“I have had occasion,” writes Morel,[294] “to remark, in some hypochondriac, hysteric, and epileptic patients, an extraordinary intellectual activity at the critical periods of the disease. It is not rarely observed that the attacks of exacerbation to which they are subject are preceded by an abnormal manifestation of the intellectual forces. A young hypochondriacal patient, confided to my care, often astonished those who saw him by the facility of his elocution, and the brilliancy with which he expressed his ideas. At certain times he would compose, in the course of a single night, a piece of music or a play which possessed remarkable traits, and some beauties of the first order. But, knowing the patient, I was never mistaken in my prognostications from this state of things. I knew that, after three or four days of excitement, this young man would fall into a dull stupor and become a prey to a torpid apathy which prevented him from feeling the instinct of his greatest natural necessities. The case ended in complete dementia.” “In the case of a hysterical patient, with a predominance of exalted religious ideas, I have also observed remarkable phenomena of intellectual reminiscence. She had heard a great number of sermons, and read still more. I have heard her repeat word for word what she had read or what had been delivered in her presence. We were able to follow her, book in hand, when, under the influence of a nervous excitement which quickened her memory, she recited sermons by well-known Christian orators. She was quite unable to repeat this phenomenon in her ordinary condition; but, as in the preceding case, we knew what view to take of a fact of this nature--not to mention that it resembled a large number of other cases, by means of which, at different times, the public credulity has been exploited. In this woman the phenomenon always preceded a crisis of exacerbation followed by stupor. “Let us now pass to the extreme concentration of the attention in a hypochondriacal patient relating her own sensations. The following extracts are from a diary left to me by the patient in question. It summarizes all that is experienced by this class of patients. “_September 6, 1852_, 9 p.m. This evening, on going to bed, sharp pain in the sacral regions and in the thighs. Tearing pains in the left ear and eye while falling asleep. I was overpowered by the feeling of fear. I seemed to be rolling into bottomless abysses, and to have, as it were, an iron hook fixed in my skull and heart, and dragging them out.