An inquiry into the real nature of hysteria / by D. de Berdt Hovell.

  • Hovell, Dennis de Berdt.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the real nature of hysteria / by D. de Berdt Hovell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Aiul the barbed arrows of a frowning God, And such emollients as bis friends could spare; Friends, such as his, for modern Jobs prepare. West, rather curst, with hearts that never feel. . . . And minds that deem derided pain a treat. . . . “Their sovereign nostrum is a clumsy joke On pangs enforced by God’s severest stroke; But with a soul that ever felt the sting Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing.” Next follow valuable hints as to treatment in such eases :— “ Not to molest, or irritate, or raise A laugh at his expense ”. . . . hut “ He that has not usurped the name of man. Does all, and deems too little, what he can T’ assuage the throbbings of the festered part, And stanch the bleedings of a broken heart. ’Tis not as heads that never ache suppose— Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes. . . . No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels, No cure for such till God, who makes them, heals.” So much for the psychological interpretation of this state, versus the pathological hypothesis of uterine irritation. The recognition of the physical effects of moral or psychical causes is necessary to the right understanding of the subject. The modus operandi of these influences, and the particular portion of the nervous system which they affect, still require investigation and determining. Tor the present it will be sufficient to remark, that the moral and motor powers are affected more than the mental; the feelings, both moral and physical, more than the intellect; motion, sensation, volition, together with those portions of the nervous system which direct and control circulation, more than the functions which are strictly cere- bral ; the spinal marrow and the sympathetic more frequently than the brain. Postscript.—A lamentable instance of the evil arising from the habit of designating a depressed condition of physical and moral power by the inappropriate name Hysteria, and attributing the attendant disabilities to wilfulness, obstinacy and deceit, has just occurred in the case of Sarah Jacobs, who, with equal incorrectness and misapplication of terms, was called “ The Tasting Girl in Wales.” The expedition of nurses devised by metropolitan and provincial physicians was not only founded on a misconception of the real state of the case and a waste of medical power, but also an entire mis- direction of treatment. It seems to have been undertaken with the idea that to convict the patient of imposture was a fundamental and necessary step towards her cure. It failed grievously in respect of both objects. It certainly