The greater number of persons affected with stupor have hallucinations and illusions - Symptomatology - Arrangement of hallucinations and illusions in some patients - Cases of stupor - Remarks on this malady - Recapitulation.

There are some lunatics, who, like statues, appear to comprehend nothing that is passing around them; with fixed eyes and gaping mouth, they might be taken for idiots. Georget has given the name of stupor to this particular kind of madness, which Esquirol looked on as a variety of dementia (acute dementia); and M. Baillarger as the highest degree of a variety of hypochondria.

M. Etoc, in an excellent dissertation which he published on this malady in 1833,* remarked that insane persons had hallucinations, but that they were confused and misty. M. Baillarger has given more circumstantial details relative to the errors of sensations observable in insane stupor.† According to this author, everything that surrounds them is transformed. They are a prey to all kinds of hallucinations and illusions; among others that they are inhabitants of a desert; that they live in a house of ill fame; that they reside in a foreign country; that they are condemned to the galleys or to prison. Some mistake a bath-house for hell; the baths for boats; a blister mark for the brand of a convict; lunatics for the dead revived, for prisoners, for prostitutes, for disguised soldiers, and women for men. Others see hideous and menacing faces; it seems to them that everybody is drunk. They perceive around them carriages laden with coffins, and their relations undergoing punishments; they see shadows, craters, fathomless abysses, and subterranean pitfalls.

* De la Stupidite chez les Alienes, in 4to. Paris, 1833. † De l'etat designe chez les alienes sous le nom de stupidite, Annates Mtd. Psychol., Nos. 1 and 2, Paris, 1843.

Others, again, hear alarming words; they are menaced with death, and with flames; they hear insults; their beds are filled with noises of bells and drums; guns are fired around them; their friends struggle with enemies, and implore their aid. Some being interrogated on all the actions of their lives, reply that they hear the noise of a machine with which infants are tortured; their bodies are perforated with balls, and their blood flows on the earth; some one is on their breast, smothering them.

In this description, we must recognize the highest degree of melancholic monomania.

In the nine cases which the paper of M. Baillarger contains, hallucinations and illusions are distributed in the following manner: -

The hallucinations were almost always mingled with illusions. In two cases, there were illusions only; in one, hallucinations occurred alone. None of these cases presented hallucinations and illusions of all the senses. In three out of six cases of stupor, Messrs. Aubanel and Thore have noticed hallucinations.

A number of actions apparently automatic, or without connection with exterior objects, were explained afterwards as due to the influence of hallucinations and illusions - another argument in favor of the opinion that the strangest acts performed by monomaniacs, and, above all, by maniacs, arc always caused by a hallucination or an illusion.