In this instance, apart from the obvious existence of a confirmed tic, the patient had a curious look about the eyes which a nearer glance showed was caused by complete absence of the eyelashes. He had a trick when speaking or talking of lifting his right hand and running his finger carefully along the margin of the lids, and if it encountered an eyelash projecting beyond the skin, he promptly plucked it out. The endless repetition of this toilette rendered the eyelids barren of lashes. TICS AND WRITING Are writing tics to be recognised? Tricks and turns of writing, however ridiculous, involuntary, and ingrained they be, scarcely deserve to be called tics. Those flourishes and ornaments that some people take delight in adding to their letters can no more be considered the expression of a pathological state than the superabundant gestures, the redundant words, the exuberant mimicry, of which others are so prodigal. They are simply modes of exteriorisation peculiar to the individual, and if in their superfluity and excess they go beyond the strict requirements of the case, still, they are only mannerisms of writing or of speech. Their manifestation is rigorously dependent on the performance of some function, and is not preceded by an imperious need of execution. More akin to the tics is stereotypy of written language, so common an appanage of mental disease. The term is intended to include such habits as repetition of a particular formula, underlining of words, constant use of hyphens in the same way, writing of certain pages in a hand differing from the rest of the manuscript. Séglas[102] has done excellent work in the analysis and interpretation of these troubles. One of his patients used every week to write letters bearing the same complicated address, and signed invariably with the following rigmarole: De Senez de Mesange, great Prince Napoleon, great Prince of the Blood Royal and Imperial of the Universe, great Admiral, great Marshal of my armies, ... great Procurator of the Republic, Royal and Imperial, great President of the Republic, Royal and Imperial, great Pope, great Duke, great King, great Emperor--Jupiter, Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Another would write after almost every sentence: _Dieu et son droit_, let him be cursed in all that is most cursed _qui mal y pense_. This was a sort of exorcism, a cabalistic formula enabling the persecuted unfortunate to defend herself against the wiles of the evil spirit.