HYSTERIA. 



149 



Children's Hospital, Paris, demonstrate that the disease may gene- 

 rally be cured by a persevering use of sulphur-baths. Baron Dupuy- 

 tren employed cold affusion with much success. The same mode 

 of treatment has been found very efficacious at the Hopital des 

 Enfans Malades. 



HYSTERIA. 



This is an apyrexial convulsive disorder, affecting females almost 

 exclusively. The seat of this disease is altogether unknown. 



Symptoms. — Hysteria is an intermittent, irregular, chronic dis- 

 ease, which comes on by fits, and usually attacks females from the 

 asje of puberty, to the critical period; it very commonly occurs on 

 the suppression or diminution of the menses, particularly in persons 

 of a nervous or irritable temperament. In the slighter forms, the 

 patient, without any assignable cause, bursts into a fit of weeping, 

 which perhaps is soon followed by convulsive laughter, which may 

 last for a few minutes ; and before composure takes place, the pa- 

 tient gives several loud sobs ; one of these fits may succeed the 

 other, till the patient falls asleep. The fit sometimes begins with a 

 yawning, numbness of the extremities, involuntary laughing and 

 crying, alternations of pallor and redness of the face, and a sensa- 

 tion as if a ball {globus hystericus) commencing at the hypogas- 

 trium, ascended through the abdomen and thorax to settle at the 

 throat, where it produces a violent sense of constriction, and of im- 

 pending suffocation. In more severe instances of hysteria, there are 

 convulsive movements, particularly of the hands, face, jaws, and 

 muscles of respiration ; they are of a clonic character. The pupils 

 are dilated ; and occasionally the paroxysm has a close resemblance 

 to epilepsy, only that the insensibility is rarely complete. In this dis- 

 ease there is a remarkable deficiency of the organic matters in the 

 urine, and this fluid is very watery. Hysteria does not tend essen- 

 tially to increase, nor does it determine as a consequence, mania or 

 idiotcy. 



Treatment. — In those cases where there is reason to suspect any 

 congestion or inflammation of the uterus, or of any portion of the 

 brain, then blood should be drawn by cupping from the back of the 

 head or loins. During a paroxysm, the stays and all tight strings 

 should be loosened, and the free admission of air procured; the face 

 is to be sprinkled with cold water, volatile salts are to be held to the 

 nostrils, and, if the patient can swallow, a drachm of the aromatic 

 spirit of ammonia, or the same quantity of ammoniated tincture of 

 valerian, may be given in a wineglass-full of water. In the severer 

 forms of the disease, the application of cold to the body is often a 

 most effectual means of putting a stop to the paroxysm. The bowels 

 should be kept regularly open, and the best purge in these cases is 



