A gradual improvement took place, and eighteen months after the onset of the condition the cure was complete.
In the same connection Pitres refers to a case reported by Calvert Holland.
A miner who had gone through the experience of incipient suffocation found himself two months later irresistibly impelled to exuberant speech. The rapidity and indistinctness of his enunciation of words were very much in evidence, as well as a tendency to stammering and to tautology. A further symptom consisted in rotatory spasms of the head; but after five months a satisfactory cure resulted.
We may cite a last instance from Ball:
A young girl was in the habit of kneeling down, making the sign of the cross, and repeating "Jesus, Mary, Joseph." The performance was limited to this order of events, but its practice in drawing-rooms and still more in thoroughfares led to her being certified as insane.
ECHOLALIA
In his description of the disease which bears his name, Gilles de la Tourette used the expression echolalia to denote a certain phenomenon of occasional occurrence among those who tic.
The patient (says Guinon) repeats echo-like the sounds he hears around him, and like the echo his reproduction of them is more or less lengthy. In its mildest form the symptom may consist in the repetition of a simple involuntary "ah!" which some one near by has ejaculated, or the last word or two of some one's talk is mimicked, or in a more advanced stage the whole of a phrase is reproduced.
As a general rule the "echo" is rather obtrusive, but its commencement at least may be very different, the patient being astonished to find himself repeating in a subdued tone of voice what he hears others saying; and, struggling in fear to rid himself of the habit, he ends by sinking into a state of actual anguish. It is at this moment that he fails to inhibit his impulses and gives vent to the word he has been endeavouring to check, which he may repeat loudly and violently in a sort of fury. The fidelity and clearness with which the utterances of others are imitated are remarkable.
Sometimes by an effort of the will the patient is able to suppress, it may be imperfectly, the impulse to echo, so that while his tongue is under his control, his will gives rein to his other tics, and a regular muscular debauch takes place. In the mildest cases he can replace a word by a movement, by a little cough or an insignificant "ahem!" but not beyond a certain point, for he will thus restrain himself only when he is forewarned; a sudden and unexpected ejaculation in his neighbourhood will catch him off his guard.