The short summary of causative factors given at the end of the case study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to lawyers and other students of criminalistics. It should be needless to state to our professional readers that the personalities represented in our case histories are entirely fictitious, but that alterations have been made only in such facts as will not impair scientific values. We confess to no particular pleasure in writing up this rather sordid material; the task is undertaken because such studies offer the only way to gain that better understanding which is necessary for adequate treatment of special types of human beings. CHAPTER II PREVIOUS STUDIES The subject of pathological lying was first definitely brought to the attention of the medical and legal professions by the studies of Delbruck.[8] The aim of this work was to follow the development of a symptom but little commented upon up to this time, a symptom, as he says, found in every healthy person in slight degree, but in some cases rising to pathological significance and perhaps dominating the entire picture of abnormal traits--thus becoming pathognomonic. This symptom he at the outset calls lying. [8] ``Die pathologische Luge und die psychisch abnormen Schwindler. Eine Untersuchung Uber den allmahlichen Uebergang eines normalen psychologischen Vorgangs in ein pathologisches Symptom, fur Aerzte und Juristen.'' Pp. 131, Stuttgart, 1891. Through an elaborate and exhaustive investigation of the lies told by five patients over a period of years, he came to the conclusion that the form of falsifying in these cases deserves a new and separate name. It was not ordinary lying, or delusion, or false memory, these words express only part of the conception; hence he coined the new term, pseudologia phantastica, to cover the species of lying with which he was concerned. Later German writers have also adopted his terminology. To emphasize the method by which he arrived at this conclusion and to gain at the same time some knowledge of the problems he dealt with, we may review in bare outline his case-studies.