Case VIII
Mlle X, a fifteen-year-old girl, spent several months, during the winter of 1883, undergoing hydrotherapy at Longchamps
her mother has no history
her father convulsive
she is
prone to
develop abrupt and irregular
tics
symptoms disappeared
they returned
convulsive
spasms
shoulders arms
face indistinct guttural
sounds
common
idiot
output
obscene in the extreme
disgusting expressions
prevent being understood
she abandons herself to an unparalleled outpouring of
noisy barks
bizarre postures
a cardboard likeness
devouring any object presented to
it
this spectacle
in the manner of the Gargantua.
Erased from Case VIII of Gilles de la Tourette’s “Study of a nervous affliction characterized by motor incoordination with echolalia and coprolalia (Jumping, Latah, Myriachit).”
A Lecture on Some Cases of Convulsive Tics with Coprolalia and Echolalia
Let us go to the story of our patient:
a normal development,
never
committed
any excesses, married with children.
He is being observed,
reduced to
a muscle contraction,
an uh uh,
a gnashing of teeth
I shall let
face
you.
See the phenomena,
what the tic is like,
how awful the disease
may be.
One may think that is not enough.
A full examination
may find
flashes of lightning,
the larger neuropathic family,
something more
to study and examine,
a special form
of psychic insanity.
But it would take
too long to describe the phenomena
he suffers,
the deep analogy
between
them.
Erased from Jean-Martin Charcot’s 1885 lecture of the same name, as found in Kushner, Howard I., Claudio Luzzatti, and Stanley Finger’s 1999 article in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, “A Perplexing Document in the Early History of Gilles De La Tourette Syndrome: Melotti’s Rendition of a “Lecture by Charcot” (Including a Complete Translation from the Italian with Commentary).”
