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M. Littre, on the strength of his historical sketch, decides, most correctly, that there is rien de nouveau, nothing new, in the spirit-rapping epidemic. 'These maladies never desert our race. But this fact hardly explains why 'vessels were dragged from the hands' of his nuns in the sixteenth century. In search of a cause, he turns to hallucinations.
M. Littre, writing on the 3d of October, 1871, says, "I do not find, in my account of the word, third estate before the sixteenth century. 'Prince, dost thou yearn for good old times again? In good old ways the Three Estates restrain. But I cannot give this conclusion as final, seeing that it is supported only by the documents I consulted for my dictionary."
Skippon, in the early part of the last century, reports the discharge of the bones of a fetus through an "imposthume" in the groin. Other cases of anal discharge of the product of extrauterine conception are recorded by Winthrop, Woodbury, Tuttle, Atkinson, Browne, Weinlechner, Gibson, Littre, Magruder, Gilland, and many others.
About the first half of the eighteenth century what might be called the positive period of teratology begins. Following the advent of this era come Mery, Duverney, Winslow, Lemery, and Littre. In their works true and concise descriptions are given and violent attacks are made against the ancient beliefs and prejudices.
"How can a man get out of a rut after he has been in it for years and has settled down to the slow jog-trot that leads to the grave?" The answer is the thing can be done, and millions have done it. One of the names most honored among the great men of France is that of Littre, who wrote and compiled the great French dictionary a monument of learning.
The accepted belief in the phenomena of hypnotism, and of unconscious mental and bodily actions 'automatisms' has expelled the old belief in spirits from many a dusty nook. To examine these historically is to put a touch or two on the picture of 'demoniac affections, which M. Littre desired to see executed.
And all witches told much the same tale; apparently because they were collectively hallucinated. Then were the spectators of the agile crockery collectively hallucinated? M. Littre does not say so explicitly, though this is a conceivable theory. Among accounts of 'demoniac affections, descriptions of objects moved without contact are of frequent occurrence.
Kingsford bases his theory of Gilbert's sojourn in Syria upon a story adopted, I think, from Littré and found in the Histoire litéraire de la France. Now Littré avers that a certain Hugo de Jubilet was involved in an ambuscade in Syria in the year 1227, and that he had a son named Bertram. It is very natural, of course, to conclude that this Bertram was the patient recorded in the book of Gilbert.
Their enthusiastic veneration for him, and devotion to the ends he pursued, do honour alike to them and to their teacher, and are an evidence of the personal ascendancy he exercised over those who approached him; an ascendancy which for a time carried away even M. Littré, as he confesses, to a length which his calmer judgment does not now approve.
Pécuchet was amazed above all at Jénin. What! z'annetons would be better than hannetons, z'aricots than haricots! and, under Louis XIV., the pronunciation was Roume and Monsieur de Lioune, instead of Rome and Monsieur de Lionne! Littré gave them the finishing stroke by declaring that there never had been, and never could be positive orthography.
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