88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



confined in the Salpe'triere, for it has not been usual to regard hys- 

 teria as a grave disease necessitating or justifying seclusion. It is not 

 always so grave. The disease manifests itself in every degree. Just 

 as we may suffer a burn that is so superficial that we can hardly feel 

 it, while there are other burns so deep and extended that they lead to 

 death ; just as there are light fevers and also fevers that are speedily 

 mortal so there are light hysteria?, almost imperceptible, constituting 

 a disposition of the organization rather than a disease, and besides 

 them there are grave hysterias, so grave that they are confounded with 

 insanity, with general paralysis, and with epilepsy. At the Salpe- 

 triere, there are hardly any other hysterical cases than those of grave 

 hysteria ; as to light hysteria, it may be found everywhere. When 

 the doctors speak of a nervous woman, they say an hysterical woman ; 

 and this language, though it may sound unpleasantly in a conversation 

 or a romance, is not out of place in a psychological study, for what is 

 commonly called nervousness in a young woman is simply hysteria. 



I imagine that every one is more or less acquainted with the oddi- 

 ties of character exhibited by nervous women. All their feelings are 

 carried to an extreme. The most trifling event is enough to provoke 

 enthusiasm or despair in them. Nobody can cry so easily. It even 

 seems to me that they control the fountain-key of tears, at least so as 

 to make them flow, for to put a stop to them is another affair. To say 

 that hysterical persons will cry for a small matter is saying too little, 

 for they will cry for nothing ; they will be all of a sudden possessed 

 of an indefinable grief, an incomprehensible, vague sorrow, which it is 

 not possible to resist. It is like a ball that rises from the chest to the 

 throat, hinders respiration, and causes suffocation. They must retire, 

 hide themselves in the most obscure corner, and there, where they are 

 not seen or heard, sob for hours ; then, suddenly, the fit of sorrow will 

 cease and give place to a surprising gayety.. 



All that it has been customary to attribute to the nervous temper- 

 ament of woman enters into the domain of hysteria. The appetite is 

 capricious, fantastic : to-day, for example, everything displeases, and 

 it is impossible to accept a particle of nourishment ; to-morrow, all 

 will be changed and nothing will suffice to appease the hunger. Gen- 

 erally, hysterical persons have a marked taste for vinegar and green 

 fruits a diet certainly not favorable to health. Such irregular and 

 deficient alimentation impedes general nutrition and impoverishes the 

 blood, and, by a kind of circular connection of disorders which is very 

 common in pathology, the anaemia thus induced augments the hysteria 

 which is the occasion of it ; and young women suffering from it are 

 more subject to hysteria than others. 



As every one knows, the character of hysterical persons is very 

 strange. "We might say, borrowing an expression from the painters, 

 that it is very picturesque, and presents points of view varied and 

 always unforeseen. A young woman, for example, who yesterday had 



