Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

Mr. Jumeau’s countenance darkened. “I should still be inclined to trust the evidence of my senses, and believe that my wife is unfeignedly ill.”

“Exactly as I expected: simulated ailments and hysteria are hopelessly confounded; but no wonder; hysteria is a misnomer, used in the vaguest way, not even confined to women. Why, I knew a man, a clergyman in the North, who suffered from ‘clergyman’s sore throat’; he was a popular evangelical preacher, and there was no end to the sympathy his case evoked; he couldn’t preach, so his devoted congregation sent him, now to the South of France, now to Algiers, now to Madeira. After each delightful sojourn he returned, looking plump and well, but unable to raise his voice above a hardly audible whisper. This went on for three years or so. Then his Bishop interfered; he must provide a curate in permanent charge, with nearly the full emoluments of the living. The following Sunday he preached, nor did he again lose his voice. And this was an earnest and honest man, who would rather any day be at his work than wandering idly about the world. Plainly, too, in the etymological sense of the word, his complaint was not hysteria. But this is not an exceptional case: keep any man in his dressing-gown for a week or two—a bad cold, say—and he will lay himself out to be pitied and petted, will have half the ailments under the sun, and be at death’s door with each. And this is your active man; a man of sedentary habits, notwithstanding his stronger frame, is nearly as open as a woman to the advances of this stealthy foe. Why, for that matter, I’ve seen it in a dog! Did you never see a dog limp pathetically on his three legs that he might be made much of for his lameness, until his master’s whistle calls him off at a canter on all fours?”

“I get no nearer; what have these illustrations to do with my wife?”

“Wait a bit, and I’ll try to show you. The throat would seem to be a common seat of the affection. I knew a lady—nice woman she was, too—who went about for years speaking in a painful whisper, whilst everybody said, ‘Poor Mrs. Marjoribanks!’ But one evening she managed to set her bed-curtains alight, when she rushed to the door, screaming, ‘Ann! Ann! the house is on fire! Come at once!’ The dear woman believed ever after, that ‘something burst’ in her throat, and described the sensation minutely; her friends believed, and her doctor did not contradict. By the way, no remedy has proved more often effectual than a house on fire, only you will see the difficulties. I knew of a case, however, where the ‘house-afire’ prescription was applied with great effect. ’Twas in a London hospital for ladies; a most baffling case; patient had been for months unable to move a limb—was lifted in and out of bed like a log, fed as you would pour into a bottle. A clever young house-surgeon laid a plot with the nurses. In the middle of the night her room was filled with fumes, lurid light, &c. She tried to cry out, but the smoke was suffocating; she jumped out of bed and made for the door—more choking smoke—threw up the sash—fireman, rope, ladder—she scrambled down, and was safe. The whole was a hoax, but it cured her, and the nature of the cure was mercifully kept secret. Another example: A friend of mine determined to put a young woman under ‘massage’ in her own home; he got a trained operator, forbade any of her family to see her, and waited for results. The girl did not mend; ‘very odd! some reason for this,’ he muttered; and it came out that every night the mother had crept in to wish her child good-night; the tender visits were put a stop to, and the girl recovered.”

“Your examples are interesting enough, but I fail to see how they bear; in each case, you have a person of weak or disordered intellect simulating a disease with no rational object in view. Now the beggars who know how to manufacture sores on their persons have the advantage—they do it for gain.”

“I have told my tale badly; these were not persons of weak or disordered intellect; some of them very much otherwise; neither did they consciously simulate disease; not one believed it possible to make the effort he or she was surprised into. The whole question belongs to the mysterious borderland of physical and psychological science—not pathological, observe; the subject of disease and its treatment is hardly for the lay mind.”

“I am trying to understand.”

“It is worth your while; if every man took the pains to understand the little that is yet to be known on this interesting subject he might secure his own household, at any rate, from much misery and waste of vital powers; and not only his household, but perhaps himself—for, as I have tried to show, this that is called ‘hysteria’ is not necessarily an affair of sex.”

“Go on; I am not yet within appreciable distance of anything bearing on my wife’s case.”

“Ah, the thing is a million-headed monster! hardly to be recognised by the same features in any two cases. To get at the rationale of it, we must take up human nature by the roots. We talk glibly in these days of what we get from our forefathers, what comes to us through our environment, and consider that in these two we have the sum of human nature. Not a bit of it; we have only accounted for some peculiarities in the individual; independently of these, we come equipped with stock for the business of life of which too little account is taken. The subject is wide, so I shall confine myself to an item or two.