In the same category of facts are included those to which the name of _aerophagic tic_ has been applied. Various cases have been narrated by Pitres and by Séglas,[113] the latter of whom, in a remarkably complete analysis of the condition, has demonstrated its identity with the tics, and written very instructive commentaries on his observations. I was consulted (says Séglas) by a man thirty-four years of age, who was sent to me as a hypochondriacal neurasthenic. No sooner had he entered my consulting-room than I was astonished to find he was giving vent to repeated sonorous eructations at very brief intervals. His story was to the effect that several weeks previously he had been suddenly seized in the middle of a meal by a sort of vertigo, and had lost consciousness. A consideration of subsequent events made it more than probable that he had had an ictus; the patient, however, was for no apparent reason persuaded that he had been poisoned by badly cooked food, and from that moment became despondently preoccupied with the state of his stomach. A few days later the eructations made their appearance. A closer examination very soon dispelled the idea of their gastric origin, seeing that the digestive functions were in every respect normal, whereas the symptom in question occurred at any moment, independently of the stage of digestion, and the gases evolved were absolutely inodorous. On the other hand, one could easily satisfy oneself that the eructations were preceded by an inspiratory effort and by two or three very obvious movements of deglutition, accompanied by a low, rumbling, pharyngeal noise, and followed almost immediately by the expulsion of gas. Their reproduction several times a minute was spasmodic in character and irregular in rhythm, and continued, it might be, for hours. Of this series of phenomena the patient had conscious knowledge only of the last--viz. the eructations--and affirmed their involuntary nature and his desire to be rid of them. The influence exerted on them by various circumstances is worthy of notice. Any emotion, or any reference on the part of the patient to the condition of his stomach, tended to exaggerate them, while, inversely, it was remarked by his wife that the distraction of conversation, or of a promenade, or of musical séances--to which he was passionately devoted--served to banish them instantaneously and for as long as the distraction endured. Sleep suspended their activity, but at any interruption of it they scarcely ever failed to reassert themselves.