460 FSTCHOLOOT. 



" All physicians who have been much engaged in general practice 

 have seen cases of dyspepsia in whicli constant low spirits and occa 

 sional attacks of terror rendered the patient's condition pitiable in the 

 extreme. I have observed these cases often, and have watched them 

 closely, and I have never seen greater suffering of any kind than I have 

 witnessed during these attacks. , . . Thus, a man is suffering from 

 what we call nervous dyspepsia. Some day, we will suppose in the 

 middle of the afternoon, without any warning or visible cause, one of 

 these attacks of terror comes on. The first thing the man feels is great 

 but vague discomfort. Then he notices that his heart is beating much 

 too violently. At the same time shocks or flashes as of electrical dis- 

 charges, so violent as to be almost painful, pass one after another 

 through his body and limbs. Then in a few minutes he falls into a 

 condition of the most intense fear. He is not afraid of anything ; he is 

 simply afraid. His mine! is perfectly clear. He looks for a cause of 

 his wretched condition, cat sees none. Presently his terror is such 

 that he trembles violently and utters low moans ; his body is damp 

 with perspiration; his mouth is perfectly dry ; and at this stage there 

 are no tears in his eyes, though his suffening is intense. When the 

 climax of the attack is reached and passed, there is a copious flow ot 

 tears, or else a mental condition in which the person weeps upon the 

 least provocation. At this stage a large quantity of pale urine is passed. 

 Then the heart's action becomes again normal, and the attack passes 

 off." * 



Again : 



" There are outbreaks of rage so groundless and unbridled that 

 all must admit them to be expressions of disease. For the medical 

 layman hardly anything can be more instructive than the observation 

 of such a pathological attack of rage, especially when it presents itself 

 pure and unmixed with other psychical disturbances. This happens in 

 that rather rare disease named transitory mania. The patient predis- 

 posed to this — otherwise an entirely reasonable person — will be attacked 

 suddenly without the slightest outward provocation, and thrown (to use 

 the words of the latest writer on the subject , O. Schwartzer, Die transito- 

 rische Tobsucht, Wien, 1880), ' into a paroxysm of the wildest rage, with 

 a feartul and blindly furious impulse tO' do violence and destroy.' 

 He flies at those about him; strikes, kicks, and throttles whomever he 

 can catch ; dashes every object about which he can lay his hands on; 

 breaks and crushes what is near him; tears his clothes; shouts, howls, 

 and roars, with eyes that flash and roll, and shows meanwhile all those 

 symptoms of vaso-motor congestion which we have learned to know as 

 the concomitants of anger. His face is red, swollen, his cheeks hot, hig 

 eyes protuberant and their whites bloodshot, the heart beats vio- 



*-R. M. Bucke: Man's Moral Nature (N. Y., 1879), p. 97, 



