lasted only for a few
minutes and she would breathe heavily after them. At the end of one
attack she wiped the froth from her mouth with her handkerchief and gave
it to her aunt, saying, "Burn that, it is poison." This is perhaps a
little less like epilepsy. It is plainly impossible for us to say with
any positiveness that either these were or were not genuine convulsions,
but it is nevertheless important to record them, because such phenomena
are observed fairly frequently in dementia praecox cases but are
practically unknown in manic-depressive insanity. This, then, would be
another example of the resemblance to dementia praecox in these stupors
which are unquestionably benign.[10]

We see, then, in reviewing all the physical manifestations of the
benign stupors, that none occurred which cannot be explained as
secondary to the mental changes, and therefore, until such time as
physical symptoms are reported which cannot be so explained, we see no
reason for changing our view that the benign stupor is to be regarded as
one of the manic-depressive reactions.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Papanicolaou, G. N., and Stockard, C. R., "Effect of Under-feeding
on Ovulation and the OEstrous Rhythm in Guinea-pigs." _Proceedings of
the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine_, Vol. XVII, No. 7,
Apr. 21, 1920.

[10] As a matter of fact, if the views of Clark and MacCurdy[B] be
accepted, some reason for these epileptic-like attacks may be imagined.
According to them, epilepsy is a disease characterized by a lack of the
natural instinctive interest in the environment which is expressed
chronically in the deterioration, and episodically in the attacks, the
most consistent feature of which is loss of consciousness. Now, in
stupor we have an analogous reaction where, although consciousness is
not disturbed in the sense in which it is in epilepsy, it is
nevertheless considerably affected, inasmuch as contact with the
environment is practically non-existent. The coincident thinking
disorder is quite similar, both in epileptic dementia and the torpor
following seizures and in these benign stupors. MacCurdy has suggested
tentatively that the epileptic convulsion may be secondary to a very
sudden loss of consciousness which removes a normal inhibition on the
muscles, liberating the muscular contractions which constitute the
convulsion. If this view were correct, it would not be hard to imagine
that during the onset of these stupors the tende