The passions have been divided by physicians into the exciting and the depressing. This distinction cannot, I think, be maintained at the present day, for we need only think of the effects we see produced by fear to be convinced that this emotion, which may at first appear exciting, becomes instead depressing in its paroxysms. The same may be said of narcotics and depressive remedies, which, in small doses, excite, but in larger doses depress. Some phenomena, such as the growing grey of the hair, the immediate transmission of a nervous malady from the mother to the fœtus under the influence of fright, the possible death of sucklings a few hours after the mother has suffered great fear, although the infant was not present--all these are incomprehensible phenomena which we only admit because trustworthy observers and physicians affirm that they have witnessed them. Michea, a celebrated physician, one of the most profound in knowledge of mental diseases, used to write insulting anonymous letters to some of his patients in order to cure them, and, he assures, with good result in some hypochondriacal cases. The mind may be drawn off from a fixed idea by preoccupying it with some danger. Physicians have sometimes had recourse in hysterical cases to threats or a sudden fright to check dangerous symptoms when all other remedies have proved useless. Amann tells of an hysterical patient who suffered from tetanic convulsions and trances, and whose father treated her with blows and cured her. It is a well-known fact that fear sobers the drunken and cures slight nervous affections, but nothing can encourage the physician to raise fear to the rank of a curative method, as it may be expected that in the greater number of cases nervous diseases would be aggravated by such treatment. Less questionable is, perhaps, the efficacy of fear in subduing nervous maladies acquired by simple imitation; in this case it is probable that the greater ill, as the saying is, drives out the lesser. In old books of medicine stories are found of psychic maladies which, under the name of St. Vitus’s dance, or tarantism, affected entire provinces with a morbid excitement. The first symptoms of this malady appeared in Aix-la-Chapelle, then it broke out in Cologne, afterwards in Metz, whence it spread along the Rhine. Artisans, peasants, rich and poor, in hundreds left their families, dominated by an irresistible desire to dance. Intoxicated with excitement, they performed frenzied contortions as though possessed, until at last they sank exhausted to the ground or became incurably insane.