furnishes another instance of
the continuity of therapeutic methods, through all changes of theory, from
the earliest to the latest times. Drugs of unpleasant odor, like
asafoetida, have always been used in hysteria, and scientific medicine
to-day still finds that asafoetida is a powerful sedative to the uterus,
controlling nervous conditions during pregnancy and arresting uterine
irritation when abortion is threatened (see, e.g., Warman, _Der
Frauenarzt_, August, 1895). Again, the rubbing of fragrant ointments into
the sexual regions is but a form of that massage which is one of the
modern methods of treating the sexual disorders of women.

[257] _Les Demoniaques dans l'Art_, 1887; _Les Malades et les Difformes
dans l'Art_, 1889.

[258] Glafira Abricosoff, of Moscow, in her Paris thesis, _L'Hysterie aux
xvii et xviii siecles_, 1897, presents a summary of the various views held
at this time; as also Gilles de la Tourette, _Traite de l'Hysterie_, vol.
i, Chapter I.

[259] _Edinburgh Medical Journal_, June, 1883, p. 1123, and _Mental
Diseases_, 1887, p. 488.

[260] Hegar, _Zusammenhang der Geschlechtskrankheiten mit nervoesen
Leiden_, Stuttgart, 1885. (Hegar, however, went much further than this,
and was largely responsible for the surgical treatment of hysteria now
generally recognized as worse than futile.) Balls-Headley, "Etiology of
Nervous Diseases of the Female Genital Organs," Allbutt and Playfair,
_System of Gynecology_, 1896, p. 141.

[261] Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna Delinquente_, 1893, pp. 613-14.

[262] Charcot and Marie, article on "Hysteria," Tuke's _Dictionary of
Psychological Medicine_.

[263] Axenfeld and Huchard, _Traite des Nevroses_, 1883, pp. 1092-94.
Icard (_La Femme pendant la Periode Menstruelle_, pp. 120-21) has also
referred to recorded cases of hysteria in animals (Coste's and Peter's
cases), as has Gilles de la Tourette (op. cit., vol. i, p. 123). See also,
for references, Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 59.

[264] _Man and Woman_, 4th ed., p. 326. A distinguished gynaecologist,
Matthews Duncan, had remarked some years earlier (_Lancet_, May 18, 1889)
that hysteria, though not a womb disease, "especially attaches itself to
the generative system, because the genital system, more than any other,
exerts emotional power over the individual, power also in morals, power in
social questions."

[265] Gilles de la Tourette, _Archives de Tocologie et de Gynecologie_,
June, 1895.

[266] _R