Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith.

  • Ilza Veith
Date:
1970, ©1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    107/128 (page 101)
    the operator in this case—a man of great knowledge and large experience—was not familiar with this class of disease ; and he had the candor to acknowledge it. Need you have more conclusive evidence that we have not yet acquired all the requisite knowledge on the subject of local Hys- teria ? A young lady of 17, high born, surrounded with all the comforts which wealth and parental care could furnish her, became the subject of contraction of the fingers of the right hand, which was entirely closed in flexion. Any attempt to open the hand was attended by severe pain. She was of a nervous temperament, but failed in no respect in mental power or moral force of character. Having been for some months under treatment in England, she was sent to Paris with a view both to education and to surgical treat- ment. At the expiration of six months her hand had undergone no improvement, and she returned to London, when I saw her. I should have supposed there could hardly be two varying opinions as to the nature of this morbid action of the flexor muscles, and that nothing but Hysteria could explain a condition of the muscular system which existed in a young girl of 17, who had sustained no local injury to account for it. Tn this, as in many other similar cases, there was no catamenial derangement. 1 ordered her a full nutritious diet, exercise, and tonic reme- dies in the form of bark, iron, and valerian, and she re- turned to her home and family in the country. Some weeks afterward, finding the condition of the hand not improved, she returned to London, and I put her under the influence of chloroform, and the flexor muscles immediately relaxed.