794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



same idea manifested itself relative to all the women he met, provided 

 they were pretty. He was obliged to have a person follow him, whose 

 duty it was to satisfy him on this point. Every time he met a woman 

 he repeated the eternal question, " Is she pretty ? " The attendant 

 would answer " No," and that would cut short the otherwise inter- 

 minable series of his questions. One day he was starting by railroad 

 for a distant point, and in his hurry forgot to begin his observations 

 on the woman who sold the tickets, and also to ask if she was pretty. 

 When he reached his destination, in the middle of the night, he asked 

 his companion if that woman was pretty. The companion, being for 

 once worried, tired, or forgetful, answered that he had not looked at 

 her, and did not know anything about it. This was enough to cast 

 the patient into such a condition of anxiety that he had to start back 

 immediately for Paris to assure himself as to the truth in the matter ! 



If I have been able to give a general idea of this curious mental 

 disorder, it will be agreed that, amid all its diversities, it is essentially 

 characterized by a kind of cerebral pruriency which nothing can sat- 

 isfy, and that the repetition of the same acts, the same questions, and 

 the same thoughts, appertains to an organic phenomenon which brings 

 up unceasingly the same impressions. In a similiar way we contend 

 with ourselves laboriously, while dreaming, in a situation we can not 

 bring ourselves out of, because the incessant repetition of the same 

 physical impressions reproduces the same series of ideas. We are not 

 finally delivered from this obsession till we wake. 



The doubting folly is hard to cure, but considerable periods of 

 remission sometimes occur, during which the patient seems to be re- 

 stored to his normal condition. Unfortunately, the amelioration is 

 seldom permanent. The brain falls back into its old habits, and the 

 delirium begins over again. Patients who are attacked by it at the 

 period of puberty have a better chance of recovering than others, for 

 the progressive evolution of the organism may bring them relief from 

 this psychologic condition. On the other side, the malady hardly 

 ever ends in insanity. The subjects, when they have reached the last 

 stage of their malady, remain fixed in their delirium. Incompetent 

 for all work, sad and morose, they retire from society and live in 

 voluntary sequestration. The prognostic is therefore extremely grave, 

 for in the great majority of cases the future is definitely lost, whatever 

 remissions of longer or shorter duration may give birth to slightly 

 founded hopes. 



The causes of the doubting folly are quite numerous. Heredity 

 must be placed in the first rank ; then comes puberty, which impresses 

 a peculiar stamp on the psychoses that are brought under its influence. 

 Sexual and intellectual excesses may also be included among the causes. 

 Women are supposed to be more subject to the aberration than men. 

 The disease is sometimes developed during convalescence from grave 

 sickness. A certain part in producing it is attributed to moral per- 



