The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: "Cupid's Disease"

You were always so temperate in feeling—and now this extravagance!

You were always so temperate in feeling—and now this extravagance!

What could justify such a sudden euphoria?

And as soon as I thought of euphoria, things took on a new complexion... “You’re sick, my dear,” I said to myself. “You’re feeling too well, you have to be ill!”

There may be an immense latent period between the primary infection and the advent of neurosyphilis, especially if the primary infection has been suppressed, not eradicated.

There may be an immense latent period between the primary infection and the advent of neurosyphilis, especially if the primary infection has been suppressed, not eradicated.

There may be an immense latent period between the primary infection and the advent of neurosyphilis, especially if the primary infection has been suppressed, not eradicated.

But I had never heard of an interval of seventy years—nor of a self-diagnosis of cerebral syphilis mooted so calmly and clearly.

But I had never heard of an interval of seventy years—nor of a self-diagnosis of cerebral syphilis mooted so calmly and clearly.

Now the question of treatment arose. But here another dilemma presented itself, propounded, with typical acuity, by Mrs K. herself.

Now the question of treatment arose. But here another dilemma presented itself, propounded, with typical acuity, by Mrs K. herself.

Very recently (January 1985) I have seen some of these same dilemmas and ironies in relation to another patient (Miguel O.), admitted to the state hospital with a diagnosis of ‘mania’, but soon realised to be suffering from the excited stage of neurosyphilis.

The first time I saw him he was quite excited, and when I asked him to copy a simple figure (Figure A) he produced, with great brio, a three-dimensional elaboration (Figure B)—or so I took it to be, until he explained that it was ‘an open carton’, and then tried to draw some fruit in it.

Asked to draw a tree, the Parkinsonian tends to draw a small, meagre thing, stunted, impoverished, a bare winter-tree with no foliage at all.

If he becomes too excited, high, on L-Dopa, the tree may acquire a fantastic ornateness and exuberance, exploding with a florescence of new branches and foliage with little arabesques, curlicues, and what-not, until finally its original form is completely lost beneath this enormous, this baroque, elaboration.

If he becomes too excited, high, on L-Dopa, the tree may acquire a fantastic ornateness and exuberance, exploding with a florescence of new branches and foliage with little arabesques, curlicues, and what-not, until finally its original form is completely lost beneath this enormous, this baroque, elaboration.

If he becomes too excited, high, on L-Dopa, the tree may acquire a fantastic ornateness and exuberance, exploding with a florescence of new branches and foliage with little arabesques, curlicues, and what-not, until finally its original form is completely lost beneath this enormous, this baroque, elaboration.

Such drawings are also rather characteristic of Tourette’s—the original form, the original thought, lost in a jungle of embellishment—and in the so-called ‘speed-art’ of amphetaminism.

First the imagination is awakened, then excited, frenzied, to endlessness and excess.

What a paradox, what a cruelty, what an irony, there is here—that inner life and imagination may lie dull and dormant unless released, awakened, by an intoxication or disease!

The same paradoxical valuation may attach to electrical stimulations of the brain: there are epilepsies which are exciting and addictive—and may be self-induced, repeatedly, by those who are prone to them (as rats, with implanted cerebral electrodes, compulsively stimulate the ‘pleasure-centres’ of their own brain); but there are other epilepsies which bring peace and genuine wellbeing.

The same paradoxical valuation may attach to electrical stimulations of the brain: there are epilepsies which are exciting and addictive—and may be self-induced, repeatedly, by those who are prone to them (as rats, with implanted cerebral electrodes, compulsively stimulate the ‘pleasure-centres’ of their own brain); but there are other epilepsies which bring peace and genuine wellbeing.

And such a paradoxical wellness may even confer a lasting benefit, as with Mrs O’C. and her strange convulsive ‘reminiscence’.

And such a paradoxical wellness may even confer a lasting benefit, as with Mrs O’C. and her strange convulsive ‘reminiscence’.

We are in strange waters here, where all the usual considerations may be reversed—where illness may be wellness, and normality illness, where excitement may be either bondage or release, and where reality may lie in ebriety, not sobriety.