--------------------------------------------------------------- Mental conditions: Constitutional excitement. Case 22. Girl, age 14 years. Developmental conditions: Defective pregnancy. Early impaction of teeth. Poor general physical conditions. Home conditions: Poverty. Irritability of father and mother. Delinquencies: Mentality: Running away. Ability good; Stealing. Constitutional Lying. excitement. --------------------------------------------------------------- CASE 23 Summary: A girl of 16 having been out all of one night, related a story to the police of having been led off, and incidentally made the statement that she had been repeatedly immoral, once with a relative. She dictated and signed a detailed account of the affairs, giving times and places. This was used in investigating and led to much fruitless effort even on the part of experienced people--her story was quite untrue. When studied she proved to be a mild case of chorea, exhibiting the typical psychotic tendencies of that disease, such as we have observed in court work a number of times. Nellie M., when brought to us by her grandmother, following the girl's experience with the police who had been told by her of immoralities practiced, was found to be rather a nice looking and gentle girl, pleasant and responsive with us. On the physical side we found her to be poorly developed and nourished. Weight 93 lbs.; height 4 ft. 9 in. Vision about 20/40 in each eye, but wears glasses which correct this. Rather poor color. Complains somewhat of headaches. Marked tremor of outstretched hands. Moderate amount of choreic movements in arms and legs, exaggerated when attention distracted. Knee jerks exaggerated. Conjunctival and palatal reflexes almost absent. Small regular features. Well shaped head. Said to drink at least 4 cups of tea a day. Heart sounds negative. Mentally, she seemed to be fairly normal in ability, but was undoubtedly in a peculiar psychical condition. She had reached 7th grade in spite of much moving about, even to different cities. We found evidence of lack of good apperceptive powers and the history of the case led us to see clearly that she had been just recently in a very unstable, if not quite confusional mental condition. The ``Aussage'' or Testimony Test was not given in this case.