Persuaded, the two table companions chose salsifis. And from there began a cordial acquaintance, on two days each month.
«You see, Monsieur Simonini,» Bourru explained, «Doctor Charcot is studying hysteria, a form of neurosis that manifests itself in various psychomotor, sensory and vegetative symptoms. In the past it was regarded as an exclusively female phenomenon caused by disturbances in uterine function, but Charcot has formed the view that hysterical manifestations are to be found equally in both sexes, and may include paralysis, epilepsy, blindness or deafness, and difficulties in breathing, speaking or swallowing.»
«In the past it was regarded as an exclusively female phenomenon caused by disturbances in uterine function.»
«My colleague,» Burot interrupted, «has not yet mentioned that Charcot claims to have developed a treatment that alleviates the symptoms.»
«I was just about to get there,» responded Bourru, exasperated. «Charcot has chosen the path of hypnotism, which until recently was an occupation for charlatans like Mesmer. Under hypnosis, patients ought to be able to recall traumatic episodes, which are the origin of the hysteria, and be cured through awareness of them.»
«And are they cured?»
«That is the point, Monsieur Simonini,» said Bourru. «For us, what goes on at the Salpêtrière often feels more like the theater than clinical psychiatry. Let us be clear: we wouldn’t want to dispute the infallible diagnostic abilities of the master…»
«Not to question them at all,» confirmed Burot. «It’s the technique of hypnotism itself that…»
Bourru and Burot told me about the various systems for hypnotizing, from the quackish methods of a certain Abbé Faria (my ears pricked up at that Dumasian name, though it is well known that Dumas plundered real stories) to the scientific approach of Doctor Braid, a true pioneer.
«The best magnetizers,» said Burot, «now follow procedures that are much simpler.»
«And more effective,» added Bourru. «A medallion or a key is waved before the patient, who is told to watch it closely. Within one to three minutes the subject’s pupils develop an oscillatory movement, the pulse slows down, the eyes close, the face relaxes, and drowsiness may last for up to twenty minutes.»
«It has to be said,» Burot observed, «that much depends on the subject, since magnetization does not depend upon the transmission of mysterious fluids, as that buffoon Mesmer suggested, but upon phenomena of autosuggestion. Indian gurus obtain the same result by focusing on the point of their nose, the monks of Mount Athos by staring at their navel.
«We do not much believe in these forms of autosuggestion,» Burot added, «though we ourselves are only putting into practice ideas developed by Charcot himself, before he began to place so much trust in hypnotism. We are dealing with cases of personality variation, in other words, with patients who think they are one person one day and someone else another, and the two personalities know nothing of each other. Last year a certain Louis came to our hospital.»
«An interesting case,» said Bourru. «He complained of paralysis, anesthesia, contractions, muscular spasms, hyperesthesia, skin irritation, hemorrhaging, coughing, vomiting, epileptic fits, catatonia, sleepwalking, Saint Vitus’ dance, speech impediments…»
«Sometimes he thought he was a dog,» said Burot, «or a steam locomotive. And then he had persecutory delusions, restricted vision, gustatory, olfactory and visual hallucinations, pseudo-tubercular pulmonary congestion, headache, stomachache, constipation, anorexia, bulimia, lethargy, kleptomania…»
«In short,» Bourru said, «a normal picture. But instead of resorting to hypnosis, we applied a steel bar to the patient’s right arm, and there, as if by magic, he appeared before us like a new man. Paralysis and insensitivity had disappeared from the right side and had moved to the left.»
«In front of us was another person,» continued Burot, «who remembered nothing of what had happened a moment earlier. Louis, in one of his states, was teetotal; in the other he had a tendency to drunkenness.»
«Note,» said Bourru, «that the magnetic force of a substance acts even from a distance. For example, a small bottle containing an alcoholic substance is placed under the subject’s chair without his knowledge. In this state of somnambulism the subject will display all the symptoms of drunkenness.»
«You understand that our practices respect the mental integrity of the patient,» concluded Burot. «Hypnotism makes the subject lose consciousness, whereas with magnetism there is no violent impact upon an organ but a progressive charging of the nervous plexus.»
«Charcot has chosen the path of hypnotism, which until recently was an occupation for charlatans like Mesmer.»
From that conversation I formed the view that Bourru and Burot were two imbeciles who tormented poor lunatics with injurious substances, and I felt confirmed in my opinion when I saw Doctor Du Maurier, who was following the conversation from a nearby table, shaking his head several times.
«My dear friend,» he said to me two days later, «Charcot and our two from Rochefort, instead of analyzing the past history of their patients and asking themselves what it means to have two states of consciousness, spend their time worrying about whether it’s better to work on them with hypnosis or with metal bars. The problem is that in many patients the passage from one personality to another occurs spontaneously, without our being able to predict how and when. We might talk of self-hypnosis. In my view Charcot and his disciples have not given sufficient consideration to the experiences of Doctor Azam and the Félida case. We know very little about these phenomena. Memory disturbance may be caused by a reduction in blood flow to a still unknown part of the brain, and the momentary constriction of the vessels could be provoked by a state of hysteria. But where in the brain is the lack of blood flow that causes memory loss?»
«Where?»
«That is the point. You know that our brain has two hemispheres. There may be people who think sometimes with a complete hemisphere and sometimes with one that is incomplete, in which the memory faculty is missing. In my clinic I have found a very similar case to that of Félida. A young woman a little over twenty called Diana.»
Du Maurier stopped for a moment, as if anxious about revealing a confidential matter.
«A relative left her with me for treatment two years ago, and then died. The payments obviously stopped, but what could I do, turn the patient out onto the street? I know little of her past. It seems, according to what she has told me, that during her adolescence, every five or six days she would feel pain in her temples after some excitement, and then collapse as if asleep. What she calls sleep is, in fact, an attack of hysteria; when she wakes up, or calms down, she is quite different from what she was before. In other words, she has entered what Doctor Azam described as the second state.
In the state that we shall call normal, Diana behaves as the disciple of a Masonic sect…Don’t misunderstand me, I too belong to the Grand Orient, by which I mean the Freemasonry of respectable people, but perhaps you know that there exist various ‘obediences’ in the Templar tradition with peculiar propensities for the occult sciences, and some of them—which are, fortunately, very much on the fringe—incline toward satanic rites.
In what must, alas, be defined as her normal state, Diana considers herself to be a disciple of Lucifer or something of that kind. She makes licentious remarks, talks about lewd incidents, tries to seduce members of the male nursing staff and even me. I am sorry to be so indelicate, especially as Diana is, one might say, a charming woman. In my view, in this state she suffers the effects of traumas inflicted upon her during her adolescence, and tries to escape those memories by entering periodically into her second state. In this state Diana appears as a mild, innocent creature; she is a good Christian, asks for her prayer book and to be allowed to go to Mass.
But the strange aspect, which also happened with Félida, is that Diana, in her second state, when she is the virtuous Diana, clearly remembers how she was in her normal state, and is distressed, and asks how she could have been so bad, and punishes herself with a hair shirt, to such a point that she calls the second state her rational state, and refers to her normal state as a period when she was prey to hallucinations.
In her normal state, however, Diana remembers nothing of what she does in her second state. The two conditions alternate at unpredictable intervals, and sometimes she remains in one or the other state for several days. I would agree with Doctor Azam when it comes to perfect somnambulism. It is not just somnambulists, in fact, but also those who take drugs—hashish, belladonna, opium—or abuse alcohol, who do things they cannot remember when they wake up again.»
I don’t know why the account of Diana’s illness intrigued me so much, but I remember saying to Du Maurier: «I will mention it to an acquaintance of mine who deals with sad cases such as this, and knows where an orphan girl might be best looked after. I will send Abbé Dalla Piccola to you; he has much influence among charitable institutions.»
At least I knew the name Dalla Piccola when I
