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Charcot, however, did not follow this path towards an explanation of hysteria, although he drew copiously upon the surviving reports of witch trials and of possession, in order to show that the manifestations of the neurosis were the same in those days as they are now. He treated hysteria as just another topic in neuropathology; he gave a complete description of its phenomena, demonstrated that these had their own laws and uniformities, and showed how to recognize the symptoms which enable a diagnosis of hysteria to be made. The most painstaking investigations, initiated by himself and his pupils, extended over hysterical disturbances of sensibility in the skin and deeper tissues, over the behaviour of the sense organs, and over the peculiarities of hysterical contractures and paralyses, and of trophic disturbances and changes in metabolism. The many different forms of hysterical attack were described, and a schematic plan was drawn up by depicting the typical configuration of the major hysterical attack as occurring in four stages, which made it possible to trace the commonly observed minor’ attacks back to this same typical configuration. The localization and frequency of occurrence of the so-called ‘hysterogenic zones’ and their relationship to the attacks were also studied, and so on. Once all this information about the manifestations of hysteria had been arrived at, a number of surprising discoveries were made. Hysteria in males, and especially in men of the working class was found far more often than had been expected; it was convincingly shown that certain conditions which had been put down to alcoholic intoxication or lead-poisoning were of a hysterical nature; it was possible to subsume under hysteria a whole number of affections which had hitherto not been understood and which had remained unclassified; and where the neurosis had become joined with other disorders to form complex pictures, it was possible to separate out the part played by hysteria. Most far-reaching of all were the investigations into nervous illnesses which followed upon severe traumas - the ‘traumatic neuroses’ - views about which are still under discussion and in connection with which Charcot has successfully put forward the arguments in favour of hysteria.

After the latest extensions of the concept of hysteria had so often led to a rejection of aetiological diagnosis, it became necessary to enter into the aetiology of hysteria itself. Charcot put forward a simple formula for this: heredity was to be regarded as the sole cause. Accordingly, hysteria was a form of degeneracy, a member of the ‘famille névropathique’. All other aetiological factors played the part of incidental causes, of ‘agents provocateurs’.

The construction of this great edifice was naturally not achieved without violent opposition. But it was the sterile opposition of an old generation who did not want to have their views changed. The younger among the neuropathologists, including those in Germany, accepted Charcot’s teaching to a greater or lesser degree. Charcot himself was completely certain that his theories about hysteria would triumph. When it was objected that the four stages of hysteria, hysteria in men, and so on, were not observable outside France, he pointed out how long he himself had overlooked these things, and he said once more that hysteria was the same in all places and at every time. He was very sensitive about the accusation that the French were a far more neurotic nation than any other and that hysteria was a kind of national bad habit; and he was much pleased when a paper ‘On a Case of Reflex Epilepsy’, which dealt with a Prussian Grenadier, enabled him to make a long range diagnosis of hysteria.