At length the day arrives when the hand is unequal to the task, and the patient endeavours to utilise more resistant bodies, such as the back of a chair or the wall of the room, as in a case of retrocollis reported by Brissaud. These devices in their turn prove insufficient, and relief is obtained only in the recumbent position. Fournier[144] has seen a case of convulsive twitching of the right sternomastoid and trapezius arrested when the head was reclining on a pillow. Even in bed, however, there is usually something to complain of: the pillow is too high, or too low, or too soft; the rustle of the packing is disagreeable, the sheets are too rough, etc., etc. It is then that all sorts of unlikely arrangements are adopted, and the patient puts his head under the bolster, or lets it hang over the edge of the bed, or piles up additional cushions and mattresses calculated to retain it in the desired situation. Frequently the stratagems are highly ingenious and complicated. Madame K.,[145] forty-three years of age, suffers from clonic movements of the head which disappear with the adoption of a torticollic attitude, the face looking to the left. Nothing is easier than voluntarily to correct this attitude, but the clonic movements at once reassert themselves, although they may momentarily be kept in abeyance by placing the hand on the chin. Numerous and ingenious have been the devices framed by this lady, but in no instance has their success been other than transient. Her latest invention is a stiff high collar fashioned of several thicknesses of a heavy material. At the risk of strangling herself she has so compressed her neck that no movement is possible, but the right arm has now become the seat of action. A patient of Grasset[146] used to promenade in the grounds of the hospital holding a cane in his teeth and maintaining his head in position by keeping one finger on the end of the stick. Another patient, under the care of Noguès and Sirol,[147] whose head was fixed in irresistible anteroflexion and rotation to the left, had invented a most elaborate piece of apparatus, the adoption of which was followed by perfectly satisfactory results. On the frame of a pair of pince-nez deprived of the glasses he fixed a piece of iron wire ten centimetres long in such a way that it stood out from the spring at right angles to the plane of the pince-nez. It was sufficient to wear this thing on his nose to inhibit the spasm, and to be able to talk, walk, do anything unhampered by his torticollis; it was not even necessary to concentrate his gaze on the extremity of the rod.