That affected the man so depressingly that, after a three months’ stay
at a sanitarium, he returned penitently, a changed man, and prevailed
upon the wife to return and live with him again. But in a few weeks his
old demoniac jealousy set in once more. This time he accused her of the
most horrible crimes. He reproached her that she allowed herself to be
licked by the dog and shot the animal. He watched her carefully and
denied her the least social intercourse. Finally he accused her of
intimacy with her 15-year-old brother. He found a small spot on the bed
linen and he cut that out to preserve as proof of her infidelity. He
pounced on her one night, choked her, and tried to force her to confess
her doings with the brother. Again she fled to her parents but hesitated
to turn her husband over to the lunacy board. She did not want to be the
cause of his commitment to a sanitarium.
Meanwhile the patient’s insanity grew rapidly. He drank to great excess
and raised a big row in front of her parents’ home. He complained to the
police that his wife and her younger brother, with whom she maintains
criminal relations, had set a number of desperate-looking characters on
his trail. He served notice that he would give those fellows something
to remember him by and that the first one who would dare come too close
to him would be shot down. Commitment. Delirium tremens. Exitus in
consequence of an intercurrent malady.
It is noteworthy that the suspected little brother-in-law had been a
great favorite of his; he had been fond of taking the boy along on his
hunting trips. When completely under the influence of drink he always
wanted to embrace him and pet him.
A connection between paranoia and alcoholism is shown also by the last
of this series of observations, which follows:
81. This is a woman no longer in her prime of life. She is the
grandmother of several children, 54 years of age, and, up to a few years
ago, she was not jealous. As soon as her husband ceased to have
intercourse with her she was seized with the idea that he must have
intercourse with a certain pretty girl who had been formerly in their
employ and had left. She had seen that girl often in the neighborhood
and wondered that the girl looked so well and was so well dressed. She
had always liked the girl very much. In fact, she wept when the girl
left the house. Now she tortured her husband with the accusation that he
was intimate with that girl,—she was sure of it. The man denied it,
but—grilled by her—he had to admit that he had met the girl on the
street a few times and had spoken to her. That led to such terrible
quarrels,—he had to leave the house and was gone for weeks on a journey.
He wanted to have peace and was energetic enough to bring it about. In
fact, he threatened to sue for separation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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