But, precisely as in the ordinary insane, so also in mattoids, the calm sometimes suddenly ceases, and gives place to impulsive forms of mania and delusion, especially under the stimulus of hunger or irritated passion, or during the return of the various neuroses which accompany and often generate the disease, as in the cases of Cordigliani and Mangione. This is why it is important to note that many are subject to symptoms which indicate the pre-existence of disturbance at the nervous centres. Giraud and Spandri have convulsive movements of the face, lowering of the right eyebrow, and ptosis on the right side. Anæsthesia was found in Lazzaretti, Mangione, and De Tommasi; delusions of short duration in Cordigliani. P----, a young man of distinguished abilities, became mattoid only after an attack of typhus fever. Kulmann became a prophet at eighteen, after suffering from disease of the brain. These impulsive outbursts make such cases extremely important to alienist physicians--who, finding no similar cases in any of the better-known forms of mental disease, often erroneously infer imposture, or soundness of mind--and still more to politicians who, by not at once placing such men (at first, it is true, far more ridiculous than dangerous) in asylums, expose themselves to perils perhaps greater than those threatened by actual madmen, who betray themselves at once, thus making it possible to take measures for rendering them harmless. There is a much more dangerous variety of these graphomaniacs--those whose disease was formerly known as “lawsuit mania.” These individuals feel a continual craving to go to law against others, while considering themselves the injured party. They display an extraordinary activity, and a minute knowledge of the law, which they always try to interpret to their own advantage, heaping up petition on petition, memorial on memorial, in such quantities as is difficult to imagine. Many attach themselves to some person, to obtain whose influence they are continually scheming; then they apply to the King or the Parliament. They are apt to succeed at first, especially with members of Parliament, or at least to be considered merely as over-zealous suitors. At last, however, when their persistence has wearied every one out, they convert their forensic and literary violence into deeds, certain that everything will be pardoned them in consideration of the justice of their cause--nay, that their action will have the effect of deciding the suit in their favour. This result, to tell the truth, sometimes ensues, thanks to the institution of the jury. Thus G----, having lost his cause, shot at and wounded Count Colli, but was acquitted through the singular eloquence he displayed before the jury. Ten years later, he forced his way, armed, into an apartment which he had already sold, and which, nevertheless, he insisted on having back.