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Brain fever (or cerebral fever) describes a medical condition where supposedly the brain becomes inflamed and causes a variety of symptoms and can lead to death. The terminology is dated and is encountered most often in Victorian literature, where it typically describes a potentially life-threatening illness brought about by a severe emotional upset. [1] [2]
A modern physician, confronted with the term, might conclude that it describes encephalitis or meningitis. Audrey C. Peterson explains that 18th-century medicine often used "fever" to mean "disease", not necessarily a raised body temperature. For brain fever, also called phrenitis, the seat of that disease was the brain, and Robert James classified it as the most dangerous kind of inflammation, which could lead to delirium. Later scholars distinguished between a fever that affected parts of the brain or the whole, but William Cullen denied the existence of such a differentiation on the basis of "observation and dissection". Firmly classified by the end of the 18th century as a disease, the "inflammation of the brain", known as phrensy or phrenitis, came to be called, familiarly, "brain fever". [2]
Symptoms described in the literature included headache, red eyes and face, impatience and irritability, a quickened pulse, moaning and screaming, convulsions followed by relaxation, and delirium. Peterson notes that while sometimes an instance of brain fever was said to come gradually, "more often the attack was described as coming on abruptly, a feature which is especially significant for the writers of fiction". Absent knowledge of bacterial causes of disease, medical scientists did recognize epidemic occurrences of brain fever, but considered them caused by "matters floating in the atmosphere". As with all fevers of the time, emotional and psychological causes were frequently cited as well, including fear, lack of sleep, mental exertion, and disappointment. People leading sedentary lifestyles (like those who study) are particularly vulnerable. [2]
Brain fever is frequently associated also with hysteria, particularly female hysteria, as in the case of Catherine Linton in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847). [3]
Ioana Boghian used the term as a synonym for hysteria in a semiotic analysis of Victorian conceptions of illness, which were viewed, she argues, as somatic symptom disorders; they are "disorders ...characterized by physical complaints that appear to be medical in origin but that can not be explained in terms of a physical disease, the results of substance abuse, or by an other mental disorder." These "physical symptoms must be serious enough to interfere with the patient's employment or relationships, and must be symptoms that are not under the patient's voluntary control." [4]
In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Crooked Man", the term is used to describe a woman in a state of shock when her husband has been murdered. The term is also used in "The Naval Treaty", in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ; here it refers to Percy Phelps, an old schoolmate of Dr. Watson's, who was distraught after losing important diplomatic papers. He becomes so upset that, while travelling home after leaving the case with the police, he reports becoming "practically a raving maniac". Phelps "lay for over nine weeks, unconscious, and raving mad with brain fever", before recovering enough to send for the aid of Dr Watson's friend Sherlock Holmes. Similarly, characters with brain fever are also mentioned in the Holmes stories "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box", and "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual".
Brain fever is also mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula , where Jonathan Harker has brain fever after escaping from the Count. [9]
Brain fever is mentioned in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov , which manifests itself into Ivan's nightmare of the devil: "Anticipating events I can say at least one thing: he was at that moment on the very eve of an attack of brain fever. Though his health had long been affected, it had offered a stubborn resistance to the fever which in the end gained complete mastery over it." [10]
The Indian Gentleman, Mr Carrisford, in Francis Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess , and Captain Crewe, Sarah's father, both experience brain fever when they think their investments in the diamond mines have become worthless. [11]
Rena, the main character of House Behind the Cedars (Charles W Chesnutt, published 1900) is afflicted with brain fever in her final moments, with symptoms including delirium and hallucinations.[ citation needed ]
In The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler, Ernest develops brain fever after being sent to prison for sexual assault. [12]
Anne Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the androgynous name Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name "Ellis Bell". It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws' foster son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.
Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which were adapted for television by the BBC.
Delirium is a specific state of acute confusion attributable to the direct physiological consequence of a medical condition, effects of a psychoactive substance, or multiple causes, which usually develops over the course of hours to days. As a syndrome, delirium presents with disturbances in attention, awareness, and higher-order cognition. People with delirium may experience other neuropsychiatric disturbances, including changes in psychomotor activity, disrupted sleep-wake cycle, emotional disturbances, disturbances of consciousness, or, altered state of consciousness, as well as perceptual disturbances, although these features are not required for diagnosis.
Hysteria is a term used to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, female hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that the basis for diagnosis operated under the belief that women are predisposed to mental and behavioral conditions; an interpretation of sex-related differences in stress responses. In the twentieth century, it shifted to being considered a mental illness. Many influential people such as Sigmund Freud and Jean-Martin Charcot dedicated research to hysteria patients.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1847.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths.
Reye syndrome is a rapidly worsening brain disease. Symptoms of Reye syndrome may include vomiting, personality changes, confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness. While liver toxicity typically occurs in the syndrome, jaundice usually does not. Death occurs in 20–40% of those affected with Reye syndrome, and about a third of those who survive are left with a significant degree of brain damage.
Conversion disorder (CD), or functional neurologic symptom disorder, is a diagnostic category used in some psychiatric classification systems. It is sometimes applied to patients who present with neurological symptoms, such as numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits, which are not consistent with a well-established organic cause, which cause significant distress, and can be traced back to a psychological trigger. It is thought that these symptoms arise in response to stressful situations affecting a patient's mental health or an ongoing mental health condition such as depression. Conversion disorder was retained in DSM-5, but given the subtitle functional neurological symptom disorder. The new criteria cover the same range of symptoms, but remove the requirements for a psychological stressor to be present and for feigning to be disproved. The ICD-10 classifies conversion disorder as a dissociative disorder, and the ICD-11 as a dissociative disorder with unspecified neurological symptoms. However, the DSM-IV classifies conversion disorder as a somatoform disorder.
"The Adventure of the Dying Detective", in some editions simply titled "The Dying Detective", is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories that were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was originally published in Collier's in the United States on 22 November 1913, and The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1913. Together with seven other stories, it was collected in His Last Bow.
Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women. It was described as exhibiting a wide array of symptoms, including anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, even sexually forward behavior, and a "tendency to cause trouble for others". It is no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for hundreds of years in Western Europe.
Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette was a French neurologist and the namesake of Tourette syndrome, a neurological condition characterized by tics. His main contributions in medicine were in the fields of hypnotism and hysteria.
Clouding of consciousness, also called brain fog or mental fog, occurs when a person is slightly less wakeful or aware than normal. They are less aware of time and their surroundings, and find it difficult to pay attention. People describe this subjective sensation as their mind being "foggy".
Catherine Earnshaw is a fictional character and the female protagonist of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights written by Emily Brontë. Catherine is one of two surviving children born to Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, the original tenants of the Wuthering Heights estate. The star-crossed love between her and Heathcliff is one of the primary focuses of the novel. Catherine is often referred to as "Cathy," particularly by Heathcliff.
Cousin Phillis (1863–1864) is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published in four parts in The Cornhill Magazine, though a fifth and sixth part were planned. Later it was published in book form, including an edition in 1908 with illustrations by Mary Wheelhouse. The story is about 19-year-old Paul Manning, who moves to the country and befriends his mother's family and his (second) cousin Phillis Holman, who is confused by her own placement at the edge of adolescence.
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for contagion. It is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic causes that are known.
Mental illness in ancient Rome was recognized in law as an issue of mental competence, and was diagnosed and treated in terms of ancient medical knowledge and philosophy, primarily Greek in origin, while at the same time popularly thought to have been caused by divine punishment, demonic spirits, or curses. Physicians and medical writers of the Roman world observed patients with conditions similar to anxiety disorders, mood disorders, dyslexia, schizophrenia, and speech disorders, among others, and assessed symptoms and risk factors for mood disorders as owing to alcohol abuse, aggression, and extreme emotions. It can be difficult to apply modern labels such as schizophrenia accurately to conditions described in ancient medical writings and other literature, which may for instance be referring instead to mania.