Parkyns was not a missionary, and he was a shrewd and levelheaded observer. His comments are to the point:—“To many of my readers it will doubtless appear, and very naturally, that all these symptoms are impostures resorted to by the pretended sufferers as a means of procuring the borrowed finery, and enjoying the gaieties and festivities which are considered as the means of curing the disorder. This sounds very probable; and I cannot deny that such is my own opinion, though there are still some points which have rather puzzled me. First, as in the _bouda_, the extraordinary talent for acting which they display, and then the fact that the imposture has not been discovered and published centuries ago, but that it is still believed by the very people among whom it has so long been and still daily continues to be practised. How is it possible that a woman, who in her youthful days may have been guilty of such a hoax, should suffer herself to be imposed upon and led into so much trouble and expense by her children afterwards? And yet this is of common occurrence. From this last remark let it not be supposed that young women are the only sufferers; men and women of all ages are liable, though the young of the fair sex are perhaps the most frequently possessed. “One of my servants, who, by the great anxiety he showed in watching and tending the patients, was evidently convinced of the truth of their sufferings, had himself been attacked many years before, and assured me that after his recovery he had not the slightest recollection of anything that had taken place while the fit was on him, but that his friends had told him all about it. How was it possible that this man, supposing his own illness to have been feigned, could be cheated by the same means? “Lastly, the most puzzling thing of all is when a person acts sickness to such perfection that Azrael himself is deceived, and, mistaking the feigned malady for a real one, finishes it by seriously taking away the life of the shammer.