Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/871

Rh Tidal Theory of the Forms of Comets. By George W. Coakley. Salem, Massachusetts. 1880. Pp. 18.

"Papillo." Organ of the New York Entomological Club. Vol. I, No. 1. New York. January, 1881. Pp. 12. Subscription, $2 per annum (ten numbers).

Third Annual Announcement of the Normal and Scientific School, Morris, Illinois. Morris. 1880. Pp. 22.

On the Constitution of the Naphthalines and their Derivatives. By M. M. P. Reverdin and E. Notting. Translated from the German by M. Benjamin, Ph.B., and T. Tonnele, Ph.B. Pp. 8.

Indications of Character in the Head and Face. By U. S. Drayton, A.M. Illustrated. New York: Fowler & Wells. 1851. Pp. 48. Price, 1.5 cents.

Pueblo Pottery. By F. W. Putnam. From the "American Art Review" for February, 1881. Illustrated. Pp 4.

The Spirit of Education. By M. l'Abbé Amable Béesau. Translated by Mrs. E. M. McCarthy. Syracuse. New York: C. W. Bardeen. 1881. Pp. 325. $1.25.

Reminiscences of Dr. Spurzheim and George Combe. By Nahum Capen. LL. D. New York: Fowler & Wells. 1881. Pp. 262. $1.50.

Drugs that enslave. The Opium, Morphine, Chloral, and Hashisch Habits. By U. H. Kane, M.D. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston. 1881. Pp. 204. $1.50.

First German Book. After the Natural or Pestalozzian Method. By James H. Worman, A.M. New York and Chicago: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 63. 35 cents, post-paid.

The Baldwin Locomotive Works. Illustrated. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1881. Pp. 153. $5.

The Human Body: An Account of its Structure and Activities, and the Conditions of its Healthy Working. By H. Newell Marten. D. Sc, etc. Illustrated. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1881. Pp. 655. $1.75.

 

An Epidemic of Hystero-Demonomania.—An Italian physician, Dr. Franzolini, has published an account of an hystero-demoniac epidemic which prevailed in the rural district of Verzeguis, province of Friuli, Italy, in 1878, and which he and Dr. Chiap were commissioned by the Prefect of Udine to examine. The commune contains about eighteen hundred inhabitants, of whom, at the time the inquest was made, sixty-two women and eleven men in two of its four subdivisions were sick, the majority of them with nervous affections of different degrees of intensity, and generally of the hysteric form without convulsions or delirium. The people of the commune were of inferior intellectual capacity and development, enjoyed little communication with the world, had been in the habit of intermarrying with each other and often with relatives of the third and fourth degrees, and were uneducated, and greatly under the influence of the priests. In November, 1877, previous to the appearance of the disease, the Jesuits had conducted a mission in the commune, with exercises and services occupying nearly all the time for several days. A general, intense religious excitement was thus produced. Two months afterward, Margherita Vidusson, a delicate girl twenty-six years old, who had already had hysteric symptoms, supposed to arise from simple nervous disease, for eight years, was attacked with convulsive fits, accompanied with lamentations and cries, which were repeated with varying frequency, intensity, and duration. Sometimes she would have ten or twelve short and quite distinct attacks in a day; at other times the attacks would continue through the day and night, with alternative remissions and exacerbations. The most intense attacks corresponded with the catamenial period. Physical remedies were employed at first against the disease, but the girl was at last believed to be super-naturally possessed, and the priests were called in to practice their exorcisms upon her. The affection then seemed to become more violent and its manifestations to assume a more dramatic form after each priestly visitation. A second person was attacked in a similar manner in July, 1878, then a third and a fourth. A commission of priests was sent to examine into the cases, a solemn mass was held, and other exercises were instituted, after which the malady took a new start and became epidemic. Drs. Franzolini and Chiap were appointed at this time to investigate the character of the disease, and suggest measures for arresting it. They found eighteen persons suffering from violent attacks, all of whom were of marriageable ages, from seventeen to twenty-six years old; one was forty-five, another fifty-five, and a third sixty-three. The symptoms of hysteria in its most simple form, without convulsions or mental aberration, had been observed in all of them for from one or two to five or ten years before the development of the morbid form. In some of them the symptoms of the former form ceased on the appearance of those of the latter. At a given moment in the course of the simple form, new symptoms 