rdly an
attendant or patient in the building who cares to associate with Y. He
missed no opportunity of playing upon the credulity of the younger and
less sophisticated attendants in the criminal building, at first
begging and urging them to carry his petitions to their destination in
a surreptitious manner, and finding this of no avail threatening them
with fines and imprisonment as accomplices in this gigantic crime of
keeping him confined in a hospital. When not out walking he keeps
himself constantly busy making out documents, briefs, petitions,
bills, etc. He is very seclusive, keeping himself aloof from the other
patients, as he considers himself very much their superior.

Now this master litigant, this profoundly diseased man, succeeds in
making quite a normal impression in a casual interview, and in his
writings he frequently succeeds in conveying the idea of being quite
normal. Each isolated fact looks plausible enough to the casual
observer. He talks quite rationally, shows a remarkably well-preserved
memory, has never exhibited hallucinations or those gross disorders of
conduct which to the lay mind form the _sine qua non_ of mental
disease. It is only after a close study of the entire life history, of
the many fine shades of deviation from the normal which this man
exhibits, that one discovers that his mind is very seriously affected
indeed, and that because of his plausibility he belongs to a rather
dangerous type of mentally diseased individuals.

The chief aim of this paper has already been indicated, and we shall
adhere to our original intention of rendering it as free from purely
didactic considerations as is consistent with clearness. For this reason
the case histories given above were considerably abbreviated and only
such an account rendered as would suffice to convince even a layman that
the two individuals in question are seriously affected mentally. Of this
there should not be the slightest doubt in anyone's mind, neither should
one encounter here any diagnostic difficulties. The only difficult
point, and a point which may become of considerable forensic importance,
is the exact estimation of the duration of the illness in each instance.
From the available data at hand it would seem that in the case of X----,
the disease had its inception in the episode during the late Civil War,
though the possibility of retrospective falsification must be kept in
mind