The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet.

  • Janet, Pierre, 1859-1947.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The major symptoms of hysteria : fifteen lectures given in the Medical School of Harvard University [between the fifteenth of October and the end of November, 1906] / by Pierre Janet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the immobility of her fingers is due in reality to a mus- cular disturbance in her fore-arm. She stops her anesthesia at the wrist, as would the vulgar, who, in their ignorance, say that if the hand does not move, it is because the hand is diseased. Now this popular conception of the limbs is formed by old ideas we have about our limbs, which we all keep in spite of our anatomic notions. So these hysteric anesthesias seem again to have something mental, intellectual, in them. This characteristic, though really very important, might still, however, give rise to some cavilling. There are in intoxications, in alcoholism, for instance, in- sensibilities in the form of a sock or a boot. In the medulla, segmental localizations have been studied that may lead one to conceive anesthesias of the same kind. Practically, you will be right nine times out of ten in basing a diagnosis of hysteric paralysis on this geometric form of anesthesia, but, in order to avoid the least chances of error, we must insist on the last characteristic, to which we have just come, namely the mental char- acter of this anesthesia. It is, moreover, this character which will enable us to arrive at a more intelligible conception of the paralysis itself. Such will be the object of our next lesson.