other hand, in hypnosis she could recount the proceedings in the cemetery and during the nightly disturbances.
By the peculiar hallucination and by its appearance our case recalls the conditions which V. Kraft-Ebing has described as “protracted states of hysterical delirium.” He says: “Such conditions of delirium occur in the slighter cases of hysteria. Protracted hysterical delirium is built upon a foundation of temporary exhaustion. Excitement seems to determine an outbreak, and it readily recurs. Most frequently there is persecution-delirium with very violent anxiety, sometimes of a religious or erotic character. Hallucinations of all the senses are not rare, but illusions of sight, smell and feeling are the commonest, and most important. The visual hallucinations are especially visions of animals, pictures of corpses, phantastic processions in which dead persons, devils, and ghosts swarm. The illusions of hearing are simply sounds (shrieks, howlings, claps of thunder) or local hallucinations frequently with a sexual content.”
This patient’s visions of corpses occurring almost always in attacks recall the states occasionally seen in hystero-epilepsy. There likewise occur specific visions which, in contrast with protracted delirium, are connected with single attacks.
(1) A lady 30 years of age with grande hystérie had twilight states in which as a rule she was troubled by terrible hallucinations; she saw her children carried away from her, wild beasts eating them up, and so on. She has amnesia for the content of the individual attacks.[1]
(2) A girl of 17, likewise a semi-hysteric, saw in her attacks the corpse of her dead mother approaching her to draw her to her. Patient has amnesia for the attacks.[2]
These are cases of severe hysteria wherein consciousness rests upon a profound stage of dreaming. The nature of the attack and the stability of the hallucination alone show a certain kinship with our case, which in this respect has
