er is one of pronounced morbidity.

The condition of true hysteria is thus linked on to almost healthy states,
and especially to a condition which may be described as one of sex-hunger.
Such a suggestion may help us to see these puzzling phenomena in their
true nature and perspective.

At this point I may refer to the interesting parallel, and
probable real relationship, between hysteria and chlorosis. As
Luzet has said, hysteria and chlorosis are sisters. We have seen
that there is some ground for regarding hysteria as an
exaggerated form of a normal process which is really an
auto-erotic phenomenon. There is some ground, also, for regarding
chlorosis as the exaggeration of a physiological state connected
with sexual conditions, more specifically with the preparation
for maternity. Hysteria is so frequently associated with anaemic
conditions that Biernacki has argued that such conditions really
constitute the primary and fundamental cause of hysteria
(_Neurologisches Centralblatt_, March, 1898). And, centuries
before Biernacki, Sydenham had stated his belief that poverty of
the blood is the chief cause of hysteria.

It would be some confirmation of this position if we could
believe that chlorosis, like hysteria, is in some degree a
congenital condition. This was the view of Virchow, who regarded
chlorosis as essentially dependent on a congenital hyoplasia of
the arterial system. Stieda, on the basis of an elaborate study
of twenty-three cases, has endeavored to prove that chlorosis is
due to a congenital defect of development (_Zeitschrift fuer
Geburtshuelfe und Gynaekologie_, vol. xxxii, Part I, 1895). His
facts tend to prove that in chlorosis there are signs of general
ill-development, and that, in particular, there is imperfect
development of the breasts and sexual organs, with a tendency to
contracted pelvis. Charrin, again, regards utero-ovarian
inadequacy as at least one of the factors of chlorosis.
Chlorosis, in its extreme form, may thus be regarded as a
disorder of development, a sign of physical degeneracy. Even if
not strictly a cause, a congenital condition may, as Stockman
believes (_British Medical Journal_, December 14, 1895), be a
predisposing influence.

However it may be in extreme cases, there is very considerable
evidence to indicate that the ordinary anaemia o