observations médicales hommes et femmes’, La Salpêtrière Hospital (1851–4), ref: 5th division, 2nd section, 6R24, fol. 108.
6 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan VIII, 1651.
7 Fabre, Antoine, Bibliothèque du médecin-practicien, vol. 9 (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1849), pp. 494–5.
8 Esquirol, Jean-Étienne, Mental Maladies (1820), trans. E. K. Hunt (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), p. 210.
9 Ibid., p. 44.
10 Account contained within a review inside the Analectic Magazine of John Reid’s ‘Essays on hypochondriacal and other nervous affectations’, vol. X, July−December 1817, M. Thomas, Philadelphia.
11 Sade, Journal inédit, p. 116. Quoted in Murat, The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon, p. 92.
12 Fabre, Bibliothèque du médecin-praticien, vol. 9, p. 496.
13 Rokeach, Milton, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (New York: Knopf, 1964; afterword added 1981; repr. New York Review of Books, 2011).
14 Beccaria, Cesare, On Crimes and Punishments (Livorno: Marco Coltellini, 1764). Commentary attributed to Voltaire, to Cesare, On Crimes, translated from French, fourth English Language edn (London: F. Newbery, 1775).
15 Harper’s Magazine, December 1954; Lindner, Robert, The Fifty-Minute Hour (New York: Bantam, 1958), pp. 193−4.
16 See Bell, Vaughan, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’, Slate, 26 May 2010, slate.com/technology/2010/05/the-three-christs-of-ypsilanti-what-happens-when-three-men-who-identify-as-jesus-are-forced-to-live-together.html (accessed 21 January 2022).
17 Patient admitted 10 June 1831; discharged 7 September 1831. See ‘Registre d’observations médicales hommes et femmes’, Charenton, 1831, ref: 4X699, fol. 77.
18 See ‘Delusions Associated with Consistent Pattern of Injury’ containing interviews with delusional patients by Devinsky, Orrin, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York University School of Medicine, 2009.
19 The 1904 silent film Maniac Chase, made by the Edison Manufacturing Company in the US, shows a Napoleon in a cell, wearing the time-honoured bicorn hat and frock coat, fighting with his guards. He escapes, is chased, hides in a barrel and a tree, runs back and eventually does a full circle and ends up back in his cell. There is something about how Napoleon keeps coming back that is well expressed by the circularity of this little film.
Chapter IX
1 Cotard, J., ‘Du délire hypocondriaque dans une forme grave de la mélancholie anxieuse’, Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 4, 1880, pp. 168–74. For translation see Berrios, G., and Luque, R., ‘Cotard’s “On hypochondriacal delusions in a severe form of anxious melancholia”’, History of Psychiatry, 10(38), 1999, pp. 269–78.
2 Burton, ‘Music a Remedy’, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2, p. 115.
3 See Förstl, H., and Beats, B., ‘Charles Bonnet’s Description of Cotard’s Delusion and Reduplicative Paramnesia in an Elderly Patient (1788)’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 1992, p. 417.
4 See Pearn, J., and Gardner-Thorpe, C., ‘A Biographical note on Marcel Proust’s Professor Cottard’, Journal of Medical Biography, 11(2), 2003, pp. 103–6, on comparisons between two characters.
5 Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time, II: Within a Budding Grove, trans. C. F. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised D. J. Enright, 1992 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981; revision 1992; repr. London: Vintage, 2005), pp. 4−5.
6 Ibid.
7 Ritti, A., Eloge du Docteur Jules Cotard (from a letter read at the annual public lecture of the Société Médico-Psychologiques, 30 April 1894) (Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d’Appel, 1894), pp. 1–10.
8 Jacobi, Maximillian, On the Construction and Management of Hospitals for the Insane, trans. John Kitching (London: J. Churchill, 1841).
9 Cotard, Jules, ‘Du délire des négations’, Archives de Neurologie, 11, 1882. For the English translation see Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ‘Phantoms: Bodies without organs’, Cabinet, 25, 2007, cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/heller-roazen.php (accessed 31 January 2022).
10 Hussey, Andrew, Paris: The Secret History (London: Viking, 2006).
11 See Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), p. 208, as cited by Fifield, P., ‘Beckett, Cotard’s Syndrome and the Narrative Patient’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 17(1–2), 2008, pp. 169–86.
12 Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (London: Picador, 1985), p. 2.
13 Berrios G., and Luque R., ‘Cotard’s Delusion or Syndrome: A Conceptual History’, Comprehensive Psychiatry, 36(3), 1995, p. 218.
Chapter X
1 The collected works of de Clérambault were published by the Presses Universitaires de France as Oeuvre psychaitrique (Paris: 1942). The studies focusing on ‘Érotomania’ also appeared as separate publications: de Clérambault, G., and Brousseau, A., ‘Coexistence de deux délires: Persécution et Érotomanie (présentation de malade)’ in de Clérambault, G., L’Érotomanie (Paris: Les Empêchers de penser en rond/Le Seuil, 2002), pp. 42–64.
2 Hart, Bernard, The Psychology of Insanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921).
3 For all de Clérambault’s collected papers and lectures on ‘Erotomania’ see de Clérambault, L’Érotomanie.
4 De Clérambault, G., ‘Érotomanie pur, Érotomanie associée, Présentation de malade’, in G. de Clérambault, L’Érotomanie, pp. 79–118.