In the neuromimesis of chronic spondylitis or hysterical spine the pain is generally superficial, and is almost always located over or near the spinous processes; it is sometimes transient, and frequently changes its location from time to time; a normal degree of mobility of the spinal column under properly directed manipulation is preserved; the nocturnal cry and apprehensive expression of Pott's disease are wanting.
With reference to the hysterical lateral curvature, Shaffer, quoting Paget, says “ether or chloroform will help. You can straighten the mimic contracture when the muscles cannot act; you cannot so straighten a real curvature.”
In the diagnosis of local hysterical affections one point emphasized by Skey is well worthy of consideration; and that is that local forms of hysteria are often not seen because they are not looked for. “If,” says he, “you will so focus your mental vision and endeavor to distinguish the minute texture of your cases, and look into and not at them, you will acknowledge the truth of the description, and you will adopt a sound principle of treatment that meets disease face to face with a direct instead of an oblique force.” According to Paget, the means for diagnosis in these cases to be sought—(1) in what may be regarded as the predisposition, the general condition of the nervous system, on which, as in a predisposing constitution, the nervous mimicry of disease is founded; (2) in the events by which, as by exciting causes, the mimicry may be evoked and localized; (3) in the local symptoms in each case.
Local symptoms as a means of diagnosis can sometimes be made use of in general hysteria. A case may present symptoms of either the gravest form of organic nervous disease or the gravest form of hysteria, and be for a time in doubt, when suddenly some special local manifestation appears which cannot be other than hysterical, and which clinches the diagnosis. In a case with profound anæsthesia, with paraplegia and marked contractures, with recurring spasms of frightful character, the sudden appearance of aphonia and apsithyria at once cleared all remaining doubt. Herbert Page mentions the case of a man who suffered from marked paraplegia and extreme emotional disturbance after a railway collision, who, nine months after the accident, had an attack of aphonia brought on suddenly by hearing of the death of a friend. He eventually recovered.
To detect hysterical or simulated blindness the methods described by Harlan are those adopted in my own practice. When the blindness is in both eyes, optical tests cannot be applied. Harlan suggests etherization.110 In a case of deception, conscious or unconscious, he says, “as the effect of the anæsthetic passed off the patient would probably recover the power of vision before his consciousness was sufficiently restored to enable him to resume the deception.” Hutchinson cured a case of deaf-dumbness by means of etherization. For simulated monocular blindness Graefe's prism-test may be used: “If a prism held before the eye in which sight is admitted causes double vision, or when its axis is held horizontally a corrective squint, vision with both eyes is rendered certain.” It should be borne in mind that the failure to produce double images is not positive proof of monocular blindness, for it is possible that the person may see with either eye separately, but not enjoy binocular vision, as in a case of squint, however slight. Instead of using a prism while the patient is reading with both eyes at an ordinary distance, say of fourteen or sixteen inches, on some pretext slip a glass of high focus in front of the eye said to be sound. If the reading is continued without change, of course the amaurosis is not real. Other tests have been recommended, but these can usually be made available.
110 Loc. cit.
The diagnosis of hysterical, simulated, or mimetic deafness is more difficult than that of blindness. When the deafness is bilateral, the difficulty is greater than when unilateral. The method by etherization just referred to might be tried. Politzer in his work on diseases of the ear111 makes the following suggestions: Whether the patient can be wakened out of sleep by a moderately loud call seems to be the surest experiment. But, as in total deafness motor reflexes may be elicited by the concussion of loud sounds, care must be taken not to go too near the person concerned and not to call too loudly. The practical objection to this procedure in civil practice would seem to be that we are not often about when our patients are asleep. In unilateral deafness L. Müller's method is to use two tubes, through which words are spoken in both ears at the same time. When unilateral deafness is really present the patient will only repeat what has been spoken in the healthy ear, while when there is simulation he becomes confused, and will repeat the words spoken into the seemingly deaf ear also. To avoid mistakes in using this method, a low voice must be employed.
111 A Textbook of the Diseases of the Ear and Adjacent Organs, by Adam Politzer, translated and edited by James Patterson Cassells, M.D., M. R. C. S. Eng., Philada., 1883.
Mistakes in diagnosis where hysteria is in question are frequently due to that association with it of serious organic disease of the nervous system of which I have already spoken at length under Complications. This is a fact which has not been overlooked by authors and teachers, but one on which sufficient stress has not yet been laid, and one which is not always kept in mind by the practitioner. Bramwell says: “Cases are every now and again met with in which serious organic disease (myelitis and poliomyelitis, anterior, acute, for example) is said to be hysterical. Mistakes of this description are often due to the fact that serious organic disease is frequently associated with the general symptoms and signs of hysteria; it is, in fact, essential to remember that all cases of paraplegia occurring in hysterical patients are not necessarily functional—i.e. hysterical; the presence of hysteria or a history of hysterical fits is only corroborative evidence, and the (positive) diagnosis of hysterical paraplegia should never be given unless the observer has, after the most careful examination, failed to detect the signs and symptoms of organic disease.”
PROGNOSIS.—Hysteria may terminate (1) in permanent recovery; (2) in temporary recovery, with a tendency to relapse or to the establishment of hysterical symptoms of a different character; (3) in some other affection, as insanity, phthisis, or possibly sclerosis; (4) in death, but the death in such cases is usually not the direct result of hysteria, but of some accident. Death from intercurrent disorders may take place in hysteria. It is altogether doubtful, however, whether the affection which has been described as acute fatal hysteria should be placed in the hysterical category. In the cases reported the symptom-picture would in almost every instance seem to indicate the probability of the hysteria having been simply a complication of other disorders, such as epilepsy, eclampsia, and acute mania.