HYSTERIA AND DEMOXISM 



159 



the metals act when they are applied to the skin. It is by the devel- 

 opment of feeble electric currents in consequence of the contact of the 

 metal with the moist and salty skin. The currents, although they 

 have not enough intensity to be felt, are strong enough to modify the 

 condition of the sensory nerves, cause anaesthesia to disappear, and 

 reestablish sensibility. Experiments made directly for that object 

 have established the probability of this theory. 



Magnets, which may be compared to very feeble electric currents, 

 exert an action on the skin very like that of metals. The phenomena 

 are very clear ; but, instead of curing anaesthesia, magnets transfer it, 

 causing it to disappear from one side and pass to the other side. If, 

 for example, we apply a magnet to a patient insensible on the right 

 side, at the end of half an hour the right side will have become sen- 

 sible while the left side will have lost its sensibility, showing that the 

 disease, instead of disappearing, has been carried over from one side to 

 the other. Does not this facility with which the morbid spot may be 

 moved exclude every hypothesis of a deep material lesion of the ner- 

 vous centers ? The facts of metallotherapy and magnetotherapy are 

 of great interest in physiology as well as in clinics ; but the exposition 

 of them is very dry, and even this short glance at them may seem too 

 long. I pass to the description of symptoms which we might call 

 demoniacal, and which constitute the grand attack of hystero-epilepsy. 



It would be hard to imagine a more terrible spectacle than that of 

 one of these demoniac fits. The body pulsates with tremors and vio- 

 lent shocks. The muscles are contracted, so tense that we might be- 

 lieve them to be on the point of bursting. Great bounds, frightful 

 cries and bowlings, confused vociferations, indescribable contortions 

 which we would not have supposed a human creature capable of mak- 

 ing such is the hideous picture which the hysterical patient presents 

 when she is seized with an attack. After one has witnessed a scene of 

 this character, he will be less astonished that the simple credulity of 

 the men of the middle ages made them see in the phenomena the 

 intervention of evil spirits, and that they supposed that only the devil 

 could provoke such a furious exasperation of all the forces of the 

 body. 



As we study more closely the attacks of epileptic hysteria, we per- 

 ceive that, in the face of this violent appearance of disorder, the disease 

 has its regular, distinct periods. Nothing is at hazard. Every symp- 

 tom, however unordered it may seem, appears in its turn with a sur- 

 prising regularity, we might almost say punctuality. M. Charcot and 

 his pupils * have shown that the demoniac fits embrace three well-char- 

 acterized periods. 



* Paul Richer, " Etude descriptive de la grande Attaque hysterique," 1879. The nu- 

 merous drawings attached to this book, as well as the excellent photographs of MM. Re- 

 gnard and Bourneville in their " Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere," give a 

 very fair idea of the successive periods of the attack. 



