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usually proportionate to the degree of paralysis. In many cases there is more or less deformity. Club-foot is common in pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis, not uncommon in the peroneal type. Sometimes there is retraction of the biceps, flexure of the elbow, especially in juvenile atrophy. Marked curvature of the spine is, also, common in pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis and is also found in the other forms. I have given two illustrations in the juvenile form--and the impaired gait, peculiar manner of rising, etc., belong to the typical picture in many cases,

The course of the disease is usually a very chronic one. In most instances it advances very slowly. Sometimes it appears to remain stationary in the group of muscles first affected, or years may elapse before it attacks other parts. Of the cases presented to you the second of the spinal form of atrophy has made no perceptible progress in the four or five years I have had him under observation. The fourth patient, suffering with the peroneal type, had the disease in his legs at ten years of age, and then fifteen years elapsed before the upper extremities were affected. In the sixth case, with juvenile atrophy, the changes since she was presented to the academy nine years ago have not been very material. It is probably true that as a rule the spinal form of atrophy progresses more rapidly than the juvenile or peroneal type. Pseudohypertrophic paralysis often produces complete disability in a comparatively few years, and such patients rarely reach forty years of age.

As to treatment the most that can be suggested is electricity, massage and hypodermics of strychnia. Gowers believes that he has always succeeded in arresting the spinal form of the disease by the latter. But when a disease is so slow in its progress, and in its natural course often arrested for years, we must not be too hasty in attributing the arrest to the treatment instituted.

A CASE OF MUSCULAR ONANISM.

THE SEXUAL ORGASM IN A CHILD CALLED FORTH BY A MUSCULAR EFFORT.

By DIMITRY STEFANOSKI, LL. B., Faroslawl, Russia.

AYOUNG friend of mine, 25 years old, of scrupulous

sincerity, a little nervous, but of perfectly healthy complexion, has told me the following fact which he has experienced many a time in his childhood. When nine years old he was put in a boarding school for boys. During the gymnastic training it happened to him one day that he climbed a vertical pole several times in succession. With contracted limbs he held himself immobile at the top of the pole, when he suddenly felt a sweet and agreeable sensation in the spine and genital organs. This novel sensation, which he never felt before, attracted his attention, and he tried to produce it again; but it did not repeat itself in spite of his efforts. The following day he had the same orgasm under the same conditions. It produced itself (once or twice a day) whenever the boy was much tired by the climbing and when he was at the end of his strength. Since this gave him a certain pleasure, he repeated the experiment rather often. It was before all essential that the muscles of the arms were tense and contracted by the effort of supporting the body. Accordingly the phenomenon also appeared during exercise performed on the trapeze by the arms alone, without any taking part of the legs. The orgasm never was accompanied by an emission of the penis or by an ejaculation of sperma or any other liquid. On the contrary, the penis remained perfectly quiet, as ordinarily. Neither had the friction during the climbing any influence on the production of the phenomenon. It is to be remarked

that the sensation was diffused and vague in character. The orgasm consisted of one or two consecutive shocks, accompanied by a voluptuous chill in the spine and at the root of the penis. After some months the phenomenon ceased to appear, and never returned afterwards. The boy was curious to get the explanation of that strange sensation and asked his parents for it, but he was so naïve that he could not well explain and describe what he had experienced, and so his question was not understood. Not until two or three years later, when he had learned to masturbate, he felt the same sensation again, much more intense and voluptuous, and he immediately recognized his old acquaintance. I have to add that the young man enjoys full health now, and that there never has been anything abnormal about his sexual functions. Seminal emissions are rare with him. They happen once in a while, at night, but even during the most exhausting gymnastic exercises he never experienced the erotic spasm that manifested itself in so strange a manner in his childhood.

PATHOLOGY OF ARTISTS.

FROM

By LUCIEN ARREAT, Paris, France.

ROM a psychological stand-point the special sense disorders affecting artists are chiefly of interest.

No one is astonished to see cripples and humpbacks become artists. It is much more curious, however, to meet with deaf-mutes. Such an infirmity hardly leads to the intimate association of its victim with his fellows. Deaf-mutes have shown, when instructed, that they are not so much disinherited by nature as by society. Spain had a deaf-mute artist, Juan Fernandez Navarette, surnamed "The mute." Deprived of hearing when three years old, in consequence of infantile convulsions, he soon lost his speech. His father remarked his powers of drawing, and confided him to the care of a monk, who instructed the boy. Cean Bermudez adds that Navarette,* a painter of talent, made himself clearly understood by signs.

A French deaf-mute sculptor, Deseine, offered the National Assembly a bust of Mirabeau. He sent to the salons of 1791 and 1793, various works, among which was a bust of the Abbè de l'Epée, who had been his instructor. Three deaf-mute painters and five deaf-mute sculptors, exhibited at the 1889 salon: J. G. Ferry, J. L. Lousteau, A. Berton, A. Colas, R. P. Princeteau. The" Arrival at the Press," of the last mentioned, excited much favorable comment.t

The deaf-mute, despite his evidently grave cerebral lesion, lacks nothing which will prevent him acquiring

M. D.

NOTE.-Translated from "Psychologie des Peintres," by JAS. G. KIERNAN,

* It is noticeable he was not a congenital case, hence not a victim of degeneracy. † An artist has recently cited, in this connection, the cases of the miniaturemakers and portrait painters, Martin who studied and painted at Paris. These deafmute twins so resembled each other in face and figure that they were frequently confounded. Moreover their style was so closely akin, that each worked alternately at their portrait or design.

In a

general ideas when education comes to his aid.* much greater degree may he possess all the visual and motor images, which are necessary in the arts of design, and all the ideas which may be expressed in lines and colors.

Infirmities of sight have not spared painters. Strabismus has not been unfrequently present. Carel VanMander cites Corneille Molenaer, nicknamed "Squinty Neil." Barbieri owed to this defect his art surname, "il Guercino." H. Flandrin was exempted from military service because of squint. An attempt to remedy this defect in his right eye, extinguished it and left him but his left, which had become presbyopic. Myopia is frequent among painters, owing to their being born in families where hereditary conditions favor its development. Myopia does not however exclude good visual memory, and its influence is much less than would at first sight appear. The myope sees vaguely and. indefinitely; certainly an inconvenience, but in return the near objects, mass themselves in their general plan and distracting details mingle so that herein is an advantage. Moreover, the myopic painter, when this defect is not too excessive, can correct its bad results easily, whether by suitable glasses or an acquired rectification, and this infirmity proves a simple obstacle. Who would believe on seeing Quentin La Tour's fine pastel of Mme. de Pompadour, at the Louvre, that the artist had "short and feeble sight." This he has described in detail, himself, in a letter to the Marquis de Marigney.†

Delicate men are wounded by a picture taken as near at hand as twenty-five feet. What an embarrassment therefore for a short and feeble sight forced to be at two or three feet of the model; to notice near what can be best done afar. One must put himself into my place to appreciate the struggles I have made to put a face and head together with due regard for proportion. The angles are so short that the model cannot look with both eyes at the eye of the painter. They go and come without ever being together. Their perfect accord is absolutely necessary to secure the life and soul of a portrait.

*At this point the fact may be mentioned that Reynolds and Goya became deaf before old age.

† Gazette des Beaux-Arts, page 31.

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