Surgeon General William Hammond

In A Treatise on Insanity (1883), author William Hammond (former surgeon-general of the Army) described various cases of intellectual objective morbid impulses and how he had treated them. In one case, a young man developed an overwhelming desire to throw vitriolic acid over women’s beautiful gowns. He considered his actions “immoral and degrading,” but told Dr. Hammond that “a handsome dress acts upon me very much as I suppose a piece of red cloth does on an infuriated bull: I must attack it.” The young man had managed to throw vitriol on three women’s dresses without being caught, but wanted desperately to stop doing it. He could not determine where the impulse came from, but simply found it impossible to control.

Tilden’s Bromide of Calcium

Dr. Hammond examined the man, and could find no disease other than “wakefulness.” Hammond prescribed a bromide of calcium (a sedative) and “insisted on his removing himself from further temptation by taking a sea voyage on a sailing vessel upon which there were no women passengers.” The young man did so, and came back after three or four month free of his impulse to ruin women’s dresses with vitriol.

According to Hammond, an intellectual objective morbid impulse is an idea that occurs to a person which is contrary to his sense of right and wrong, urging the person to do something “repugnant to his conscience and wishes.” As in the case of the young man just described, such an impulse “if yielded to . . . is often of a character as to demand the serious consideration of society.” In his case, the man would probably have ended up in an asylum if he had not had his condition nipped in the bud.

Dr. Hammond’s Book