"The wife persisted in reiterating them and so the
wrangle went on till suddenly she fell from her chair
on the floor in a fit, the spasmodic movements of which
were so strange and varied that it would be almost
impossible to describe them. At one moment the patient
was extended at full length with her body arched
forward in a state of opisthotonos. The next minute she
was in a sitting position with the legs drawn up,
making, while her hands clutched her throat, a guttural
noise. Then she would throw herself on her back and
thrust her arms and legs about to the no small danger
of those around her. Then becoming comparatively quiet
and supine she would quiver all over while her eyelids
trembled with great rapidity. This state perhaps would
be followed by general convulsive movements in which
she would put herself into the most grotesque postures
and make the most unlovely grimaces. At last the fit
ended, and exhausted and in tears she was put to bed.
The patient was a lithe, muscular woman and to restrain
her movements during the attack with the assistance at
hand was a matter of impossibility, so all that could
be done was to prevent her injuring herself and to
sprinkle her freely with cold water. The
after-treatment was more geographical than medical. The
husband ceased doing business in a certain town where
the object of his wife's suspicions lived."
I have been told by a perfectly healthy married woman that when
jealous of her husband she felt a sensation as of some liquid welling
up in her throat and suffocating her. Pride came into play in part;
she did not want others to think that her husband preferred an
ignorant girl to her--a woman of great physical and mental charm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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