is great alteration but _not loss_ of consciousness. The patient struggles
with those about her, bites them, but never her own tongue, shrieks and
fights, but never passes urine, throws things about, and arches the back
until the body rests on head and feet (_opisthotonos_). The stretching and
convulsive stages alternate, and the attack lasts a long time, being
stopped by pain or by the departure of onlookers. During this stage the
face may reflect the various emotions passing through the mind--with a
fidelity that would rouse the envy of an Irving.

The patient gradually calms down, and a fit of tears or a scream ends the
attack, after which the worn-out victim is depressed but not confused,
though memory for the events of the attack may only be partial. The patient
sometimes passes into the "dream state", described in Chapter II, for some
hours or occasionally for far longer; these are the women described with
much gusto in the local Press as being in a trance--"the living dead".

The victim of these attacks _is_ suffering from a disease, for she shows
many temporary mental symptoms which could not possibly be feigned, while
there is often a genuine partial forgetfulness of the incidents of an
attack. She says she cannot help it; candid friends say she will not. The
truth is that she cannot _will_ not to help it; for though intelligence and
memory are often good and sometimes abnormal, the judgment and will are
always weak--indecision, obstinacy, and doubt being common.

Treatment. A thorough examination by a doctor is _absolutely essential_, to
prove that the patient is merely hysterical, and not the victim of
unrecognized organic disease. In a few cases, skilled attention to some
minor ailment will result in an apparently miraculous cure.

Many who habitually "go into hysterics", are merely grown-up "spoiled