The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-15
French eurotics.

Of the neurasthenic condition threatens to become the great scourge of society; and they are bound to admit that some of the phenomena arising from it are such as their science can throw but lit tie light upon. Moreover. it is often impossible to say where mere nervous disorder ends and downright lunacy be- gins, The case of Mile. Amelot, who shot the Abbe de Broglie few weeks since, is one in point. She has been pronounced insane by committee of medical men; but had she not commit ted criminal act they could not possi- ply have come to any such conclusion from her conversation and general con- duct. A doctor has made the consoling statement that we brush shoulders with such people almost every hour, but that | so long as they refrain from doing mis- chief their state of mind cannot be | characterized as dementia.
 l There is a later case respecting
 which the Parisiam mind is still much
 exercised. It is that of the youth of
 twenty who indulged propensity for stabblng young women with a pen
 knife as they passed him in the street. | In doing so he used some prudence and reflection, for he stabbed them all in the
 same place-one where such an injury
 was not likely to be dangerous. After
 his arrest he declared that he could not
 account for the impulse under which he
 had acted. Dr. Giles de la Tourette,
 who Is taking the position occupied by | the late Dr, Charcot, places this young man in the Jack the Ripper category of modern maniacs-those whose ruling propensity is to do mischief to women.
 He declares that such desequilibres are by no means rare, but that in general way 1t Is impossible to treat them as maniacs. They know quite well that | they are evil-doers, for when arrested they invariably deny with much energy the charge brought against them until the evidence of their guilt becomes too strong Dr. Giles de Ia Tourette main- tains that they should be dealt with as criminals; for there Is nothing like the dread of punishment to rescue them from the ''fascination of their vice" !" There is some conflict of Ideas here. for if such people are truly maniacs they
 ought not to be punished to cure them | of the 'vice;" but in their case it is so
 difficult to distinguish madness from badness that to spend compassion on
 them would be probably to waste it.
 The fact to be faced is that, whether
 from causes of the physical or the nor
 al order, or of both. the bizarreries of
 the human mind are becoming more
 perplexing every day in France, and
 they are beginning to interfere very se-
 riotlsly with the normal course of life. We hear of dragons who are seized
 with an unaccountable terror when they mount horse, so that they fall from sheer panic; of consulting doctors yes, even doctors-who are ready to tear the hair from their heads when the
 patient has left, for fear that they have
 made some terrible blunder in the pre-
 scription; of railway employees who are , troubled in a similar manner by an ap-
 palling dread of having done something wrong; of preachers who dare not put their foot on the first step leading to the
 pulpit; of persons who are terror-strick- en while crossing a bridge, although , they may have perfect command over their will In all other respects; and of
 nervous conditions still more distress . ing. Such a state Is described as one oi "neurasthenic anxiety" and excessive , concentration of the mind on certain points Is generally supposed to be the I cause of it. But, whatever may be the explanation, the nerves of modern soci
 ety appear to be getting seriously out oi repair.-Paris Correspondence of the St f James Gazette