Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/328

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
310
PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS.


which was not purely platonic, with the lady described in Case 118; and that she wrote her affectionate letters like those of a lover to his beloved. In 1887 I again saw the patient in a sanitarium, where she had been placed on account of hystero-epileptic attacks, spinal irritation, and morphinism. The contrary sexual feeling existed unchanged, and only by the most careful watching was the patient kept from improper advances toward her fellow-patients.

Her condition remained quite unchanged until 1889. Then the patient began to fail, and she died of “exhaustion,” in August, 1889. The autopsy showed, in the vegetative organs, amyloid degeneration of the kidneys, fibroma of the uterus, and cyst of the left ovary. The frontal bone was much thickened, uneven on the inner surface, with numerous exostoses; dura adherent to vault of cranium. Long diameter of skull, 175 millimetres; lateral diameter, 148 millimetres; weight of the cedematous, but not atrophied, brain, 1175 grammes. The meninges delicate, easily removed. Cortex pale. Convolutions broad, not numerous, regularly arranged. Nothing abnormal in cerebellum and great ganglia.

Case 131. Gynandry.[1] History: On November 4, 1889, the step-father of a certain Count Sandor V. complained that the latter had swindled him out of 800f., under the pretense of requiring a bond as secretary of a stock company. It was ascertained that Sandor had entered into matrimonial contracts and escaped from the nuptials in the spring of 1889; and, more than this, that this ostensible Count Sandor was no man at all, but a woman in male attire,—Sarolta (Charlotte), Countess V.

S. was arrested, and, on account of deception and forgery of public documents, brought to examination. At the first hearing S. confessed that she was born on Sept. 6, 1866; that she was a female, Catholic, single, and worked as an authoress under the name of Count Sandor V.

From the autobiography of this man-woman I have gleaned the following remarkable facts that have been independently confirmed:—

S. comes of an ancient, noble, and highly-respected family of Hungary, in which there have been eccentricity and family peculiarities. A sister of the maternal grandmother was hysterical, a somnambulist, and lay seventeen years in bed, on account of fancied paralysis. A second great-aunt spent seven years in bed, on account of a fancied fatal illness, and at the same time gave balls. A third had the whim that a certain table in her salon was bewitched. If anything were laid on this table, she would become greatly excited and cry, “Bewitched! bewitched!” and run with the object into a room which she called the “Black Chamber,” and the key of which she never let out of her hands. After the death of this lady, there were found in this chamber a number of shawls, ornaments,

  1. Comp. the expert medical opinion of this case, by Dr. Birnbacher, in Friedreich’s Blätter f. ger. Med., 1891, H. 1.