HYSTERIA AND DEM ONI SM. 165 



man named Camille, but at the end of a year her affianced died of a 

 brain-fever. She was shut up during the funeral, to prevent a scene, 

 but got out of the window, ran to the cemetery, and wanted to throw 

 herself into the grave. She was confined again, but went to the ceme- 

 tery in the night, calling on her lover and wishing to dig up his body. 

 She was afterward seized with a nervous fit, during which she appeared 

 to be dead, and continued for about twenty-four hours in a complete 

 lethargy. After two years more of residence in the asylum she seemed 

 to have nearly recovered ; then, at seventeen years of age, she took a 

 situation as chambermaid at Poitiers. Her nervous attacks returned 

 in a few weeks ; she pretended to be pregnant, was believed, and was 

 sent to the hospital to be confined. The deception was soon exposed, 

 but her attacks had assumed a graver form ; she was indomitable and 

 rebellious to all discipline, and was sent to an insane asylum. While 

 the physician was treating her with belladonna, she hid her daily doses 

 of pills for ten days, and then took them all at once. They nearly 

 killed her, but she recovered. She maimed her chest with a pair of 

 scissors, and could not tell why she had done it. She ran away from 

 the hospital and went to Paris, but was attacked again and sent back. 

 She was transferred to the insane asylum at Toulouse, but escaped 

 from there and returned to Paris, walking all the way, if her story is 

 to be believed, dressed in the uniform of the asylum, sleeping in the 

 woods, undressing herself to wash her linen, living on bread which 

 she asked for at the farmhouses, and being three months on the road. 

 She made up her mind, under the pressure of hunger, to beg in spite 

 of her pride, saying that our Lord had asked for alms, and she could 

 do what he had done. She was arrested at a railroad-station for tear- 

 ing down the placards from the walls. She was taken back to the 

 Salpetriere, where she gave birth to a daughter in 1867. She escaped 

 in 1870, and became an attendant in the hospital of St. Antoine, but 

 gave way to violence in a dispute with a nun, and was discharged. 

 She started to go to see her daughter in Burgundy after the armistice 

 was signed, but was detained by the Prussians, returned to Paris, and 

 went back to the Salpetriere. At one time, having read in the papers 

 the stories about the miraculous Louise Lateau, she desired to go to 

 Belgium to visit " her sister." She was attacked with a fit on the way, 

 and met with adventures in Brussels which prevented her making her 

 visit. She finally returned to the Salpetriere in 1877, and has been 

 there ever since. She suffers from frequent demoniac attacks, but is 

 generally quite docile and reasonable in a certain measure, ready to 

 tell, to any one who will listen to it, her long and improbable history.* 



The story of G will be read with more interest, if we are able 



to realize that two hundred and fifty years ago she would have been 

 exorcised, or condemned as a witch and burned alive. 



* For a more detailed narrative of the facts relative to G , see the " Icouographie 



Photographique," part i., pp. 65, et seq. 



