122 A STUDY OF SOME 



Artificially- Induced Convulsions. Plates 544 and 545. 



In order that these plates may be understood, it will be neces- 

 sary to quote from the paper* in which these convulsions were 

 first described. 



"Our experiments were performed by subjecting a group of 

 muscles to a constant and precise effort, the attention being at the 

 same time concentrated upon some train of thought. The position 

 we most frequently adopted was the following : The subject being 

 seated, the tips of the fingers of one or both hands were so placed 

 upon the surface of a table as to give merely a delicate sense of 

 contact, — i.e., the fingers were 7iot allowed to rest upon the table, 

 but were maintained by a constant muscular effort barely in contact 

 with it. Any other position involving a like effort of constant 

 muscular adjustment was found to be equally efficient. Any one 

 object in the room was now selected and the mind fixed upon it, or 

 some subject of thought was taken up and unswervingly followed. 



"After the lapse of a variable period of time, extending from 

 a few minutes to an hour, . . . tremors commenced in the hands. 

 These tremors became rapidly magnified into rapid movements of 

 great extent, sometimes to and fro, sometimes irregular. If the 

 experiment was now continued, the muscles of the arms, shoulders, 

 back, buttock, and legs became successively affected, and the sub- 

 ject was frequently thrown violently to the ground in a strong- 

 general convnlsion. 



"Seizures equalling in violence a general convulsion were by 

 no means induced in all subjects, and were generally the result of 

 experiments repeated many times during the same evening." 



The subject employed in the experiments from which the photo- 

 graphs were made Avas a professional artist's model, a woman, aged 

 thirty-five, of indifferent or phlegmatic temperament. The con- 

 ditions of the experiment were much less favorable, of course, 

 than they would have been in a private room. They were per- 

 formed in the large open photograpiiic yard and amid the dis- 

 tracting circumstancesof strange and unusual preparation. How- 



* " On the Artificial Induction of Convulsive Seizures," by F. X. Dercum, 

 M.D., and A. J. Parker, M.D. : Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 

 vol. xi., No. 4, October, 1884 



