124 



A STUDY OF SOME 



Fro. r 



the first series of Plate 544, the subject was lying upon a mattress, 



and the convulsion was induced by 

 simply attempting to keep the hands 

 in delicate contact with the body. 

 The convulsion, as shown by the 

 figure, was of considerable violence. 



It might have been possible by 

 prolonging the experiment to pro- 

 duce still more startling results, but 

 the unfavorable surround ings, the 

 temperament of the subject, and the 

 fact of her being much exhausted, 

 forbade, as being both impracticable 

 and unjustifiable, any further attempt. 



The reader may appreciate more 

 fully the violence of these seizures 

 when told that of the various figures 

 here given, each represents only a brief portion of a convulsion, 



Fig. 18. 



and that portion embraced within so small an interval of time as 

 1.8 seconds.* 



Case of Functional Spasm. (Local Chorea.) Plates 556 and 557. 



This remarkable case, some of the phenomena of which resem- 

 ble those seen in the artificially induced convulsions, was first 

 studied by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and reported by him, in the 

 American Journal of the Medical Sciences for October, 1876, in a 

 paper entitled ''On Functional Spasms." From it we abstract 

 the following history : 



* For further particulars concerning these interesting phenomena the reader 

 is referred to the original paper. 



