348 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



tliis, we cannot do better than quote the following case, which rests on the evidence 

 of a physician of the highest eminence in his profession : " A romantic girl," he 

 says, " was for some months under my care in the hospital with this complaint. She 

 vomited such quantities of dark blood (which did not coagulate, however), as I 

 should not have thought possible if I had not seen them. Day after day there were 

 potfuls of this stuff; yet she did not lose flesh, and she menstruated regularly; and, 

 what was very curious, the vomiting was always suspended during the menstrual 

 period, and recurred again so soon as the natural discharge ceased. I said she was 

 romantic, but I should rather have said that she had that peculiar mental constitu- 

 tion which belongs to hysterical females. She used to write me long letters of thanks 

 for my attention, though I was heartily tired of her ; and these were couched in all 

 the fine language of the Minerva press. At last I sent her away, just as bad as 

 when she came into the hospital. Five or six years afterwards she called at my 

 house with a present of some game, and told me she had got married to a hair- 

 dresser, and was quite recovered." 



We occasionally observe in hysterical patients, especially at the catamenial period, 

 a complete suppression of urine, lasting from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. There 

 may, perhaps, be some uneasiness experienced, and the pulse may be quickened, but 

 after a short time a few spoonfuls of urine are expelled, and the normal state is 

 restored. In other instances, during the lapse of several successive days, weeks, or 

 even months, the quantity of urine secreted in the twenty-four hours may be quite 

 insignificant or almost nil. Occasionally there is complete suppression for days 

 together. When matters take this turn there is superadded, as it were of necessity, 

 another phenomenon, which may be regarded as the complement of the first, and that 

 is vomiting, the ejected matter presenting the appearance and exhaling the odour of 

 urine. This may go on for weeks or months without any visible disturbance of the 

 general health. Of course, this condition may be feigned, and girls have been 

 known to drink their urine in order to conceal the fact of their having been able and 

 obliged to void it, but in many cases the patients have been so strictly watched that 

 there was no possibility of deception, and no reasonable doubt can be entertained of 

 the truth of the phenomena we have described. 



It must be admitted that many of these facts are very difficult to explain, but 

 they are none the less real for that. Many doctors refuse to have anything to do 

 with them, declaring that they fall within the province of Dr. Lynn or Mr. 

 Maskelyne, or Robert Houdin, rather than within that of the physician. That is 

 absurd, and those who are acquainted with the care and accuracy with which obser- 

 vations are now carried on in the wards of our hospitals, know that deception is well- 

 nigh impossible. Hospital nurses, nowadays, are intelligent, well-educated young 

 women, with sharp eyes and quick ears, and they are as incapable as the physicians 

 of countenancing any imposture. More than that, in some cases in which doubts 

 have been expressed as to the reality of the phenomena, the patients have for a time 

 been placed in a straight waistcoat, so that they were powerless to help themselves 

 in any way. 



In a case of hysterical suppression of urine, which was in one of the Paris 

 hospitals in 1871, the patient also suffered from contraction of all her limbs. The 



