160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The first period is analogous to the attack of epilepsy proper. An 

 abrupt loss of consciousness takes place. The patient falls to the 

 floor ; her muscles contract, stiffen ; her face turns blue ; the features 

 are wrought into a horrible grimace ; the arms bend ; the hands clinch ; 

 in a few instants afterward the muscles quiver with convulsive trem- 

 blings, which at first grow more marked, then become weaker and 

 weaker. At last, the muscles, exhausted by the long and violent strain, 

 relax, and a deep, stupid sleep succeeds the convulsive spell. 



This lasts only for a little while, and then begins the second period, 

 which M. Charcot calls the period of cloamism, because it recalls the 

 curious attitudes and contortions of the clowns in the circus. At this 

 stage the patient executes prodigious bounds ; the body, bent into the 

 arc of a circle, rests on the bed only by the head and feet ; the face is 

 disfigured, sometimes terribly so, and the twisted features give it a 

 hideous expression ; and at times the whole body will bound up, then 

 fall heavily upon the bed. " The patient goes into a fury against her- 

 self," says M. P. Richer, describing one of the attacks ; " she tries to 

 scratch her face, to tear her hair, she utters pitiful cries, she hits her 

 breast with her fist so hard that the attendants have to interpose a 

 cushion ; she springs at the persons who are around her, tries to bite 

 them, and, if she can not get at them, tears everything within her 

 reach, the bedclothes, her own clothes, bellows like a calf, strikes the 

 bed with her head and her fists as if she could never get enough of it ; 

 she jumps up, throws her arms around, bends her legs up and kicks 

 them out again, shakes her head back and forth uttering hoarse cries 

 all the time, or, if she sits down, twists her body around from one side 

 to the other, and keeps her arms moving." 



Not less surprising than the violence of the attack is the ease 

 with which it can be stopped. All the excess ceases at once on sim- 

 ply compressing the abdomen. The demoniac spell originates ap- 

 parently in the ovary, for, on pressing the hand on the abdomen pre- 

 cisely at the point that answers to the ovary, the rage immediately 

 ceases. The poor demoniac, restored to herself, casts an astonished 

 look at the persons around her, as if she does not understand why they 

 are there, for she was alone when she was seized, and has been uncon- 

 scious since. She keeps her consciousness as long as the ovary is com- 

 pressed, and is able to put the clothes in order, to talk, laugh, and en- 

 joy herself cheerfully with her associates ; but, if the compression is 

 relaxed a little, the attack begins again with all its original force, to 

 cease again if the ovary is compressed anew. By a coarse but intel- 

 ligible comparison, the working of this pressure may be likened to the 

 action of a faucet on the flow of water in a pipe. The flow ceases 

 when the valve is turned off, to begin again as soon as it is turned on. 

 The patients at the Salpetriere understand the relation so well that, 

 when one of them is attacked, the others straightway go to her bed 

 and press on her abdomen, for several hours if it is necessary, till the 



