HYSTERIA AND DEMONISM. i 57 



We have not in this case a disease in which any disorder in the struc- 

 ture of the organ can explain how its function is perverted. What 

 further causes us to believe that it would be wrong to look for an 

 organic hurt where there is only a dynamical perversion is, that hemi- 

 anesthesias, after having lasted for even four or five years, will some- 

 times disappear all at once without any appreciable cause of cure, and 

 leave no traces. As we have said, hysteric patients have an uncertain 

 and changing disposition. Their maladies are likewise capricious and 

 fantastical, and will come on without known cause, and disappear in 

 the same way. An insignificant emotion, hardly perceptible, is some- 

 times enough to dissipate a paralyis of several years' standing. I knew 

 a case of this kind, in which an hysterical patient had been paralyzed 

 for four years, so that she was not able to speak, or eat, or drink, and 

 had to be fed by putting food into her mouth. One evening she spoke 

 out all at once, and said she could eat without being helped. Her sud- 

 den cure was unexplainable. Analogous cases, when they take place 

 in the Pyrenees, pass for supernatural and divine manifestations. We 

 judge otherwise in Paris, and see in them only the irregular effects of 

 a disease which is imperfectly understood, the singular and complex 

 nature of which science has not yet unraveled. 



Some very strange phenomena have been observed in hysterical 

 patients. It appears to be proved that they can remain a very long 

 time without taking food and without drinking ; at the same time, the 

 secretions seem to be suspended, so that, under certain conditions not 

 yet well determined, there takes place an almost complete cessation of 

 the chemical operations of life, such as does not occur in other persons 

 till the moment of death. " Nature," says M. Charcot, " seems to 

 have a special provision for hysterical persons." The most surprising 

 circumstance is that, although the attack be extremely violent and the 

 alimentation most deficient and poor, the affected persons preserve 

 their plumpness and the usual appearance of health. These facts are 

 certainly not supernatural, though they have not been explained. It 

 is right, then, to be on the guard against seeing in this prolonged 

 abstinence, as they assumed to do in the case of Louise Lateau, a kind 

 of miraculous divine protection. It is also necessary to beware against 

 the simulations which many patients habitually attempt. It would be 

 puzzling to say why they do this unless it be that they lie for the sake 

 of lying, for the mere pleasure of propagating an error, even when 

 that error is not to their profit. Some of the so-called demoniacs in 

 former centuries indulged this curious fancy of making believe that 

 they lived without food. Wier, one of the few persons who ventured 

 to defend good sense against the universal folly of his age, tells how, 

 in 1574, he exposed the tricks of a little beggar, who was probably 

 hysterical, named Barbara, who made herself pass for a prodigy, and 

 pretended not to eat or drink. He took the little mendicant home 

 with him, watched her carefully with the aid of his wife and servant, 



