For—and this is a point to be borne well in mind—it is not alone abnormal suggestibility that characterises the hysterical child. There is also present an abnormal craving to attract attention, to be a centre of interest. Of this craving, as of the deceits carried out to attain its realisation, the child itself is unconscious. But it may be stated with assurance that it invariably exists as a concomitant of hysteria. Ordinarily it is the family and intimate friends whose interest and sympathy the child wishes to arouse, though this is not always the case. There may be special reasons for desiring to impress mere acquaintances, or even absolute strangers. Then we have the odd spectacle of children, like the pupil in the German school, whose hysterical obsessions appear chiefly or only in the presence of outsiders, while the parents remain in partial or total ignorance of them. And, speaking of this type of hysteria, I may say that I am acquainted with a young New York woman who, since the age of fifteen, has led many an unsuspecting physician a merry dance by reason of her extraordinary hysterical simulations. In early girlhood she began to complain of various ailments, which on examination proved to be of no moment. Not unnaturally her family lost patience with her “whims,” as they called them, and regarded her as a wholly imaginary invalid. Like most people similarly situated, they utterly failed to appreciate that, as has been well said by Doctor Pierre Janet, one of the world’s foremost authorities on hysteria, “When a person is so ill that he says he is ill when he is not ill at all, then he must be very ill indeed.” They scolded the girl, they argued with her; but they made no attempt to give her the treatment she really needed. What was the consequence? One day she mysteriously disappeared from home, and some time passed before she was located in a hospital, where preparations were making to perform an operation upon her for appendicitis. A little later she wandered off again, and turned up at another hospital with symptoms so closely resembling a tumorous growth that a diagnosis to that effect was made, and an immediate operation advised. Still later an eminent specialist was misled into crediting her with a serious spinal disease. After this it was decided that she was insane, and the family had her committed to an asylum. Before her release she developed symptoms of ear trouble so pronounced that the dangerous mastoid operation would have been performed had not the superintendent of the asylum been informed of her previous adventures as a hospital visitant.