9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lies as that they indulge themselves in forging useless ones. They 

 seem to have a love for lying, or rather for imposture. Nothing 

 pleases them better than to lead those who question them into error ; 

 to relate stories that are absolutely false, which have not a shadow of 

 probability ; to give an account of all that they have not done and all 

 that they have done, with an incredible luxury of details. These 

 wanton lies are told boldly, bluntly, with a coolness that disconcerts. 

 The physician who examines hysterical patients has always to bear in 

 mind that they intend to deceive him, to hide the truth, and feign 

 things that do not exist, as well as to disguise things that do exist. 



Let us see now how hysteria differs from insanity. In insanity the 

 intelligence is deeply affected, while hysteria is rather a form of dis- 

 position than a disease of the intellect. Hence the psychological 

 interest of the hysterical condition. The apprehension is brilliant, the 

 memory sure, the imagination lively. The defective side of the mind 

 is revealed only by the impotency of the will to restrain passion. The 

 will seems, in fact, to be the most delicate mechanism in the mental 

 organization ; and, when a poisonous substance enters the system to 

 trouble the intellectual faculties, it always begins by suppressing the 

 influence of the will over the passions. 



Hysteria in its light form is of frequent occurrence. The causes 

 that determine it ought then to be very common. One of the princi- 

 pal ones is heredity. If the father or mother has a nervous tempera- 

 ment, the daughter will probably be predisposed to hysteria. The 

 sense of the word " heredity " as used here should be rightly under- 

 stood. It is not necessary that the same form of affection shall ap- 

 pear in the parents and the children. A nervous derangement in the 

 parents may be reproduced in the children under different aspects. 

 For example, an epileptic father may have an idiotic son, an insane son, 

 and an hysterical daughter. The law of hereditary liability is equally 

 true when, instead of a nervous malady as grave as epilepsy or insan- 

 ity, we have to do simply with a nervous temperament. Just as the 

 color of the hair, the shape of the nose, and the voice are similar in 

 parents and children, so the temperament is transmitted from one gen- 

 eration to another. The results of the medical observations of several 

 centuries agree with the common opinion. In the times of witchcraft, 

 the daughter of a witch that is to say, of a person afflicted with hys- 

 teria was inevitably regarded as a witch, and there was no need of 

 seeking other motives for an accusation. 



Other accessory causes supplement the preponderant influence of 

 heredity. A girl, brought up with a certain degree of culture, who 

 sees around her persons that were her companions in other days in a 

 better situation than she has been able to reach, will become hysteri- 

 cal because fortune has not given her the enjoyments she craves. 

 Dreams that have been dispelled, illusions that have vanished, hopes 

 that have proved to be chimerical, afford motives almost sufficient to 



