Tim
asked
Stacy Schiff:
In your research for your book did you find out possible explanations for the girls' behaviours including the "hallucinations?" Is there a medical explanation?
Stacy Schiff
What the girls experience could very well have been what we formerly called hysteria and today call conversion disorder. It would explain the convulsing, the sense of suffocation, the crawling, prickling sensations on the skin. But without the girls to examine, we have no firm diagnosis. Whatever caused their suffering allowed them to express in fits would they could not communicate in words. And whatever it was in no way impaired their health; they remained robust when not convulsing. No medical condition explains the synchronized hallucinations.
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