Later he avoided undressing, because, as he said, the fire attacked him only when he was undressed. This occurrence led him to believe that he himself might have already heard of a similar episode at the time of the pain.

I lack the necessary material to sustain these explanations from observation. A predisposing influence for the origin of the cerebral condition of the boy may be attributed to heredity and to the fathers chronic syphilitic state.
To illustrate by a comical example how one wearing the blinders of medical mythology may miss the understanding of such cases I will relate a case which I found in a thesis on pavor nocturnus by Debacker,. He subsumed what occurred between his parents under the conception violence and wrestling, and thus reached a sadistic conception of the coitus act, as often happens among children. While he was seemingly thinking of the subject of violence, a reminiscence from his ninth year suddenly occurred to him.
From amid these evil dreams, which menaced his health, he was sent into the country, where he recovered within a year and a half, but at the age of fifteen he once confessed Je nosais pas lavouer, mais jeprouvais continuellement des picotements et des surexcitations aux parties a la fin, cela menervait tant que plusieurs fois, jai pense me jeter par la fenetre au dortoir. I remember that I suddenly became calm on coming face to face with my mother, as if I needed the assurance that my mother was not dead. I was not frightened because I dreamed that my mother was dying, but I interpreted the pain in this manner in the foreconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of the anxiety. For the night terrors with hallucinations pavor nocturnus frequently found in children, I would unhesitatingly give the same explanation.
The fact that he often noticed blood on his mothers bed corroborated his conception. Let us, however, quote the conclusions drawn by our author.
I am well aware of all the inconveniences arising for the reader from this difficulty, but I know of no way to avoid them. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a lengthy sojourn in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of physical strength after the termination of the period of puberty.
In connection with the ax he recalled that during that period of his life he once hurt his hand with an ax while chopping wood. The pain never occupies itself with trifles.