Note 355 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

J. Cotard, Études sur les Maladies cérébrales et mentales; Paris, 1891. In this book the délire des négations is for the first time recognised and described as a form of melancholia. The Third Congress of French Alienists, which sat at Blois from the 1st to the 6th of August, 1892, devoted almost the whole of its conferences to the insanity of doubt. In a work by F. Raymond and F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur certains cas d’aboulie avec obsession interrogative et trouble des mouvements’ (Annales médico-psychologiques, 7e séries, t. xvi.), we read, p. 202: ‘The invalids occupy themselves with questions intrinsically insoluble, such as the creation, nature, life, etc. Why the trees are green? Why the rainbow has seven colours? Why men are not as tall as houses?’ etc.