On the association of hysteria with malingering, and on the phylogenetic aspect of hysteria as pathological exaggeration (or disorder) of tertiary (nervous) sex characters / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Weber, Frederick Parkes, 1863-1962.
Date:
1911
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the association of hysteria with malingering, and on the phylogenetic aspect of hysteria as pathological exaggeration (or disorder) of tertiary (nervous) sex characters / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    account for occasional cases of “male hysteria.” I am not here con- cerned with the temporary “ hysterical ” conditions not rarely observed in the male as the result of violent emotions, starvation and grave nutritive disturbance, or as forming a familiar part of the effect of certain toxic substances, such as alcohol. The phylogenetic aspect of hysteria is, as far as I can see, not necessarily opposed to Pierre Janet’s, Babinski’s, and some other modern views on the subject. Pathomimia. I shall not trouble to bring forward any special evidence here to prove that ordinary hysterical symptoms are frequently associated in the same patient with attempts to simulate disease, accident, or injury, and with deception of all kinds (“mythomania,” &c.). The fairly frequent occurrence of such association is recognized by all—so much so, that in a recent paper on “ Hysteria and Mythomania ” Dupre and Logre quote Hartemberg as maintaining that hysteria (which Charcot called “ la grande simulatrice ”) “ est d’essence mythopathique; elle pent so definir la mythomanie des syndromes.” 1 Moreover, the frequent use of the term “ hysterical malingering,” or “ hysterical simulation,” proves that the occurrence of such associations is generally acknowledged.2 In fact, hysteria is frequently characterized by two kinds of simulation of disease, or “pathomimia,” if I may be allowed to borrow a term suggested by Paul Bourget for his friend Dr. Dieulafoy, who em- ployed it in one of his most sensational medical communications3: (1) The unconscious mimicry of disease, so well referred to in the writings of Charcot, Sir James Paget, &c., to which the term “ neuromimesis ” has been usually applied; and (2) the conscious, more or less voluntary, imitation of disease that may be termed “ hysterical malingering.” 1 “Proceedings of the Twenty-first Congress of Alienists and Neurologists, 1911,” Presse Midicale, Par., 1911, xix, p. 660. • I am about to publish elsewhere two remarkable cases, which 1 have had an opportunity of following over a great number of years, and which illustrate the intimate association of simulation and hysteria. Hysterical anaesthesia and hysterical paralysis occurred in both cases. 1 Communicated to the Paris Academy of Medicine, June 9, 1908, Presse Medicalc, Par. 1908, xvi, p. 369.