This young person was brought from the country to the hospital of Le Havre at the age of 19 because she was considered insane and the hope of seeing her cured had almost been given up. The facts were that she had periods of convulsive attacks with delirium which lasted for days. After a period of observation, it became clear that the sickness consisted of periodical manifestations which occurred regularly at the time of her menstruations, and of less severe manifestations which were more prolonged and occurred at irregular times during the intervals.
      Let us begin with the first ones. At the time preceding her menstruations, Marie's character changed; she became gloomy and violent, which was not in her habits, and suffered pains, nervous spasms, and shivering in her entire body.  However, things went on almost regularly during the first day, but hardly 20 hours after the beginning, the menstruation stopped suddenly and a great tremor seized the whole body; then, a sharp pain ascended slowly from the abdomen to the throat, and a great hysterical crisis ensued. The attacks, although they were very violent, never lasted for a long time, and never had resembled epileptoid tremors; instead, there was a very long and severe delirium. At times, she would utter cries of terror, ceaselessly speaking of blood and fire, fleeing in order to escape the flames; at other times she would play as a child, speak to her mother, climb on the stove or on the furniture, and create havoc in the ward. This delirium and the violent bodily contortions alternated with short periods of rest during 48 hours. The attack ended with vomiting blood several times, after which everything came back approximately to normal. After one or two days of rest, Marie would quiet herself and remembered nothing of the episode. During the intervals of those intense monthly manifestations, she maintained limited contractures at the arms or the intercostal muscles or various, changing anaesthesias, and above all a complete and permanent blindness of the left eye [...] furthermore, she occasionally had smaller crises without the great delirium, but which were characterized predominantly by attitudes of terror. This sickness, which was so obviously linked to the menstrual periods, seemed to be uniquely a physical one, and of little interest for the psychologist. Therefore, at the beginning, I dealt very little  with this person. At most, I performed on her a few hypnotic experiments and a few studies on her anaesthesia, but I avoided anything which could have disturbed her at the time when her major manifestations were approaching. She remained for seven months at the hospital during which the various medications and hydrotherapy had not brought forth the least modification. Moreover, therapeutic suggestions, notably suggestions concerning her menstruation, had nothing but bad effects and increased the delirium.
      Around the end of the eighth month she complained about her sad lot and said, with a kind of despair, that she was well aware that her symptoms would continue to recur.
       'Look here,' I told her out of curiosity, 'explain to me now what happens when you are going to be sick. '
      'But, you know it...everything stops. I have a big shivering, and I don't know what happens next.'
      I wanted to get precise information about the way her periods had been inaugurated and had been interrupted. She did not give a clear answer, and seemed to have forgotten most of the events about which I asked her. I then occurred to me to put her into a deep somnambulic condition,  a state where [as we have seen] it is possible to bring back seemingly forgotten memories, and thus I was able to find out the exact memory of an incident which had hitherto been only been very incompletely known.
 At the age of 13, she had had her first menstruation, but, as a result of a childish idea or something she had heard and misunderstood, she imagined that there was some shame in it, and she tried a means of stopping the flow as soon as possible. About 20 hours after the beginning, she went out secretly and plunged herself into a big bucket of cold water. The success was complete' the menstruation was suddenly stopped, and in spite of a violent shivering, she was able to come back home. She was sick for a rather long time and had several days of delirium. However, everything settled down, and the menstruation did not appear again until five years later. When it reappeared it brought back the disturbances I observed. Now, if one compares this sudden stopping, the shivering, the pains she describes today in the waking state, with what she describes in a somnambulic condition--which, incidentally, was confirmed from other sources--one comes to this conclusion: Every month, the scene of the cold bath repeats itself, brings forth the same stopping of the menstruation and a delirium which is, it is true, much more sever than previously, until a supplementary hemorrhage takes place through the stomach. But, in her normal state of consciousness, she knows nothing about all this, not even that the shivering is brought forth by the hallucination of cold. It is therefore probable that this scene takes place below consciousness, and form it the other disturbances erupt.
      This assumption--true or false--being made, and after consulting Dr Powilewicz, I tried to take away from somnambulic consciousness this fixed and absurd idea that the menstruation was stopped by a cold bath. At first, I could not manage to do it; the fixed idea persisted; and the menstruation, which was due for two days later, occurred as usual. But, since I now had more time at my disposal, I tried again: I was able to succeed only thanks to a singular means. It was necessary to bring her back, through suggestion, to the age of thirteen, put  her back into the initial circumstances of the delirium, convince her that the menstruation had lasted for three days and was not interrupted through any regrettable incident. Now, once this was done, the following menstruation came at the due point, and lasted for three days, without any pain, convulsion or delirium.
 After noticing this result, the other symptoms were to be investigated. I omit the details of the psychological exploration, which was at times difficult. The attacks of terror were the repetition of an emotion which this young girl had felt when seeing, at the age of 16, an old woman killing herself by falling down stairs; blood, of which she always spoke during her crises, was memory from this scene; in regard to the picture of the fire, it was probably an association of ideas, because it was not linked with anything precise. Through the same procedure as before, through bringing the subject back by suggestion to the moment of the accident, I succeeded, not without difficulty, to show her that the old woman had only stumbled but had not killed herself: the attacks of terror did not recur.
       Finally, I wanted to study the blindness of the left eye; but Marie was opposed to it and said that she was like that from birth. It was easy to check by means of somnambulism that she was mistaken; if  one transforms her into a five year-old child, by the well-known methods, she takes back the sensitivity she had at that age and one observes that she sees well with both eyes. Therefore, it was at the age of six years that the blindness had started. On what occasion? Marie maintains, in waking state, that she does not know. During somnambulism, I make her play the chief scenes of her life at that time, and I see that the blindness starts at a certain point on the occasion of a trifling incident. She had been compelled, in spite of her cries, to sleep with a child of the same age who had impetigo on the entire left side of her face. Some time later, Marie developed an almost identical impetigo, in the same place. Then plagues appeared again several times at about the same time of year and were finally cured; but no one noticed that, hence forward, she had an anaesthesia of the left side of her face and was blind in the left eye! Since that time the anaesthesia had persisted or at least-- in order not to go beyond that which can be observed-- whatever be the period into which I set her back through suggestion, this anaesthesia remains constant although her various other anaesthesias would disappear completely at times. Same attempt as previously at cure. i put her back with the child who had so horrified her; I make her believe that the child is very nice and does not have impetigo (she is half-convinced. After two reenactments of this scene I get the best of it); she caresses without fear the imaginary child. The sensitivity of the left eye reappears without difficulty, and when I wake her up, Marie sees clearly with the left eye.
 It is now five months since these experiments were performed. Marie has never shown the slightest signs of hysteria, she is doing well and above all is becoming stronger. Her physical aspect has changed thoroughly. I do not attach  to this cure more importance than it deserves, and do not know how long it will last, but I found this story interesting as showing the importance of fixed subconscious ideas and the role they play in certain physical illnesses, as well as in emotional illnesses [Ellenberger, 1970,361-4; translation of Janet, 1889, 336-40].