ARE LOVERS MAD ?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2352, 19 November 1908, Page 3

ARE LOVERS MAD ?

A FRENCH DOCTOR’S DIAGNOSIS

AND CURE

Are lovers mad? Dr. Berillon has been asked, and lie ds inclined to think they are(says the Paris- correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph”). He is a well-known specialist in hypnotism, and the editor of the “Revue de l’Hypnotisme.” Passionate love, according to him, is always an hysterical condition. He quoteg the examples, observed by himself, of a boy of 20 who Avas driven to stealing for love of a ballet girl, of a woman who shot her lover dead, then fell on his body weeping, and asking his pardon; and' of a respectable mother of six children, avlio left them and" everything else to run after a. young lover, and' turned pickpocket for his salco. Dr. Berillon. might have quoted other examples also from the earlie-st days to the present times. He proposes no cure for tlio madness of love, but ho cites a remarkable fact which he. has observed. “All persons having a fixed affective idea show greater sensitiveness in the left side of tho body than in tlio right.” This seems, to revive the old idea that the heart is the seat of the affections. Indirectly, this observation has led tho docter to devise a method for curing the madness of love. “When a patient suffering from a fixed idea is brought to me I generally note exaggerated sensitiveness m the left hand, the aeft Avrist, on the left temple, etc. I then take measures to re-establish sensitiveness on the right side, -and' the affective idea dwindles, the love madness disappears.” The recipe for lovesick men and maidens accordingly seems to be physical culture of tho loft half of the body. > ’ j.,