In the first period of the illness, the hands do not tremble as they lie on the coverlet, but when the patient tries to take a cup or a spoon, they shake so that everything is upset and spilt. At night the dreams, which have already awakened him in fright, assume the character of a positive hallucination. Often patients spring out of bed, crying that a snake is twining round their neck, and they tear, panting, the clothes from their body, and wander about naked, writhing, as though trying to release their neck from a noose, to free themselves from fetters in which their madness has bound them fast. Then they grow quiet again, but the delirium has broken out and will develop, leaving them no more peace. They will lend life to every shadow, and see perpetually before them reptiles and insects crawling about and multiplying. What agony! Ever and anon they cry out that monstrous spiders or venomous scorpions are creeping from the walls on to the bed; that black cats with fiery eyes are crouching on their breast; that wolves with open jaws or mad dogs with foaming mouths are biting them, or that loathsome rats, mingling with a black swarm of beetles, are gnawing at their vitals. And then the patients, tortured, annihilated by fear, writhe, gnashing their teeth, groaning, howling, sobbing. They bite their hands, tear the bed-clothes, bury their nails in their faces disfigured with rage. Then they rise to escape, and fall heavily backwards into bed, exhausted, pallid, with distorted face, a rattling in the throat, and their eyes rolling in the most awful despair. Sometimes this hideous storm blows over, and a little calm returns. The patients are languid, and when questioned answer intelligibly but crossly. In lucid intervals some regret their faults, and say that they drank in order to forget their misfortunes or their misery, but these are only rays of light in the midst of ruins shrouded in darkness. Nearly all remain indifferent to the desolation of the family, shake their heads disconsolately, and talk of suicide. At every feverish attack, by whatever cause produced, the frenzy becomes so great that they must be bound and secured in a strait-jacket. The trembling increases, the patient cannot sleep; he chatters, walks up and down, wandering about the room like a lost dog. We make out from his laments that the hallucination is gradually taking possession of all his senses. In stammering, disconnected words, he complains from time to time that he is poisoned, has the taste of something loathsome in his mouth, and he rejects everything because he fears treachery. He says there are chemical vapours rising in the room which will suffocate him, and then he runs hither and thither raging, fighting the air with clenched hands, pressing himself close to the wall, or rushing to the window, throwing to the ground furniture and utensils from which he thinks he sees the pestilential vapours poured forth.