A first-rate and interesting book, about the neurology service at the Salpetrie in Paris unde Jean Charcot. The author has a degree in French literature, and has researched the histories of three of the famous patients in the hysteria ward. Charcot, a name revered in neurology for the clinical and anatomic correlations that defined multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, developed a fascination for the contortions and other dramas of the hysterics, hoping to find some correlate in neuroanatomy, and some rationale to the various presentations. The milieu, however, attracted individuals who found that good performances allowed them to retain privileges and make a living of their illnesses. Hustvedt gives the biographies of three of the famous hysterics, Blanche, the reliable preformer, Genevieve, the photogenic one, and Augustine, the one who furthered the theory that religious hysterias were nothing more than the medical hysteria. I noted several famous names, the handsome Joseph Babinski, Bourneville, of tuberous sclerosis, and of course Freud. Bourneville was particularly fervid to debunk stories of religious ectasy, especially a contemporaneous religious mystic Louise Lateau, subsisting on a daily communion wafer and water, bleeding unexpectedly. I noted the stories of the "convulsionists" a brief and violent cult of self mutilation surrounding a grave of a priest in Saint-Medard, and of the Ursulines at Loudun. The religious hysteria was often erotic, citing Bernini's sculpture "Saint Teresa in Ectasy"
After Charcot's death, most neurologist belittled and rejected his theories on hysteria. Of interest was that his late writings claimed that faith healing could be real, and he had directed patients to Lourdes. Hustvedt thinks that Charcot was right in treating hysteria as real, and in an epilogue discusses modern hysterias, including Gulf War syndrome. Altogether, a very interesting book, well-written, and professionally, to a neurologist, enhancing. ( )