570 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



deaf and dumb and shortly after that lost the use of the right arm and 

 the right leg. 



In this condition he was brought to court, eight months after the 

 accident, the most important witness in his suit against the street 

 railway company. There never was a fairer trial. Opposed experts 

 coincided in the view that the plaintiff had received no injury of impor- 

 tant organs and that his dramatic symptoms were the physical expres- 

 sions of idea. It was a tribute to the dignity of honest experts that the 

 judge, in the face of the exhibit, listened calmly to this testimony and 

 that the jury did not laugh out loud. For the poor man seemed sitting 

 in the shadow of the tomb. Emaciated, his face agitated by constant 

 twitchings, his whole right side inert and powerless, hearing nothing, 

 uttering no sound, getting his questions on slips of paper and writing 

 the answers with the left hand (an accomplishment acquired since his 

 illness) — he looked the leaf about to drop, the very essence of decay. 

 Optimist indeed who could believe in his rehabilitation. 



The jury disagreed, mainly on the negligence, and the case was 

 settled a few months later out of court. The man recovered, not all at 

 once, but gradually. He now hears everything, and, if his wife is to 

 be believed, talks too much ; his muscles have regained their power and, 

 when not busy on the farm, he ferries passengers across a little river 

 in the county of Princess Anne. So the doctors, all of them, were 

 right for once, for hysteria and nothing else can explain a case like this. 



As a psychological proposition, this strange malady more than 

 demonstrates the influences of mind on matter — it establishes the de- 

 pendence of all voluntary expression on idea. It can disrupt mental 

 and physical unity as completely as the most destructive injuries. Its 

 dark shadows flitting in the subconsciousness corners of the mind may 

 stimulate to increased function, or so far suppress function that the 

 affected organ is left without its purpose. Hypersensitiveness, which 

 soon is pain, to light, to sound, to smell and taste, to feeling, may all 

 be products of hysteria when the disorder whips up function; when it 

 paralyzes, the victim must get along as best he can until his sensorial 

 servants come back to work. In the sphere of motion, twitchings, 

 tremors, contractions and even convulsions, bear witness to excess of 

 function; paralysis, to loss of it. These functional perversions, these 

 idealistic symptoms, are cast in the same mold as those of structural 

 disease. But they carry with them tell-tale differences of form and 

 arrangement which permit their true nature to be recognized. Various 

 and many are the hypotheses to explain the psychological enigma. For 

 its last analysis it needs the genius of a Plato. For working purposes, 

 perhaps the theory of Charcot is the most acceptable. He compared the 

 genesis of traumatic hysteria — which alone concerns us here — with the 

 mechanism of hypnosis. The jar, the blow, the fright, like the passes 

 or the artificial aids of the hypnotist, create disorder in the mind. 



