On insanity and nervous disorders peculiar to women, in some of their medical and medico-legal aspects / by Thomas More Madden.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On insanity and nervous disorders peculiar to women, in some of their medical and medico-legal aspects / by Thomas More Madden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Within the last ten years many cases of hystero-epilepsy have come under my notice, and in these the influence of uterine dis- placement or flexions was not as apparent as from Dr. Grailey Hewitt's observations might have been expected. In only four cases was there any marked displacement, whilst in twenty instances there was some accompanying menstrual disorder. III. HYSTERICAL DELUSIONS CONNECTED WITH EPILEPSY. Amongst the symptoms of hysterical hyperiEsthesia which often usher in epileptiform disease, Morel, who is copied by other more recent writers, mentions delusions on the subject of health, unjust complaints, and recriminations without foundation, as facts which should awaken our solicitude. These hysterical symptoms, however, are, I believe, still more marked at the moment that consciousness returns after an epileptic seizure, when the patient slowly and indistinctly begins to remember something that may have happened immediately before, or even during, the paroxysm. Occasionally there is then a curious inter- blending of the patient's recollection of her real and fancied condition. In this condition the phenomena of the pre-epileptic aura may come into startling prominence, and be insisted on as of actual occurrence. Illusions consequent on epilepsy may possibly, in some cases, become of serious medico-legal interest. Thus a recent instance of alleged assault on a lady, which has puzzled the ingenuity of detectives, and taxed the imagination of journalists, might, perhaps, have been better elucidated by a physician conversant with the post-epileptic delusions of hysterical women. IV. THE VOICE IN HYSTERIA. As a general indication of hysteric disease the changed character of the patient's voice in such cases may be mentioned. This altera- tion consists in a loss of that peculiar softness and melody which distinguishes the female from the male voice. In uterine disease