164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thies and sympathies. Hysterical patients demand, more than any- 

 thing else, that other persons shall be occiapied wholly with them, in- 

 terested in their petty passions, that they take part in their likes and 

 dislikes, that they admire their intelligence or their dress. They tell 

 improbable stories, lie boldly, and are not disconcerted in the least 

 when they are convicted of the lie. Deprived of all moral sense, they 

 obey only because they have no alternative. No feeling of modesty 

 or false shame restrains them ; they tell their adventures to any one 

 that comes, provided they are pleased with him, and will talk with 

 men as freely as if they were of their own sex. Nothing embarrasses 

 these female Diogeneses ; they have an answer for everything, ask the 

 most indiscreet questions, and tell the truth bluntly to every one. They 

 are not deficient in self-love, and are indignant if one does not appear 

 to be occupied with them. They never hold the same opinion long, 

 and will pass from one sentiment to another with marvelous rapidity. 

 No idea, no reasoning can hold them or persuade them. Their mind 

 wanders from spot to spot without the power to settle itself, and it is 

 as hard to fix the attention of an hysterical person upon a precise idea 

 as it is by reasoning to induce a bird which is hopping about to stop 

 and fix itself on a branch. 



These unfortunate creatures are wholly deficient in good sense, and 

 commit all manner of follies when left to themselves. It is necessary 

 to be fully aware of this fact to understand why they are confined in 

 an asylum for the insane ; for when we question them, when we con- 

 verse with them, we do not discover that total perversion of intelli- 

 gence which we make out so easily with regard to most insane persons. 

 "We should have to see them in their working life, that is, in the midst 

 of the exterior world, subjected to the exciting influences of every 

 kind with which it abounds, to comprehend to what extravagances, 

 not to use a stronger term, they will abandon themselves when no 

 restraint hinders them. Sometimes, though rarely, they commit crimes. 

 Most frequently they forge strings of fables to delude justice. One 

 will cut herself with scissors, and pretend that some one has hurt her ; 

 another will feign pregnancy in order to make some one whom she 

 hardly knows marry her ; another is a kleptomaniac, and when she is 

 in a shop steals everything witbin her reach, to accuse the first person 

 that comes along of having committed the theft. 



No description can be as valuable to convey an understanding of 

 the nature of the disorders of the intelligence which hysteria causes as 

 the simple story of a patient who has long been known at the Salpe- 

 triere under the name of G , and who is distinguished for the eccen- 

 tricity of her disposition, as well as for the violence of the convulsions 

 from which she suffers. G was born at Loudun on the 2d of Janu- 

 ary, 1843 ; was abandoned by her mother and put among the found- 

 lings ; after having passed her early years in an asylum, she was sent 

 to the country. "When fourteen years old she was courted by a young 



