en fanatical, in reading the Bible. Coming to the
passage, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, etc.," she was so
impressed with the necessity of obeying the divine injunction that she
enucleated her eye with a meat-hook. There is mentioned the case of a
young woman who cut off her right hand and cast it into the fire, and
attempted to enucleate her eyes, and also to hold her remaining hand in
the fire. Haslam reports the history of a female who mutilated herself
by grinding glass between her teeth.

Channing gives an account of the case of Helen Miller, a German Jewess
of thirty, who was admitted to the Asylum for Insane Criminals at
Auburn, N.Y., in October, 1872, and readmitted in June, 1875, suffering
from simulation of hematemesis. On September 25th she cut her left
wrist and right hand; in three weeks she became again "discouraged"
because she was refused opium, and again cut her arms below the elbows,
cleanly severing the skin and fascia, and completely hacking the
muscles in every direction. Six weeks later she repeated the latter
feat over the seat of the recently healed cicatrices. The right arm
healed, but the left showed erysipelatous inflammation, culminating in
edema, which affected the glottis to such an extent that tracheotomy
was performed to save her life. Five weeks after convalescence, during
which her conduct was exemplary, she again cut her arms in the same
place. In the following April, for the merest trifle, she again
repeated the mutilation, but this time leaving pieces of glass in the
wounds. Six months later she inflicted a wound seven inches in length,
in which she inserted 30 pieces of glass, seven long splinters, and
five shoe-nails. In June, 1877, she cut herself for the last time. The
following articles were taken from her arms and preserved: Ninety-four
pieces of glass, 34 splinters, two tacks, five shoe-nails, one pin, and
one needle, besides other things which were lost,--making altogether
about 150 articles.

"Needle-girls," etc.--A peculiar type of self-mutilation is the habit
sometimes seen in hysteric persons of piercing their flesh with
numerous needles or pins. Herbolt of Copenhagen tells of a young Jewess
from whose body, in the course of eighteen months, were extracted 217
needles. Sometime after 100 more came from a tumor on the shoulder. As
all the symptoms in this case were abdominal, it was supposed that
during an epileptic seizure this girl had swallowed the needl