LOQUACITY – JEALOUSY Lachesis
Case I. Mrs. J.C., age forty-one; mother of three children; family and personal history good; having enjoyed excellent health until six months ago, walked into my office with a quick, firm step and without waiting for any questions began a tirade against her husband. He had always been a kind, faithful, helpful husband until six months ago, when she noticed he had become infatuated with the housekeeper.
At this point I excused myself and brought in the office stenographer. The stenographer was put in my chair at the desk, I took a chair back of her, facing the patient as usual; the daughter was put at her mother’s right, so that the mother could not see her while walking to me.
The patient then began again, and the stenographer took her statements. The daughter shook her head at most that the mother said. The patient was permitted to talk at a rapid rate for half an hour, when I interrupted her, saying it was nearly the lunch hour and that she could resume at 2.00 P.M.
She was advised to go the Y.W.C.A. rooms for lunch and rest. The daughter was asked to get paper and pencil at the “Y” and write briefly her version of the case. The stenographer was to type her notes, which were ready at 1.00 P.M. I read the patient’s statements, over two thousand words. The statements were incoherent, rambling, untruthful, and hence wholly unreliable.
The daughter’s written statements showed that she was an artist in painting, even the picture of a remedy. The colors and shadings were perfectly blended and were as follows: “Doctor, Mother’s not responsible for what she says and has not been since her father’s death six and a half months ago when he was suddenly killed in a railway accident. Mother is a very affectionate person and just worshipped Grandpa. When she received the news, she fainted and became unconscious.
It took Dr. Knox five hours before the could restore her. Mother was menstruating at the time. The flow stopped and she has not been unwell since. When Grandpa’s will was read she learned that everything had been left to her but that Father was given full charge of it all. From that time on Mother has accused Father of everything.
“The housekeeper she mentioned so often is Mother’s aunt, her father’s own sister, an old maid, who lived wit us, in sense as housekeeper, looking after the meals, etc. When Auntie went to live with Grandma, and Father went there often, Mother accused him of going to visit Auntie.
She also accused Auntie of being the cause of having the will written as it was so that Father and Auntie could have the money for themselves and that Mother and we children could not have any.”
I quickly ran through two remedies as follows: A mental case in a neurotic, sensitive, emotional woman, as the predisposing cause. The exciting cause was shock. The results were, first, grief, then suppression of menses, a functional change, followed by delusions and illusions; also functional changes, and finally jealousy, with suspicions of her husband and her aunt.
Loquacity was the determining symptom, as refusing to talk was the determining symptom in the Ignatia case.
