HYSTERIA AS AN ASSET 571 



dazing it and reducing it to extreme impressionability. Then follow 

 the suggestions. Verbal from the hypnotist, to the hypnotized victim 

 of the casualty they come from the circumstances of the accident, or 

 what follows it, or from the victim's mind itself, as it reflects on injuries 

 he has seen or heard of resulting from similar disasters. Thus is 

 determined the symptomatic type. Little by little the symptoms spread 

 and deepen — they rarely reach their full development at once — until at 

 last, the patient, sound in wind and limb, may become as inert a mass 

 as ever wheel-chair carried. 



As important as the accident itself, or even more so, are the circum- 

 stances which follow it. Injudicious sympathy from friends, fears felt 

 by physicians not wise enough to keep them to themselves, the solicitous 

 exaggeration by attorneys and the patient's perception of the financial 

 possibilities of his wrongs, all give new tentacles to the morbid ideas, 

 which burrow deeper among the roots of rational conduct. Left to 

 a physician versed in psychic medicine and rich of conscience, with 

 damage claim thrown out the window, there are few cases of traumatic 

 hysteria, taken at the outset, which a month of vigorous treatment 

 would not cure. But, with the demands of legal procedure ever immi- 

 nent, such a course is never possible. In Germany and other countries 

 which maintain parental protection of the injured, conditions are even 

 more unfavorable. In these countries, the injured workman is placed 

 on an allowance of money, graded in accordance with his earning, which 

 continues to be paid as long as he is incapacitated. This robs the 

 patient of his spur to effort and tends to prolong the mental instability. 

 As a result, in these countries, or at least in Germany, traumatic 

 hysteria is more protracted and rebellious than it is yath. us. With us, 

 sooner or later, the case is finished. It may be years before the final 

 card is played ; but some day the game is over and the hands are on the 

 table. And then, for the first time since the accident, the injured per- 

 son has a chance to regain his health. Before there was no chance. 

 For, with the persistence of symptom-inducing suggestions, inseparable 

 from litigation, it is practically unheard of, if not impossible, for a 

 plaintiff to improve in any essential particular before the release is 

 signed or the court-room doors have closed upon him for the last time. 

 This helps to make hysteria the most difficult disease of any found at 

 law of satisfactory settlement out of court. 



At the outset, the surgeon for the company, thinking the case is one 

 of temporary shock, reports favorably and the claim agent makes offers 

 of small sums. These are rejected; the plaintiff's physician has seen 

 such symptoms aggravate with time. The attorney feels a conscien- 

 tious duty toward his client and must know the way things are going 

 before settlement is thought of. While they all thus solicitously wait, 

 the gloomiest fears are realized. Paralysis sets in. By this time the 

 dangerous character of the case dawns on the defendant. Head sur- 



