Felida's second state is altogether superior to the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior, inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her shop much more effectively than when she was in the _etat bete_, as she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew.

In this case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no memory of which remains in the first state--has resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral or medical treatment that we know.

The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Felida's normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average women of her class.

(Vol.IV.p.

503.).