158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and so fully laid bare her deceptions that she was compelled to con- 

 fess, not that she had been playing tricks, but that Wier had cured 

 her. 



Wier was not the only person who, even in the sixteenth century, 

 protested against the abuse of the belief in the supernatural. Several 

 educated physicians would not allow themselves to be blinded by the 

 ruling prejudices, and referred nervous affections and convulsions to 

 their true cause, hysteria, which they then called suffocation of the 

 womb, instead of to the devil. It would, however, have been rash for 

 them to deny the action of demons, and they were, therefore, reticent 

 in expression, and used well- rounded phrases to disguise the boldness 

 of their doctrine. " I have seen," says Houlier, " two daughters of a 

 president of one of the Parliaments of France, subject to be taken 

 with such fits of laughing that it was impossible to stop them, either 

 by fright or by threats and scolding." " In suffocations of the womb," 

 says a learned man of the sixteenth century, " incidents frequently oc- 

 cur which cause physicians of little experience to think that it is a 

 case of enchantment or of something extraordinary and supernatural." 

 They had also observed incidents of catalepsy and of burial alive in 

 hysteria, but were very careful against ascribing them to the machina- 

 tions of the devil. 



The efforts of physicians to cure hysteric anaesthesia have only 

 recently been attended with any success. A happy discovery, reveal- 

 ing a series of real but improbable facts, has led to the introduction of 

 salutary modifications in the therapeutics of hysteria. Twenty-five 

 years ago, M. Burq affirmed that the application to the skin of certain 

 metals, as gold, silver, copper, or zinc, would cure neuralgias, head- 

 aches, and paralyses, but no one thought of making a scientific verifi- 

 cation of his novel assertion. M. Burq passed out of notice, but con- 

 tinued to maintain that the treatment of nervous diseases with metals 

 would lead to marvelous cures. lie might, however, have preached in 

 the desert till the end of his days, had it not occurred to M. Charcot 

 to make a test of some of his experiments. He found that M. Burq's 

 representations were correct, at least in part. Though the application 

 of metals gives only moderate results in many nervous diseases, it is 

 nevertheless true that in hysteria, and particularly in anaesthetic hys- 

 teria, it is attended with singular modifications in the symptoms. 

 The application of pieces of gold or silver or other metal upon the 

 insensible region is sufficient to produce a complete restoration of sen- 

 sibility in the course of a few hours. Some patients are cured with 

 gold, others with silver, others with zinc or copper. This process of 

 treatment, which consists in the application of pieces of metal to the 

 skin, is called metallotherapy. 



Strange as these facts may appear, they have been verified too 

 many times in France and other countries to permit us to call them in 

 question. Additional researches have disclosed the manner in which 



