He had measles and mumps during childhood, from which he made good
recoveries. Gonorrhœal and syphilitic infection were denied.
(Wassermann with the blood-serum negative.) During a bar-room brawl in
Panama he was struck on the head with a table leg and rendered
unconscious for fifteen or sixteen hours. This was some time in 1908.
He thinks there was nothing more than a scalp wound, requiring no
treatment beyond a simple dressing. For about a year after, headaches
were present almost continually, occipital in location and of a
tingling sensation. There was likewise a reduction of tolerance for
alcoholics, since then two glasses of whisky being sufficient to
intoxicate him. He does not know whether there was any change in his
mental make-up or faculties following this injury, as he paid no
attention to this. He commenced to indulge in alcoholics at the age of
eighteen or nineteen. He cannot give a detailed account of the extent,
but, as a rule, he spent all his money not needed for living expenses
for whisky. He would become intoxicated every time he went ashore,
stating that there was nothing else to do and no place to which he
could go. Practice of onanism was denied. He claimed to have begun
normal sexual intercourse at about the usual age. Strenuously denied
sexual perversions, in spite of the fact that he is now serving a ten
years' sentence for sodomy. He denied the guilt of this offense;
insisted that he was never arrested before in his life, and believed
the present conviction to have been a trumped-up affair because they
must have gotten sore on him, although he cannot figure out why.
Following his conviction for the above offense he was sent to the
State Penitentiary at Concord, N.H. For a short while after he got
there he got along well; was kept continually at work in the chair
factory. He did not like this work, as he was subjected to the
inhalation of the dust and shavings, and feared he would develop
tuberculosis from this, and asked to be transferred to some other
place. This request was finally granted him, and he was put to work in
the kitchen. He states he did not get along well there; very soon got
into some sort of trouble and was put into a dark dungeon, where he
thinks he remained for about twelve months, strapped to the bed. He
never saw the daylight during this time. He does not know why these
strict measures were taken with him, but it is a fact that he was tied
down. He had no idea of the onset of the present trouble, but stated
that he complained frequently to the doctor of headaches and vomiting.
The headaches were occipital in nature and severe at times. He could
not recall his transfer to this institution nor the events which
transpired during the first two or three days after his arrival here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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