Symptoms of the Paroxysms

Categories: Diseases of The Nervous System

Convulsive seizures are common manifestations
of hysteria, and frequently present a great similarity to epilepsy. The

prodromal (fore-running) symptoms are frequently present and may begin

several days before the convulsion occurs. In milder forms, in which the

cause may be due to a temporary physical exhaustion, or emotional shock,

the fore-running symptoms are of short duration. The patient may become

very nervous, irritabl , impatient, have fits of laughing and crying,

alternately, or have a feeling of a chill rising in the throat. The

convulsion follows these symptoms. The patient generally falls in a

comfortable place; consciousness is only apparently lost, for she

frequently remembers what has taken place; the tongue is rarely bitten, In

the milder forms the movements are apt to be disorderly. In the severe

forms the movements are apt to be a lasting contraction of the muscles and

the patient may have the head and feet drawn back and the abdomen drawn

front. There then may follow a condition of ecstacy, sleepiness,

catalepsy, trance, or the patient may show symptoms of a delirium with the

most extraordinary sights of unreal things. These convulsions may last for

several hours or days. Firm pressure over the ovaries may bring on a

convulsion, or if made during a convulsion may arrest it. The disease is

rarely dangerous to life, yet death has followed exhaustion induced by

repeated convulsions or prolonged fasting. The duration of hysteria is

very uncertain.





DURING A CONVULSION. The first thing to do is not to be frightened. A

patient in a convulsion from hysteria very seldom injures herself during

the convulsions. If you are sure it is hysteria, give a nasty tasting

medicine, asafoetida is a splendid remedy, but not in pill form, for there

is no taste or smell to them. Sometimes a convulsion may be arrested by

the sudden use of ice to the backbone or abdomen or by dashing cold water

in the face and chest, or by pressing upon the ovaries. When the hysteria

is of a mild form it is sometimes a good plan, when the convulsion comes

on, to place the patient in a comfortable position and then leave her, and

when the patient comes to and finds herself alone and without sympathy,

the attacks are less likely to be repeated. Sometimes if you watch a

patient closely when she is seemingly unconscious, you will see, if you

look at her very guardedly, that one eyelid is not entirely closed, and

that the patient really sees much that is occurring around her. I am

writing of real genuine hysteria, in which the patient is not quite right,

not only physically but mentally,--especially the latter,--during the

attack at least. For that and other reasons such patients should not be

treated cruelly.