ivista Sperimentale di Freniatria_, 1897, p. 290; summarized in
the _Journal of Mental Science_, January, 1898.

[267] From the earliest times it was held that menstruation favors
hysteria; more recently, Landouzy recorded a number of observations
showing that hysterical attacks coincide with perfectly healthy
menstruation; while Ball has maintained that it is only during
menstruation that hysteria appears in its true color. See the opinions
collected by Icard, _La Femme pendant la Periode Menstruelle_, pp. 75-81.

[268] Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psychosen durch Sexuelle
Abstinenz," _Jahrbuecher fuer Psychiatrie_, vol. iii, 1888. It must,
however, be added that the relief of hysteria by sexual satisfaction is
not rare, and that Rosenthal finds that the convulsions are thus
diminished. (_Allgemeine Wiener Medizinal-Zeitung_, Nos. 46 and 47, 1887.)
So they are also, in simple and uncomplicated cases, according to Mongeri,
by pregnancy.

[269] "All doctors who have patients in convents," remarks Marro (_La
Puberta_, p. 338), "know how hysteria dominates among them;" he adds that
his own experience confirms that of Raciborski, who found that nuns
devoted to the contemplative life are more liable to hysteria than those
who are occupied in teaching or in nursing. It must be added, however,
that there is not unanimity as to the prevalence of hysteria in convents.
Brachet was of the same opinion as Briquet, and so considered it rare.
Imbert-Goubeyre, also (_La Stigmatisation_, p. 436) states that during
more than forty years of medical life, though he has been connected with a
number of religious communities, he has not found in them a single
hysterical subject, the reason being, he remarks, that the unbalanced and
extravagant are refused admission to the cloister.

[270] Parent-Duchatelet, _De la Prostitution_, vol. i, p. 242.

[271] It may not be unnecessary to point out that here and throughout, in
speaking of the psychic mechanism of hysteria, I do not admit that any
process can be _purely_ psychic. As Fere puts it in an admirable study of
hysteria (_Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine_, 1897, vol. x, p. 556):
"In the genesis of hysterical troubles everything takes place as if the
psychical and the somatic phenomena were two aspects of the same
biological fact."

[272] Pierre Janet, _L'Automatisme Psychologique_, 1889; _L'Etat mental
des Hysteriques_, 1894; _Nevroses et Idees fixes_, 1898; Breuer und Freud,