with the officials at the penitentiary to torture him. This state of
affairs continued, with the addition of the delusional idea that the
physician was endeavoring to hypnotize him, until the early part of
September, 1911, when he acquired full insight into his mental
disturbance, realizing fully that the various ideas which he expressed
were delusional, and that he must have been suffering from mental
disorder at the time.
Mental examination revealed no defect, and his knowledge was quite in
accord with his educational advantages. Morally, he was distinctly
defective. Physical examination showed various stigmata of
degeneration, such as asymmetry of the face; large outstanding and
flattened ears; narrow and dome-shaped palate; irregularly placed
teeth; prominent parietal bones; two symmetrical depressions on the
occiput; congenital flat-footedness; and a sullen facial expression.
His arms were covered with tattoo marks. Sense of pain somewhat
diminished. Sympathetic reactions could not be elicited. Wassermann
reaction with blood serum nearly complete positive.
The patient finally recovered from his mental disorder, and on
January 16, 1912, was returned to the penitentiary to serve out the
remainder of his sentence. At this writing, November, 1915, nothing
further has been heard from him.
We have before us an individual who to start with, is badly tainted
hereditarily. His childhood history is indefinite, aside from his
statements of having been usually the lowest in his class at school. He
launched upon an industrial career at a very early period in life and
simultaneously with commencing to earn money he began to indulge in
alcoholics. His industrial career was cut short soon after. He gets
drunk and sets fire to a store, causing the death of a human being.
This, at the age of seventeen. His moral status can readily be surmised
when we remember his reply to the question as to whether he was sorry
for the deed. "Why should I be sorry? I didn't know the man that was
burned." The usual course of the law was taken in the case and he was
placed in a reformatory. He spent nearly six years between that
institution and hospitals for the criminal insane, when he was released
on parole. It is of interest to note here how he reacted to the stress
of confinement in the reformatory. We find that on two occasions during
this period it became necessary to transfer him to an insane asylum. We
shall have occasion to refer to this again later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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