The third case given by Petetin is that of Madame de Saint Paul, who was attacked with catalepsy a few days after her marriage, in consequence of seeing her father fall down in a fit of apoplexy at table. The general features of her lucidity are the same as in the former cases. I shall, therefore, content myself with quoting some observations made by Dr. Prost, author of La Médecine éclairée par l’Observation et l’Anatomie pathologique, on the authority of Dr. Foissac, to whom he communicated them. Dr. Prost had studied this case assiduously during nine months. “Her intellectual faculties,” observed Dr. Prost, “acquired a great activity, and the richness of her fancy made itself remarked in the picturesque images which she threw into her descriptions. As she was telling her friends of an approaching attack of catalepsy, suddenly she exclaimed,—‘I no longer see or hear objects in the same manner; every thing is transparent round me, and my observation extends to incalculable distances.’ She designated, without an error, the people who were on the public promenade, whether near the house, or still a quarter of an hour’s walk distant. She read the thoughts of every one who came near her; she marked those who were false and vicious; and repelled the approach of stupid people, who bored her with their questions and aggravated her malady. ‘Just as much as their pates excite my pity,’ said she, ‛do the heads of men of information and intelligence, all whose thoughts I look into, fill me with delight.’”
The following facts I cite corroboratively, from one of several cases of hysteria communicated by Dr. Delpit, inspecting physician of the waters at Barèges.—(Bibliotheque Médicale, t. lvi. p. 308.)
Mdlle. V——, aged thirteen, after seeing the curé administer extreme unction, fainted away. There followed extreme disgust towards food. During eighteen days she neither ate nor drank; there was no secretion; her breathing remained tranquil and regular; the patient preserved her embonpoint and complexion. During this complete suspension of the functions of digestion, the organs of sensation would be alternately paralyzed. One day the patient became blind; on the next, she could see, but could not hear; another day she lost her speech. The mutations were noticed generally in the night, upon her waking out of sleep. “Nevertheless,” says M. Delpit, “her intellect preserved all its vivacity and force, and, during the palsy of the organs of sensation, nature supplied the loss in another way; when, with her eyes, Mdlle. Caroline could not distinguish light, she yet read, and read distinctly, by carrying her fingers over the letters. I have made her thus read, in the daytime and in the profoundest darkness, either printed pages out of the first book that came to hand, or written passages that I had previously prepared.” In this, the alternation of different states of recollections is not described as having been observed. But I have little doubt that double consciousness was really present. I believe that feature to be essential to waking trance. I have little doubt, likewise, that double consciousness is attended by more or less trance-perception. The co-existence of spasm, necessary to constitute the case one of catalepsy, is accidental.
Sensorial illusions occasionally occur in catalepsy, but not frequently; they are commoner in the inferior grades of trance. The daimon of Socrates was, no doubt, a hallucination of this kind.
The trance-daimon, or sensorial illusion mixing itself with trance, is exemplified in the following case of catalepsy, which occurred in the person of the adopted daughter of the Baron de Strombeck.
Besides the ordinary features, on which I will not again dwell, at one time it was her custom to apply to an imaginary being for directions as to the treatment of her own case. Subsequently, she one day observed—“It is not a phantom; I was in error in thinking it so; it is a voice which speaks within me, and which I think without me. This apparition comes because my sleep is less perfect. In that case, I seem to see a white cloud rise out of the earth, from which a voice issues, the echo of which reverberates within me.”
This patient had quintuple consciousness, or four morbid states, each of which kept its own recollections to itself.
A final case I will quote, the authority of which is the Baron de Fortis. It was treated by Dr. Despine of Aix-les-Bains.
The patient had had epilepsy, for the cure of which she went to Aix. There she had all sorts of fits and day-somnambulism, during which she waited at table, with her eyes shut, perfectly. She likewise saw alternately with her fingers, the palm of her hand, and her elbow, and would write with precision with her right hand, superintending the process with her left elbow. These details are peculiarly gratifying to myself, for in the little I have seen, I yet have seen a patient walk about with her eyes shut, and well blinded besides, holding the knuckles of one hand before her as a seeing lantern. However, the special interest of this case is, that the patient was differently affected by different kinds of matter; glass appeared to burn her, porcelain was pleasantly warm, earthenware felt cold.
What comment can I make on the preceding wondrous details? Those to whom they are new must have time to become familiar with them; in order, reversing the process by which the eye gets to see in the dark, to learn to distinguish objects in this flood of excessive light. Those who are already acquainted with them will, I think, agree with me that the principle which I have assumed—the possibility of an abnormal relation of the mind and body allowing the former, either to shift the place of its manifestations in the nervous system, or partially to energize as free spirit—is the only one which at present offers any solution of the new powers displayed in catalepsy. One regrets that more was not made of the opportunities of observation which Petetin enjoyed. But there are means, which I shall by-and-by have occasion to specify, through which, in the practice of medicine, and in the proper treatment of various disorders, like instances may be artificially multiplied and modified so as to meet the exigencies of inductive science. In the mean time, let me append one or two corollaries to the preceding demonstration.