740 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



function occurs with the advent of fatigue. This functional change 

 makes its appearance in the form of a physical agitation, or in 

 other words, an exaggeration of movement. Galton found signs 

 of fatigue when he examined the posture of a subject to whom a 

 difficult passage was being read aloud. The fatigued auditor yawns, 

 stretches himself, shifts his position, and contracts certain facial 

 muscles. In school-children one may observe movements of the 

 eyebrows, of the lips, of the forehead, and of the fingers; and if 

 the degree of fatigue be increased, these movements soon pass 

 over into chorea and tics. Experimental investigations, such as 

 those of Sommer and Bettmann, have revealed the presence of a 

 modification of the reflexes and an increase in the number of tremors 

 in the ergographic curve. Pathological investigations have shown 

 an exaggeration of the reflexes, an extension of innervation to 

 the unused muscles, an involuntary laugh, a muscular tremor, 

 and spasms of various sorts, etc. The agitation induced by fatigue 

 may also be visceral; I cannot lay too much stress upon the spasms 

 of the digestive organs, the changes of respiratory rhythm, the 

 profuse perspirations. The agitation may even be mental; Galton 

 observed irritability, ill-humor, a tendency to magnify small things; 

 and more recently, attention has been called to various forms of 

 fancies which take possession of the mind and even degenerate 

 into pathological obsessions. 



The subject is well aware that something abnormal is taking 

 place within him; he is conscious of certain abnormal sensations. 

 Galton emphasized the feeling of incapacity which increases with 

 increase of fatigue; Oehrn, in 1895, and more particularly Tissie, 

 laid stress upon the feeling of weariness as a characteristic symp- 

 tom of fatigue. These phenomena are observed alike in bicyclists, 

 in children who do mental work, and in subjects who repeatedly 

 perform an experiment. These feelings correspond to something 

 which is perfectly real; it is possible to demonstrate in various 

 ways that a decrease of mental function runs parallel with the 

 agitation. Whether we examine the subject's penmanship, or 

 measure his capacity to insert a needle into holes in a perforated 

 plate, as I did in 1889, and as Bryan has also done, we invari- 

 ably find a lack of dexterity, a lesser precision of movement. The 

 diminished rapidity which is found to be characteristic of reac- 

 tions and of all sorts of motor adjustments has been demonstrated 

 in innumerable ways (Kraepelin, Oehrn, Burgerstein, Vaschide, 

 Binet and Henri, etc.). On the other hand, attention and power 

 of apprehension also decrease in considerable degree; and one 

 finds an increase in the number of errors in tasks whose accom- 

 plishment depends upon automatic mental processes, or the mech- 

 anical association of ideas (Cattell, Finzi. Sikorsky, Hopfner, 



