It has often been said that all men are mad on some particular point. It is when this madness passes the half-way point of eccentricity that the title “lunatic” is bestowed upon the individual. As there are many forms of madness, so are there many indications given by the hand. The chief types that we will consider here are the following:
1st. Melancholy and religious madness, hallucinations, etc.
2d. The development of the crank.
3d. The natural madman.
Melancholy and Religious Madness
In the first case the line of head, on a rather broad hand, descends with a sharp curve low down on the Mount of Luna, very often to the base, denoting the abnormally imaginative temperament of the subject. In addition to this, the Mount of Venus is not well developed, thus decreasing the subject’s interest in all human or natural things; and lastly, the Mount of Saturn dominates.
As a rule, such is the hand of the religious maniac. He commences early in life with strong hallucinations from the extraordinary imagination that he possesses, which imagination, if directed into the proper channel, would probably work off its excess and relieve itself, but if opposed, feeds on itself, and thus increases. At first this is shown only occasionally in fits and starts. Its periods then grow longer and longer, until at last its moments of balance are few and far between. This is the morbid or melancholy type of the religious maniac.
The Development of the Crank
This type of madness is generally found in conjunction with two very distinct types—the spatulate and the philosophic.
In the first type it is the very sloping line of head on an extremely spatulate formation. At the commencement it merely denotes daring originality, which will show itself in every possible direction. It dissipates its own power by attempting too many things, owing to the multitude of its inventive ideas. Again I say, if the subject could only get into some position in life where he might work off those ideas, all would be well, and he might even give to the world some great invention or discovery which would benefit mankind. But attempt to crush such a man by some occupation entirely foreign to his nature, and you instantly turn all his current of thought to some extraordinary invention which he attempts to work out in secret; one which he dreams will be successful, and whose success will emancipate him from the slavery he is under. The very fact of his having to work in secret, the weakening of his nerve-power by confinement and by intensity of thought, the excitement under which he labors, is the laboratory where, in the end, he turns himself out—mad.
The next type is the philosophic. This is again shown by a sudden curve of the line of head on the Mount of Luna, and with an accentuated philosophic formation. In this case the crank, and eventually the madman, leans toward the extraordinary in the salvation of mankind. He means well, from first to last; he is, however, a fanatic on whatever point, doctrine, or theory he advances. It requires but unfavorable circumstances, non-success, and the indifference of the public to make this subject pass the half-way mark of eccentricity and become the lunatic.
If his weak point be religion, his is never that of the melancholy; on the contrary, he is the only person who knows the secret of the kingdom of heaven—all others are lost. It is not that he wishes to be alone when he gets there—it is his feverish anxiety for others which makes him exceptional. For this object he works day and night; he denies himself the enjoyment of life, even food, in the terrible haste to accomplish his desire; p. 154 the brain becomes more and more off its balance, and the man becomes more and more mad.
The Natural Madman
Malformation of the brain is responsible for this type, which, by a study of the hand, can be divided into two distinct classes—that of the hopeless idiot, and that of the vicious lunatic.
In the first class we generally find a wide, sloping line of head, formed entirely of islands and little hair-lines. This never gives any hope whatever of reason or intelligence, and denotes that the subject has been brought into the world with a brain insufficient—either in quantity or in quality—to govern or control the body, and the hopeless idiot is the result.
In the second division of this type the line of head, instead of being a continuous line, is made up of short, wavy branches running in all directions. A number of them rise inside the line of life on Mars, and cross to the other Mars on the opposite side of the hand. With this formation the nails are generally short and red Such a type denotes the quarrelsome, vicious lunatic more than any other class. In this case it will be noted that there are often sane moments, but such are extremely rare, and with regard to the last two classes I have never known any recovery.