HORSE-BACK RIDING. 89 



were ascending from the stomach to the throat, a 

 dry convulsive cough, a disturbance of the digestive 

 organs, and often a strange perversion of the appetite. 



The patient is sometimes sad, sometimes irascible, 

 and generally suffers from neuralgia. 



The hysteric attack is but the manifestation of, not 

 the disease itself. 



*' The most admissible theory of hysteria is the one 

 which gives as the basis of the disease a trouble of 

 nutrition of the nervous system in its totality, as in 

 the central apparatus as in the peripheral." (Nie- 

 meyer.) 



This disease is confined almost exclusively to 

 women, and, according to the researches of Briquet, 

 one half of them suffer from it. 



Jaccoud gives as the reason why it affects women 

 alone, *' that it is a disease of the moral and physical 

 nature, and is caused by the influence which the 

 affections or passions, more intense and less restrained 

 than in man, are allowed to exert upon the reason- 

 ing faculties ; and also that the nervous organization 

 of woman is such that a predisposition to this trouble 

 is created." 



More influenced than man by all impressions 

 affecting herself, woman is less apt to control them ; 

 she is powerless to prevent the automatic and invol- 

 untary- reactions which excitements produce upon her ; 

 and often tired of the struggle, even before she has 

 attempted it, she allows both will and reason to be 



