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The Induction of Klüver Visual Hallucinations

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William Blake's Visions

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Abstract

Determining the triggers, neurological, sensory or physical, for Blake’s ‘visions’ cannot be done with complete accuracy. In Blake’s case the absence of a diary, journal or an extensive written correspondence distances him from being a subject completely capable of full historical retro-diagnosis. Nevertheless, this chapter will discuss visual hallucinatory types in conjunction with a consideration of their likely agencies of induction since some of them may have had a historical specificity unlikely to be paralleled today. It should be remembered throughout that ‘Hallucinations in psychologically normal individuals provide a valuable route to studying the neural mechanisms of visual awareness.’ The natural agency of ‘Scheerer’s phenomena’ has been discussed in Chap. 1 along with Munro Smith’s assigning of migraine aura to some of Blake’s images in 1909. Naturally occurring agencies may also include some triggers of migraine, such as photophobia, which appear to be reported by Blake’s contemporaries J.T. Smith and Allan Cunningham (both of whom, of course, would not have been able to access a vocabulary capable of arriving at a diagnosis of migraine). William may also have indulged in the popular contemporary electrical therapies known to have been used by Catherine Blake, c. 1800–1804. Finally, this chapter will discuss hallucinations caused by prolonged exposure to engraved lines on copper plates or the prints taken from them (‘Parallellinienfeld in einem Kupferstiche’), a method of induction used during the first scientifically recognized experiments recording visual hallucinations. Unsurprisingly, such methods of induction have long been superseded and forgotten much like the trade of copper-plate engraver that Blake followed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Frances Wilkinson, Auras and other hallucinations: windows on the visual brain, Progress in Brain Research, 144 (2004) pp 305–320.

  2. 2.

    A good starting point is, Paul C. Bressloff, J.D. Cowan, Martin Golubitsky, Peter J. Thomas, Matthew C. Wiener, ‘What Geometric Visual Hallucinations Tell Us about the Visual Cortex,’ Neural Computation 14 (2002) pp 473–491.

  3. 3.

    Vincent A. Billock and Brian H. Tsou, ‘Elementary visual hallucinations and their relationships to neural pattern-forming mechanisms,’ Psychological Bulletin 138 (2012) pp. 744–774.

  4. 4.

    Heinrich Klüver, ‘Mescal Visions and Eidetic Vision,’ The American Journal of Psychology, 37 (1926), pp. 502–515.

  5. 5.

    For Jonathan Roberts’ account of ingesting Lophorphora Williamsii, cactus peyote, the plant basis of mescaline, while reading Blake, see Blake. Wordsworth. Religion (London: Continuum, 2010) pp 41–47.

  6. 6.

    Christine S. VanPool, ‘The Signs of the Sacred: Identifying Shamans using Archaelogical Evidence,’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28 (2009) pp 177–90.

  7. 7.

    Christine S. VanPool, ‘The Signs of the Sacred: Identifying Shamans using Archaelogical Evidence,’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28 (2009) pp 177–90; Lindahl, Jared R. et al. “A Phenomenology of Meditation-Induced Light Experiences: Traditional Buddhist and Neurobiological Perspectives.” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2014): 973. PMC. Web. 25 July 2015. https://doi.org/110.3389/fpsyg.2013.00973.

  8. 8.

    BR(2): pp 341–2.

  9. 9.

    BR(2): 700, underlining in Bentley.

  10. 10.

    BR(2): p 321.

  11. 11.

    BR(2): p 10, citing Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake … A New and Enlarged Edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880) 2 Vols.

  12. 12.

    H. Henke, P.A. Robinson, P.M. Drysdale, Spatiotemporally varying visual hallucinations: II. Spectral classification and comparison with theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 357 (2014) pp 210–219.

  13. 13.

    G. B. Ermentrout and J.D. Cowan, ‘A Mathematical Theory of Visual Hallucination Patterns,’ Biological Cybernetics 34 (1979) pp 137–150; Paul C. Bressloff, J.D. Cowan, M. Golubitsky, P.J. Thomas, M. Wiener, ‘Geometric visual hallucinations, Euclidean symmetry and the functional architecture of striate cortex,’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences B 356 (2001) pp 299–330; Frances Wilkinson, Auras and other hallucinations: windows on the visual brain, Progress in Brain Research, 144 (2004) pp 305–320.

  14. 14.

    Klaus Podoll and Derek Robinson, Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience From Within (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008) pp 201–204, Figs. 242, 244, 245. The citation is to W.R. Gowers, ‘Subjective visual sensations,’ Trans Ophthalmol Soc UK 15 (1895) pp. 1–38.

  15. 15.

    John Fothergill, The Works of John Fothergill, M.D. … with Some Account of His Life by John Coakley Lettsom (1784) 3 vols., vol. 3 pp 603–4.

  16. 16.

    E.J. Eadie, ‘Hubert Airy, contemporary men of science and the migraine aura,’ Journal of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh 39 (2009) pp 263–7.

  17. 17.

    Karl S. Lashley, ‘Patterns Of Cerebral Integration Indicated By The Scotomas Of Migraine,’ Archive of Neurology & Psychiatry 46 (1941) pp 331–339. For the context, see P.C. Tfelt-Hansen, ‘History of migraine with aura and CSD from 1941 and onwards,’ Cephalalgia 30 (2010) pp. 780–792.

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    Aristides A.P. Leão, ‘Spreading Depression of Activity in the Cerebral Cortex,’ Journal of Neurophysiology 7 (1944) pp 359–390.

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    Anupama Nair, David Brang, ‘Inducing synesthesia in non-synesthetes: Short-term visual deprivation facilitates auditory-evoked visual percepts,’ Consciousness and Cognition, 70 (2019) pp 70–79, see especially Fig. 1.

  20. 20.

    Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (1651) p. 6.

  21. 21.

    Ermentrout GB, Cowan JD (1979): A Mathematical Theory of Visual Hallucination Patterns. Biological Cybernetics 34:137–150; Bressloff, PC, Cowan JD, Golubitsky M, Thomas PJ, Wiener M (2001): Geometric visual hallucinations, Euclidean symmetry and the functional architecture of striate cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences B 356: 299–330.

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    Walker Jearl (1981): The amateur scientist: about phosphenes: patterns that appear when the eyes are closed. Scientific American 244: 142–152.

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    Vincent A. Billock and Brian H. Tsou, ‘Elementary visual hallucinations and their relationships to neural pattern-forming mechanisms,’ Psychological Bulletin 138 (2012) pp. 744–774.

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    M.B. Vincent and N. Hadjikhani, ‘Migraine Aura and Related Phenomena: Beyond Scotomata and Scintillations,’ Cephalalgia 27 (2007) pp. 1368–1377.

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    For a recent study with contrary findings, see T.P. Jürgens, K Berger, A Straube,and L Khil, ‘Migraine with aura is associated with impaired colour vision: Results from the cross-sectional German DMKG headache study,’ Cephalalgia 35 (2015) pp 508–515.

  27. 27.

    BR(2): p 620 and 620n.

  28. 28.

    Butlin catalogues the Satan drawing but lists it as untraced, Butlin: 694.

  29. 29.

    BR(2): p 651.

  30. 30.

    Anupama Nair, David Brang, ‘Inducing synesthesia in non-synesthetes: Short-term visual deprivation facilitates auditory-evoked visual percepts,’ Consciousness and Cognition, 70 (2019) pp 70–79, see especially Fig. 1.

  31. 31.

    Butlin: 536.2.

  32. 32.

    Butlin: 561, verso.

  33. 33.

    Heinrich Klüver, ‘One of these form-constants, for example, is always referred to by terms such as grating, lattice, fretwork, filigree, honeycomb, or chessboard design,’ Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966) p. 22. Klüver’s italics.

  34. 34.

    Hubert Airy, ‘On a Distinct Form of Transient Hemiopsia,’ Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of London 160 (1870) pp 247–64.

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    Shepherd, Aj. “Visual Contrast Processing in Migraine.” Cephalalgia, vol. 20, no. 10, Dec. 2000, pp. 865–880.

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    Hubert Airy, ‘On a Distinct Form of Transient Hemiopsia,’ Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of London 160 (1870) pp 247–64, p 250.

  37. 37.

    M.B. Vincent and N. Hadjikhani, ‘Migraine Aura and Related Phenomena: Beyond Scotomata and Scintillations,’ Cephalalgia 27 (2007) pp. 1368–1377.

  38. 38.

    Kathleen B. Digre and K.C. Brennan, ‘Shedding Light on Photophobia,’ Journal of neuro-ophthalmology: the official journal of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society 32 (2012) pp. 68–81.

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  40. 40.

    BR(2): p 699.

  41. 41.

    G.D. Schott, ‘William Blake’s Milton, John Birch’s “Electrical Magic”, and the “falling star”,’ The Lancet 362 (2003) pp. 2114–2116.

  42. 42.

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  43. 43.

    BL Add Ms. 36494. Fol 288, Smeathman to Cumberland, 10 March Paris 1784.

  44. 44.

    Angus Whitehead, “‘Went to See Blake – Also to Surgeons College’: Blake and George Cumberland’s Pocketbooks,’ Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley, Jr., edited by Karen Mulhallen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010) pp. 165–200.

  45. 45.

    Charlotte Sleigh, ‘Life, death and galvanism,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 29 (1998) pp. 219–248; Paola Bertucci, ‘Sparks in he Dark: the attraction of electricity in the eighteenth century,’ Endeavour 31 (2007) 88–93.

  46. 46.

    Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Blake’s Healing Trio: Magnetism, Medicine, and Mania,’ Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 23 (1989) pp 20–30.

  47. 47.

    R. Lovett, The Subtil Medium prov’d: or, that Wonderful Power of Nature … which they call’d sometimes Aether, But oftener Elementary Fire, verify’d. London, 1756; John Wesley, The Desideratum: or, Electricity made Plain and Useful. London. 1760).

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    BR(2): p 321.

  49. 49.

    Simon Schaffer, ‘The Consuming Flame: Electrical Showmen and Tory Mystics in the world of goods,’ John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993) pp 489–526.

  50. 50.

    Paola Bertucci, ‘Sparks in the Dark: the attraction of electricity in the eighteenth century,’ Endeavour 31 (2007) 88–93.

  51. 51.

    Adams’ Essay on Electricity had first appeared in 1785.

  52. 52.

    John Birch, A Letter to Mr. George Adams, on the Subject of Medical Electricity. London (1791) pp 55–56.

  53. 53.

    See also, a female patient of Charles Le Roy, undergoing treatment for blindness by electrotherapy, reported flashes of light, ‘Oú l’on rend compte de quelques tentatives que lon a faites pour guérir plusieurs maladies par l’ectricité. Mémoires de Mathématique et de Physique tirés des registres de cette Académie,’ Histoire de l′Académie royale des Sci. avec les mémoires de mathématique et de Phys. tirés des registres de cette Académie, 2 (Paris, 1755), pp. 60–98, cited in Philip M. Lewis, Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld, ‘Electrical stimulation of the brain and the development of cortical visual prostheses: An historical perspective,’ Brain Research, 1630 (2016) pp 208–224.

  54. 54.

    The classic study is Morton D. Paley, “Cowper as Blake’s Spectre,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 1 (1968) pp 236–52.

  55. 55.

    John Birch, A Letter to Mr. George Adams, on the Subject of Medical Electricity. London (1791) pp 45–50.

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    Jan Purkinje, Beobachtungen und Versuche zur Physiologie der Sinne [Observations and Experiments Investigating the Physiology of Senses] (Prague, 1823). An English translation is included in Nicholas J. Wade and Josef Brožek, Purkinje’s Vision: The Dawning of Neuroscience (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001). Subsequent references to Purkinje use Wade and Brožek’s edition.

  58. 58.

    For an overview of their history and study, see Carsten Allefeld, Peter Pütz, Kristina Kastner, Jiří Wackermann, ‘Flicker-light induced visual phenomena: Frequency dependence and specificity of whole percepts and percept features,’ Consciousness and Cognition 20 (2011) pp 1344–1362.

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    Vincent A. Billock and Brian H. Tsou, ‘Neural interactions between flicker-induced self-organized visual hallucinations and physical stimuli,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007) pp 8490–8495.

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    For a discussion of the history and debate about afterimages, see Section 5 of Vahid Salari, Felix Scholkmann, Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal, Noémi Császár, Mehdi Aslani, István Bókkon, ‘Phosphenes, retinal discrete dark noise, negative afterimages and retinogeniculate projections: A new explanatory framework based on endogenous ocular luminescence,’ Progress in Retinal and Eye Research, 2017, ISSN 1350-9462, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.preteyeres.2017.07.001. Accessed 9 March 2021.

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    Nicholas J. Wade and Josef Brožek, Purkinje’s Vision: The Dawning of Neuroscience (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001) p 65. Fig. 2 in Purkinje (Prague, 1823).

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    Michael Phillips (ed.), William Blake: Apprentice and Master (Oxford: Ashmolean, 2014); For the family of Basire, see Richard Goddard, ‘Drawing on Copper’: The Basire Family of Copper-Plate Engravers and their Works (Maastricht, 2017); Lucy Peltz, ‘Basire, Isaac (1704–1768),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1619, accessed 11 Jan 2016].

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    David Drakard and Paul Holdway, Spode: Transfer Printed Ware 1784–1833, A New, Enlarged and Updated Edition (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002) p 49.

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  84. 84.

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    David Worrall

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Worrall, D. (2024). The Induction of Klüver Visual Hallucinations. In: William Blake's Visions. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53254-2_5

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