The case of erythrophobia

Abstract

In the specialized literature for the last time, a description of a rather peculiar nervous suffering began to come across, which Pitres and Rgis called erythrophobia and the most prominent symptom of which is the periodically arising fear of reddening, on the one hand, a fearful reddening of the face, on the other hand. Apparently, the first indication of such a combination of clinical phenomena we find in Casper back in 1846. But the observation of this author, known to me only from the work of Westphalya (Ueber Zwangsvorstellungen. 1877. Berl. Klin. Woch. 1877), is too cited last day in general terms, so that one can speak about him with the desired certainty. After Casper, not one of the clinicians focused their attention on such cases, and only in 1896 appeared almost simultaneously several works devoted to the suffering of interest to us. Dugas (Revue philosophique, dec. 1896), Campbell (Brif. Med. Journal, 25 sept. 1896); Breton (Gazette des hpit. 20 oct. 1896), Pitres et Rgis (Archives de Neurologie 1896 No. 9. p. 253), Bekhterev (Review of Psychiatry 1896, No. 12; 1897 No. 1 and 8), Chigaev (Doctor 1897 30), Manheimer (La mdecine modern 1897 No. 8) published a whole series of observations in which the clinical picture of suffering is described in great detail and where its main features are already quite definite.