was looking into some stuff about schizophrenia and found this wild story about the first recorded case a man named James Tilly Matthews.

He was involved in some political scheme (1796ish) and was thrown in a mental ward in after he claimed he knew about an elaborate mind control scheme to influence politicians.

TLDR he said there was a small group who operated some weird huge machine located hidden in some basement. https://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php the machine was some crazy steam-punk esc pipe organ that magnetised gases that could be aimed at targets.

its seems to be a mix of 1700th century Pneumatic chemistry and early electro magnetism

it could do varies things like allow the operator of the machine to implant thoughts, cause mental distractions, make targets forget things or make them more influenceable and loss all emotion.

https://archive.org/details/b22042271/page/n9/mode/2up heres a book written in 1810 about him, goes into detail.

they locked his ass up in the mental ward even after he was declared sane.