Hysteria once developed, it is the moral treatment which often really cures. The basis of this method of cure is to rouse the will. It is essential to establish faith in the mind of the patient. She must be made to feel not only that she can be helped, but that she will be. Every legitimate means also should be taken to impress the patient with the idea that her case is fully understood. If malingering or partial malingering enters into the problem, the patient will then feel that she has been detected, and will conclude that she had better get out of her dilemma as gracefully as possible. Where simulation does not enter faith is an important nerve-stimulant and tonic; it unchains the will.
Many physicians have extraordinary ideas about hysteria, and because of these adopt remarkable and sometimes outrageous methods of treatment. They find a woman with hysterical symptoms, and forthwith conclude she is nothing but a fraud. They are much inclined to assert their opinions, not infrequently to the patient herself, and, if not directly to her, in her hearing to other patients or to friends, relatives, nurses, or physicians. They threaten, denounce, and punish—the latter especially in hospitals. In general practice their course is modified usually by the wholesome restraint which the financial and other extra-hospital relations of patient and physician enforce.
Although hysterical patients often do simulate and are guilty of fraud, it should never be forgotten that some hysterical manifestations may be for the time being beyond the control of patients. Even for some of the frauds which are practised the individuals are scarcely responsible, because of the weakness of their moral nature and their lack of will-power. Moral treatment in the form of reckless harshness becomes immoral treatment. The liability to mistake in diagnosis, and the frequent association of organic disease with hysterical symptoms, should make the physician careful and conservative. It is also of the highest importance often that the doctor should not show his hand. The fact that an occasional cure, which is usually temporary, is effected by denunciation, and even cruelty, is not a good argument against the stand taken here.
Harsh measures should only be adopted after due consideration and by a well-digested method. A good plan sometimes is, after carefully examining the patient, to place her on some simple, medicinal, and perhaps electrical treatment, taking care quietly to prophesy a speedy cure. If this does not work, in a few days other severe or more positive measures may be used, perhaps blistering or strong electrical currents. Later, but in rare cases only, after giving the patient a chance to arouse herself by letting her know what she may expect, painful electrical currents, the hot iron, the cold bath, or similar measures may be used. Such treatment, however, should never be used as a punishment.
The method of cure by neglect can sometimes be resorted to with advantage. The ever-practical Wilks mentions the case of a school-teacher with hemianalgesia, hemianæsthesia, and an array of other hysterical symptoms who had gone through all manner of treatment, and at the end of seven months was no better. The doctor simply left her alone. He ordered her no drugs, and regularly passed by her bed. In three weeks he found her sitting up. She talked a little and had some feeling in her right side. She was now encouraged, and made rapid progress to recovery. Neglect had aroused her dormant powers. It must be said that a treatment of this kind can be carried out with far more prospects of success in a general hospital than in a private institution or at the home of a patient. It is a method of treatment which may fail or succeed according to the tact and intelligence of the physician.
I cannot overlook here the consideration of the subject of the so-called faith cure and mind cure. One difference between the faith cure as claimed and practised by its advocates, and by those who uphold it from a scientific standpoint, is simply that the latter do not refer the results obtained to any supernatural or spiritual agency. I would not advise the establishment of prayer-meetings for the relief of hysteria, but would suggest that the power of faith be exercised to its fullest extent in a legitimate way.
A young lady is sick, and for two years is seen by all the leading doctors in London; a clergyman is asked in and prays over her, and she gets up and walks. The doctors all join in and say the case was one of hysteria—that there was nothing the matter with her. Then, says Wilks, “Why was the girl subjected to local treatment and doses of physic for years? Why did not the doctors do what the parson did?”
Tuke119 devotes a chapter to psychotherapeutics, which every physician who is called upon to treat hysteria should read. He attempts to reduce the therapeutic use of mental influence to a practical, working basis. I will formulate from Tuke and my own experience certain propositions as to the employment of psychological measures: (1) It is often important and always justifiable to inspire confidence and hope in hysterical patients by promising cures when it is possible to achieve cures. (2) A physician may sometimes properly avail himself of his influence over the emotions of the patient in the treatment of hysterical patients, but always with great caution and discretion. (3) Every effort should be made to excite hysterical patients to exert the will. (4) In some hysterical cases it is advisable to systematically direct the attention to a particular region of the body, arousing at the same time the expectation of a certain result. (5) Combined mental and physical procedures may sometimes be employed. (6) Hypnotism may be used in a very few cases.
119 Influence of the Mind upon the Body.
The importance of employing mental impression is thoroughly exemplified, if nothing else is accomplished, by a study of such a craze as the so-called mind cure. Not a few people of supposed sense and cultivation have pinned their faith to this latest Boston hobby. A glance at the published writings of the apostles of the mind cure will show at once to the critical mind that all in it of value is dependent upon the effects of mental impression upon certain peculiar natures, some of them being of a kind which afford us not a few of our cases of hysteria. W. F. Evans has published several works upon the subject. From one of these120 I have sought, but not altogether successfully, to obtain some ideas as to the basis of the mind-cure treatment. It is claimed that the object is to construct a theoretical and practical system of phrenopathy, or mental cure, on the basis of the idealistic philosophy of Berkeley, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The fundamental doctrine of those who believe in the mental cure is, that to think and to exist are one and the same, and that every disease is a translation into a bodily expression of a fixed idea of mind. If by any therapeutic device the morbid idea can be removed, the cure of the malady is assured. When the patient is passive, and consequently impressible, he is made to fix his thoughts with expectant attention upon the effect to be produced. The physician thinks to the same effect, wills it, and believes and imagines that it is being done; the mental action to the patient, sympathizing with that of the physician, is precipitated upon the body, and becomes a silent, transforming, sanitive energy. It must be, says Evans, “a malady more than ordinarily obstinate that is neither relieved nor cured by it.”