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.

    92/128 (page 86)
    physicians, surgeons, and general practitioners, come into courts of law and state their opinion that the plaintiff had sustained grievous and probably permanent bodily detri- ment to the spinal column, on the evidence of pain pro- duced by pressure of the finger on one or more of the spi- nous processes : evidence far more than counterbalanced by the fact that these deluded persons have walked unaided into court, and have stood or sat in the witness-box for three quarters of an hour while under examination. No evidence of the reputed symptoms of these persons is obtainable either through the eye or the touch of the surgeon. There is nothing palpable, nothing organic^ You take the assertions of your patient on trust, you iden- tify yourself with his case; you place an object before him, and he declares he cannot see it ; you refer to an occurrence that happened last week, he declares he does not remember it. He suffers incessant pain in his back ; he staggers in his walk, occasionally coming to a harmless fall ; he has convulsive twitchings in his legs, occurring chiefly in bed, v^hich he says he cannot control. He passes blood in his urine, which always escapes the notice of others, for it is invariably passed at the water-closet and at no other time,, but on inquiry vou will find that this afiiicted person can walk four or five miles ; that as regards his vision his iris acts well, and the ophthalmoscope detects nothing; his appetite for food is sufficient for perfect nutrition. And let me ask you finally, whether on these conditions it is more than remotely possible such a person can be the subject of any serious organic disease ? But presuming on the possi- bility of such contradictory evidence occurring in a single