HYSTERIA. 545 



A female ass shewed signs of horsing, in conjunction with some tetanic 

 indications, which were referred to the presence of the venereal orgasm •' 

 among these were clenching of the jaws, grinding of the teeth, tardy and 

 difficult mastication, and inconvenience in swallowing. At first the male 

 was denied her. She was bled, and took a nitred decoction of valerian 

 with sulphuric acid, and had enemata of assafoetida dissolved in sulphuric 

 acid, and frictions 'with camphorated liniment upon the cheeks, neck, and 

 back and loins, which dissipated the nervous disorder; but left the 

 horsing as before. She was now given a stallion ass ; she took him, be- 

 came with foal, and from that day recovered. 



Mr. Haycock, V.S., Huddersfield, has written an Essay 

 * On Hysteria in the Mare ; ' the deductions I have drawn 

 from the facts detailed in which are the following : — If 

 Mr, Haycock^s disease anywise assume the hysterical charac- 

 ter, it is when hysteria puts on the garb of the irregular 

 and anomalous disease, leaving all but untouched and undis- 

 turbed the generative organs. Dr. Copland^s pathology of 

 hysteria is, " That hysteria arises from the state of the 

 organic nervous influence, endoiving the generative organs of 

 the female, and that a similar state of the sexual organs of 

 the male very rarely occasions it/^ &c. And Dr. Elliotson, 

 in his ' Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine/ 

 says, " This (hysteria) is a disease which occurs much more 

 frequently in females than in males; and in females par- 

 ticularly during their sexual period, if I may so call it,^^ &c. 

 " Any woman may have hysteria if she can have but 

 emotion of mind enough. '' Mr. Haycock^s cases owe their 

 origin to neither mental aff'ection nor to any excitement 

 or abnormality of the sexual organs. In only one of 

 the cases (case IV) were any symptoms manifested of tlic 

 mare being ''^in use for tlie horse:" the others are 

 nervous, convulsive, or spasmodic affections, which, though 

 called " hysteria," were wanting in some important requisites 

 to make up that affection, properly so called ; such as no 

 choking and globus hystericus (wanting perhaps, from the 

 circumstance of the horse not being an animal capable of 

 vomition), no pale, limpid urine ; only a single one instond 

 of a succession of fits; vl fatal disease; although '' simple 

 and pure hysteria," as Dr. Copland says, " is rarely or almost 



II. * ^ 35 



