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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_e3d21d02-5f01-5a3c-a8c8-ef71488da1b9">[242] C. C. Hersman, "Medico-legal Aspects of Eroto-Choreic Insanities," Alienist and Neurologist, July, 1897. I may mention that Pitres (Leçons cliniques sur l'Hystérie, vol. ii, p. 34) records the almost identical case of a hysterical girl in one of his wards, who was at first grateful to the clinical clerk to whom her case was intrusted, but afterward changed her behavior, accused him of coming nightly through the window, lying beside her, caressing her, and then exerting violent coitus three or four times in succession, until she was utterly exhausted. I may here refer to the tendency to erotic excitement in women under the influence of chloroform and nitrous oxide, a tendency rarely or never noted in men, and of the frequency with which the phenomenon is attributed by the subject to actual assault. See H. Ellis, Man and Woman, pp. 269–274.

[243] In Australia, some years ago, a man was charged with rape, found guilty of "attempt," and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, on the accusation of a girl of 13, who subsequently confessed that the charge was imaginary; in this case, the jury found it impossible to believe that so young a girl could have been lying, or hallucinated, because she narrated the details of the alleged offence with such circumstantial detail. Such cases are not uncommon, and in some measure, no doubt, they may be accounted for by auto-erotic nocturnal hallucinations.

[244] Sante de Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno nell'isterismo e nella epilessia, Rome, 1896, p. 101.

[245] Pitres, Leçons cliniques sur l'Hystérie, vol. ii, pp. 37 et seq. The Lorraine inquisitor, Nicolas Remy, very carefully investigated the question of the feelings of witches when having intercourse with the Devil, questioning them minutely, and ascertained that such intercourse was usually extremely painful, filling them with icy horror (See, e.g., Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. v, p. 127; the same author presents an interesting summary of the phenomena of the Witches' Sabbath). But intercourse with the Devil was by no means always painful. Isabel Gowdie, a Scotch witch, bore clear testimony to this point: "The youngest and lustiest women," she stated, "will have very great pleasure in their carnal copulation with him, yea, much more than with their own husbands. … He is abler for us than any man can be. (Alack! that I should compare him to a man!)" Yet her description scarcely sounds attractive; he was a "large, black, hairy man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring well-water." His foot was forked and cloven; he was sometimes like a deer, or a roe; and he would hold up his tail while the witches kissed that region (Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. iii, Appendix VII; see, also, the illustrations at the end of Dr. A. Marie's Folie et Mysticisme, 1907).

[246] Gilles de la Tourette, loc. cit., p. 518. Erotic hallucinations have also been studied by Bellamy, in a Bordeaux thesis, Hallucinations Erotiques, 1900–1901.

[247] On one occasion, when still a girl, whenever an artist whom she admired touched her hand she felt erection and moisture of the sexual parts, but without any sensation of pleasure; a little later, when an uncle's knee casually came in contact with her thigh, ejaculation of mucus took place, though she disliked the uncle; again, when a nurse, on casually seeing a man's sexual organs, an electric shock went through her, though the sight was disgusting to her; and when she had once to assist a man to urinate, she became in the highest degree excited, though without pleasure, and lay down on a couch in the next room, while a conclusive ejaculation took place. (Moll, Libido Sexualis, Bd. I, p. 354.)

[248] Breuer and Freud, Studien über Hysterie, 1895, p. 217.

[249] Calmeil (De la Folie, vol. i, p. 252) called attention to the large part played by uterine sensations in the hallucinations of some famous women ascetics, and added: "It is well recognized that the narrative of such sensations nearly always occupies the first place in the divagations of hysterical virgins."

[250] H. Leuba, "Les Tendances Religieuses chez les Mystiques Chrétiens," Revue Philosophique, November, 1902, p. 465. St. Theresa herself states that physical sensations played a considerable part in this experience.

      II.

       Table of Contents

      Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotions—The Early Greek Theories of its Nature and Causation—The Gradual Rise of Modern Views—Charcot—The Revolt Against Charcot's Too Absolute Conclusions—Fallacies Involved—Charcot's Attitude the Outcome of his Personal Temperament—Breuer and Freud—Their Views Supplement and Complete Charcot's—At the Same Time they Furnish a Justification for the Earlier Doctrine of Hysteria—But They Must Not be Regarded as Final—The Diffused Hysteroid Condition in Normal Persons—The Physiological Basis of Hysteria—True Pathological Hysteria is Linked on to almost Normal States, especially to Sex-hunger.

The nocturnal hallucinations of hysteria, as all careful students of this condition now seem to agree, are closely allied to the hysterical attack proper. Sollier, indeed, one of the ablest of the more recent investigators of hysteria, has argued with much force that the subjects of hysteria really live in a state of pathological sleep, of vigilambulism.^[251] He regards all the various accidents of hysteria as having a common basis in disturbances of sensibility, in the widest sense of the word "sensibility,"—as the very foundation of personality—while anæsthesia is "the real sigillum hysteriæ." Whatever the form of hysteria, we are thus only concerned with a more or less profound state of vigilambulism: a state in which the subject seems, often even to himself, to be more or less always asleep, whether the sleep may be regarded as local or general. Sollier agrees with Féré that the disorder of sensibility may be regarded as due to an exhaustion of the sensory centres of the brain, whether as the result of constitutional cerebral weakness, of the shock of a violent emotion, or of some toxic influence on the cerebral cells.

We may, therefore, fitly turn from the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep which in women generally, and especially in hysterical women, seem to possess so much importance and significance, to the question—which has been so divergently answered at different periods and by different investigators—concerning the causation of hysteria, and especially concerning its alleged connection with conscious or unconscious sexual emotion.^[252]

It was the belief of the ancient Greeks that hysteria came from the womb; hence its name. We first find that statement in Plato's Timæus: "In men the organ of generation—becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust—seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb, or uterus, of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and, when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and, wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration,^[253] drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease."

Plato, it is true, cannot be said to reveal anywhere a very scientific attitude toward Nature. Yet he was here probably only giving expression to the current medical doctrine of his day. We find precisely the same doctrine attributed

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