E. Raehlmann, Professor Of Ophthalmology at Dorpat, presents a résumé of his experiences as to the visual development of persons blind from birth to whom by a successful operation sight had been restored. We confine ourselves to a few quotations. "Four weeks after the operation of the right eye and a fortnight after that of the left, on April 28th, the first experiments were made on Johann Rubens. April 30th, patient moved his head more than his eyes. He declared he saw perfectly; yet he was unable to recognise any object except his drinking mug, which on the previous day he had felt with his fingers. Also his shoe was not recognised until he had touched it. May 4th, patient could see that a wooden ball differed from a wooden cube, both being of the same color, but was unable to tell that one was round, the other square. Nor could he distinguish the ball from a disc. After much handling the objects he learned to recognise by sight the roundness of the ball and the squareness of the cube, but he remained unable to distinguish the ball from the disc. He learned quickly to grasp objects in the median line of his eyes but had great difficulty in finding them with his hand when placed at an angle before him.
"May 23d, a glass is again presented to the patient; he sees his picture; noticing the frame, he declares the glass to be a picture. (A picture had been presented to him repeatedly.) Now a second face is shown to him in the glass by the side of his own. Patient becomes greatly bewildered, declaring the picture to be familiar to him. Being asked whether it is that of the Professor, he denies the fact, because the Professor stood beside him. Looking over his shoulder he notices the Professor, and seeing him twice he is confounded…. Patient is left alone and remains almost half an hour before the glass. He moves his arm constantly up and down, observing with a smile how the picture in the glass makes the same movements. Requested to touch his nose, he first grasps into the glass, then behind the glass, repeating this several times. His hand then is put on his nose. Now he laughs and touches the several parts of his face, constantly observing the motions of his hand in the glass."
Most instructive cases of diseases of mind are those in which patients cannot help having and obeying certain ideas which are not, however, hallucinations. Dr. Hack Tuke in the fourth article of this number says: "I was consulted once in the case of a lady, the most important symptom of whose disease was that she had to count up to a certain number before doing the most trivial thing; when she turned at night in bed from one side to the other, or when she took out her watch, or in the morning before she rose; when she went downstairs to breakfast, she would suddenly stop on one of the steps and count; at the breakfast table when about to take the tea-pot before touching its handle"; etc. (Arithmomania). Another case. "A young law-student who had distinguished himself at school, one day read the English sentence 'it was not compatible' and shortly after that he found the sentence, 'I like it not' in German. It struck him that the negative in the one case was placed before and in the other after the word negatived, and he commenced to ponder on negations in general. It became an all-important and all-absorbing problem to him. It kept him from work. For some time he proposed questions to himself like: Why do we not have cold blood like some other animals? etc. He is at present in great danger of becoming undecisive and wavering in his actions, for his passion of ruminating on his problem of negatives weakens his will and threatens to destroy his energy." (Folie du doute.) Esquirol calls cases of Zwangsvorstellungen, in which a patient otherwise healthy is forced to pursue a certain trivial thought, "monomanie raisonnante"; Professor Ball, "intellectual impulses." Although hereditary influences most likely play an important part in this disease they seem to originate in emotions, and Régis for this reason calls them "délire émotif," stating that their ultimate cause must be sought in a diseased state of the ganglionic system of the intestines. Dr. Tuke favors Charcot's term "onomatomanie." The disease is a Wortbesessenheit, a word-mania. Certain expressions or phrases are pressing heavily upon the patient's consciousness so as to force him irresistibly to think them or to pronounce them again and again. Not all cases can be classified under word-mania, but such cases as doubt-mania (Zweifelsucht) or arithmomania are akin to it. Dr. Tuke's advice is not to fight the disease but to teach the patient to ignore it, to treat it as trivial, for the diseased ideas derive new strength from the opposition made to them.
Professor E. Mach explains Weber's discovery that "if a tuning fork is placed upon the head of a person, one ear being shut, the sound is heard and located in the shut ear," in the following way: The sound passes through the bones of the cranium to the labyrinth of the ear and thence out of the ear into the air, thus taking the inverse direction of other sounds we hear. If the flow in one ear be stopped, the sound-waves are reflected and the drum vibrates stronger. Hence the tone will be heard more plainly in the shut ear and will be located there. Professor Schaefer in the last article of this number describes an experiment in the same line, which in another way—the transmission of sound through air waves being excluded—proves the intercranial conductibility of very weak sounds from ear to ear. (Hamburg and Leipsic: L. Voss.)
SCHRIFTEN DER GESELLSCHAFT FUER PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG. No. 1.
CONTENTS:
DIE BEDEUTUNG NARCOTISCHER MITTEL FUER DEN HYPNOTISMUS. By Dr.
Freiherrn von Schrenck-Notzing.
EIN GUTACHTEN UEBER EINEN FALL VON SPONTANEM SOMNAMBULISMUS. By
Prof. Dr. August Forel.
The psychological societies of Munich and Berlin have started under the above title a periodical the first number of which is very promising. Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing makes some critical remarks on Prof. Bernheim's view to consider hypnosis as an increase of suggestibility produced by suggestion. There are observations which do not justify this definition. He then investigates the substitution of narcotics as a means for producing hypnosis and their "suggestive" effects. In the second part of his essay Dr. Schrenck-Notzing speaks about the "suggestive" effects of Indian hemp which in a special preparation under the name of hashish is used in the Orient as a means of intoxication. Reference is made to the Ismaelite secret society "Megalis et Hiemit" (the house of wisdom) consisting of missionaries (Daïs), adepts (Fedaïs) and laymen (Refiks), all of which are bound blindly to obey their grand master (Dai-al-Doal). Hassan, an adept of this society, was obliged to flee, 1090, on account of some quarrels. He founded a similar sect at the head of which stood the old man of the mountains (Shaik-al-Djabal). Their members, especially the lower classes, the hashishin, made themselves formidable in the times of the crusades by their reckless obedience in executing murder and other crimes. The order consisted of 60,000 members and their blind obedience was effected through suggestibility in the state of hashish intoxication. The word assassin is derived from their name. In the year 1255 a Mongolian governor ordered 12,000 hashishin to be executed on account of the dangerous character of their sect. The secret of their formidable obedience appears to have been the method of intoxicating the neophyte before his admission to the order with hashish in some grand mountain scenery and suggesting to him all the pleasures of paradise which he would find in blind faith and unreserved obedience to the old man of the mountain. Contempt of death, insensibility under the severest tortures, and an unspeakable joy in the fulfilment of their leader's command were the result. It can readily be perceived what a dangerous drug hashish is; nevertheless it is said that the cultivation of Indian hemp, especially among some negro tribes of Africa according to the reports of Wissmann, exercises in several respects a good influence. Some of the barbarians of darkest Africa have given up cannibalism and accustom themselves to more civilised habits. The psychical effects of hashish are described as: (1) a feeling of comfort; (2) dissociation of ideas and a lack of their control; (3) illusion concerning space and time; (4) an increased sense of hearing; (5) fixed ideas and delirium; (6) a disturbance of affective states, e. g. suspicion; (7) irresistible impulses; (8) illusions and hallucinations. Dr. v. Schrenck-Notzing freely quotes from Moreau, Du Hashish et de l'aliénation mentale, Etude psychologique (Paris: Masson, 1845), and adds several experiments of his own.
Mrs. Fay, a somnambule accused of imposition and fraud, was delivered by the County Court of Zurich to Professor Forel for observation who kept her for several days in his institute. The professor's report to the County Court is very interesting in so far as Mrs. Fay, a woman without education, must be considered as a genuine somnambule exhibiting all the symptoms observed in other cases. She had been a servant girl in Basel and since her fifteenth year fell twice a day in an hypnotic sleep. She married and had several children, her youngest child was born while she was in her hypnotic sleep. She made a living by curing patients who consulted her when asleep, and was punished before on that account for imposition. During one of her hypnotic states patients were introduced to her in the presence of Professor Forel and she made her statements in vague terms as almost all somnambules do. The experiment showed that her diagnosis consisted of random guesses which in exceptional cases happened to be correct; sometimes they were not wholly incorrect, but mostly erroneous. She believes herself to be possessed by a spirit whom she calls "Ernst." Professor Forel without considering the woman as a model of truthfulness, believes in her sincerity. He cured her of her hypnotic sleep on her own request. She stated that the money she earned by curing patients did not make up for the loss she endured by not being able to earn a living by work. Professor Forel succeeded with his cure, but he states in a postscript that the woman having returned to her former surroundings, has since suffered from relapses. (Leipsic: Ambr. Abel.)