Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/97

Rh with medical science. We shall next inquire into the character of the demoniacal affections which were described in former centuries, and examine the strange succession of errors by which men were led to affirm that the devil took up his lodging in human bodies, and that it was necessary to burn him, to destroy those poor bodies which had become the receptacles and accomplices of malevolent spirits. Lastly, we shall review the history of the great trials for witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A chronological order would require that we should begin with the notice of demonism in the past, and close with the study of the corresponding affections of the present, but the reverse is the logical order. We shall follow with more interest the relation of the superstitions which led our ancestors astray, after we have become better acquainted with the facts that have been elucidated by contemporary investigators. In order to be able to judge error aright, we must first be acquainted with the truth.

An erroneous opinion prevails as to the causes and nature of hysteria. Romancers, particularly those who call themselves naturalists, have not neglected to propagate the doctrine that hysteria is an erotic disease. This is far from being exact. There is no relation of cause and effect between hysteria and celibacy; and we can speak of hysteria, study its causes, and describe its symptoms without infringing upon delicacy. It is a nervous disease, which has no more to do with sexual passion than other nervous diseases, and, notwithstanding the dread which it excites in half-instructed persons, we can say boldly that that dread is not justified. The facts that prove this point will appear shortly.

The asylum for the insane at the Salpêtrière is behind the buildings which are inhabited by the aged women. The hysterical patients are confined here. They are collected together in one part of the hospital, and have been for several years under the care of M. Professor Charcot. This learned physician, being desirous of applying to the nervous affections the exact methods which are employed in physiology, has established near the halls reserved for the patients a laboratory where precise studies of the most delicate phenomena of the pathology of the nervous system may be carried on. A photographic room is attached to the laboratory, in which exact representations of the principal phases of the attacks of hysteria, epilepsy, and somnambulism, have been obtained. In this manner we have succeeded in securing minute descriptions of a class of psychological phenomena so strange and fantastic that, hardly more than three centuries ago, men saw in them the breath of the devil and of all the demons of hell.

Some persons may be surprised to learn that hysterical patients are