FEMALE HALLUCINATIONS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3722, 20 June 1883, Page 4

FEMALE HALLUCINATIONS.

The British Medical Journal, aftor observing , that recent circumstances liavo directed attention to certain remarkable delusions to which females of unstable nervous equilibrium are subject, says : — "Dr. Logrand duo Simile, physician to tho Sulpetricre, I'uris, describes in his standard work, "Les Hysteriques," some remarkable cases of hallucination, where females labored under the belief that they have been struck or stabbed by others, even after having inflicted blows upon themselves. In one instance a young , woman was found by her husband lying , on the floor of her room in a fainting , iit, her face covered with blood. On reviving from her swoon she stated that she had been attacked by armed men. Tho Paris newspapers related the ease, and within three weeks two similar events occurred in tho French metropolis. All these cases proved to be fabricated by tho .supposed victims. A young girl wounded herself slightly with a. pistol. She gave the police authorities the most minute details about an imaginary assassin, who, according to her account, fired the weapon but she was found to be highly hysterical, and it was proved that she had wilfully wounded herself. In a third case in Dr. dv Saulle'sexperiencea young women was found in ii railway oamaye, stabbed in tlio left side. The incident caused great excitement, but it was proved, coutrary to her assertions, that she had inflicted the wound herself, and was a hysterical subject. A housemaid was found lying , behind a door, bound, gagged, and covered with bruises. She stated that she had been brutally attacked by two burglars with blackened facos ; but she was a highly hysterical woman, and thero appears to have been strong evidence that sho had contrived to tie her own hands, and to gag and bruise herself. Perhaps the strangest case of all occurred in M. Tardieu's practioe. A young lady, living at Courbevoie, wished to make herself an object of public interest by passing as a victim of a political conspiracy, which she pretended to havo discovered. Ono night eho was found in a state of the greatest mental perturbation at tho door of her apartment. She could not talk, but stated in writing that she had been attacked outside her own hoiiso by a man who had attempted to garroto her, at the same time striking her twice with a dagger. Only the lady's clothing was uninjured, and tho body of her dress and her corset were found to be cut through, but at different levels. She tried to make out that the attempt at strangulation had caused dumbness. 3M. Tardieu remarked in her hearing that this infirmity rapidly disappeared when produced under circumstances of this kind. Sho soon managed to regain her speech, and in a short time admitted that the whole narrative had been developed out of her inner consciousness.