draw a hard and fast line and to declare that all persons who were on one side of it must be sane and all persons who were on t

her and no one can fix positively the point of transition, is a sufficiently trite observation. Nowhere is this more true than in respect o

the filling out and signing of certain papers and through having submitted himself to a certain prescribed legal procedure. The physician, on the other hand, because of his peculiar relationship to the patient, and as a result of his particular training, looks upon this legal procedure as a necessary evil and merely as typifying the conventional mode by which society settles its accounts with its diseased members. Our legal brethren fail to appreciate, furthermore, the fact that an individual may be very seriously ill mentally and urgently require hos

ntly gives the impression of being his superior. Nevertheless, this usually well-endowed human being at a certain point in his career goes off at a tangent and spends the rest of his life in the pursuit of a phantom. The par

erest forensically. The law is the tool with which these individuals work, and the Courts their battle-grounds. The least provocation suffices to start the stone rolling, launching the unfortunate upon a career of endless litigation. As a rule the disorder originates in connection with some adverse decision or order of the authorities, which the patient considers an unjust one. Whether injustice has actually been suffered by the patient matters not and remains absolutely of no consequence as far as the course of the disease is c

to fight for his rights. He stops at no means and is the bane of judges and court officials. Naturally, he has to be refused all aid, either because he is unjust or because the courts find no remedy for his troubles. He refuses to settle actual grievances, carries the case from one court to another and finally develops an insatiable desire to fight to the bitter end. The statutes appear to him inadequate and even the fundamental principles of law fail him. He cannot abide by the ultimate decision after all the usual means of justice have been exhausted. In his attempts to gain justice he writes to ma

bed delusional field may remain quite normal. In short, he shows none of those tangible signs and symptoms upon which we must so frequently rely in our efforts to convince a jury of laymen of the existence of mental disorder. It is only when we take into consideration the entire life history of a paranoiac, which unfortunately is frequently ruled out as hearsay evidence, that the real state of affairs becomes manifest. We then see that where it concerns his delusional field the paranoiac's judgment is formed, not as a result of observation, or logic and

e can readily imagine the void in the unfortunate's life were he to be deprived of this all-engrossing, and to him really life-giving, casus belli. Thus, not infrequently, when one grievance is actually settled, another soon appears and assumes the center of the stage. The means these individuals use in their efforts to convince the authorities of the

ther over some trifling inheritance left by her mother, and who accused her father

the paranoiac is recognized in his true light and sent to a hospital for the insane. Before, however, this final scene in the litigious career is enacted, especially where the persecuted has turned persecutor, the objects of his

the degree of malevolence which they frequently exhibit. Indeed, the study of litigious paranoia, more than anything else, illustrates how much method there may really be in madness. Were an alleged lunatic standing as a defendant in a criminal s

re space than we have at our disposal. I shall, therefore, merely mention that in reviewing the history of paranoia one is unmistakably struck by the fact that those view points and ideas concerning this subject which have indelibly impressed themselves upon it occupy themselves with a study of the personality of the paranoiac rather than with the disease picture as such. Some of the investigators have gone so far as to maintain that par

ars at the Government Hospital for the Insane, and I am indebted for permis

found guilty. While awaiting sentence he was adjudged insane and sent to this Hospital. The evidence was gathered from the Reports of the Maryland Court of Appeals, dating as far back as 1874, and forms only an incomplete account of the patient's legal activities, inasmuch as ma

roof. The inference is irresistible that the magistrate who issued these judgments merely wrote the

had already had set aside by the higher Courts as many as some 1,900 distinct and separate judgments. How many more of those based on the same flimsy tissue of his distorted imagination he actually realized on is not known. As far as can be ascertained, the issue of insanity was n

ners, without their knowledge, for $1,500, which were impounded by Judge M-- of the United States Court at B--, where as a then non-resident he brought suit to recover on them. He then went down to Dickinson County, a remote section of Southwestern Virginia, and obtained other judgments for some four or five million dollars against the County and various citizens, which were obtained by perjury and forgery. They were eventually set aside. His brother died in 1907, and I became one of the sureties on the executor's bond; last year a judgment turned up here against the executor and his sureties

history as given by him was negative. He himself had the usual diseases of childhood, but, aside from chronic indigestion, had had no severe illness. He gave his occupation as that of physician. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union Army as a nurse and was discharged six months later; claims that in 1865 he graduated in medicine from the University of Maryland,

be had from the statements of his landlady,

ion, cooking his own meals in his room. After he was removed to the Hospital this room was entered and newspapers were found piled as high as the ceiling; many of the articles in them were underscored, and numerous clippings were pasted on doors and windows as well as on

least a hundred dollars per month. He states that he came originally to Washington to have this matter straightened out, but on account of his enemies was unsuccessful. His worst persecutions he believed to have been instigated by the A. E. Company because he had judgment against this Company for about $50,000. He stated that this was obtained in a damage suit which he brought against this Company because they wanted to charge him expressage of something like 40￠ on a prepaid package. Following this damage suit, the Express Company's a

patient would collect on his judgments, which by this time, amounted to something like $20,000

y tenaciously to his delusional system and believed himself fully justified in all his litigious pursuits. With all this he was clear and coherent in conversation, his memory was quite well-preserved, and he had n

by the District Attorney that he would be paroled if he were to go to Ohio and vote for President Taft. This he says he did, believing he had carried out the terms of his parole, promptly returned to

e Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress Assembled, that the Secretary of War be and is hereby authorized and directed to correct and amend the military record of X--, late assistan

bill was

esident of W., in the State of Maryland, the sum of $45,600, being the amount of the loss sustained by said X-- in property and business while he was performing important service for the Government in the year 1863, and in recognition of valuable service rendered the United States, and compensation for loss resulting from his causing the arrest of a C

returned to the Government Hospital f

he patient himself, which, unfortunately, is too lengthy to

e A. E. Company, as I was later told by several members of that jury. I have also been told by numerous detectives that they were hired by the A. E. Company to watch me." He continues in his brief:-"I was kept in jail until the eve of the 13th of February, 1905, when the jail doors were suddenly thrown open and

people had it printed in 10,000 of them that I had committed perjury. I sued them for slan

t he has made a brief of a case which could not be duplicated by anyone. He is likewise the greatest physician, and he will prove this when he gets to court. At this writing he is beginning to show evidence of senile deterioration and is no longer the keen manipulator of the law of years ago. He endeavors now to gain his ends by more direct and extremely puerile and childish methods. To illustrate:-His physician had left the institution about a year ago, and soon afterwards X-- produced an affidavit purporting to have been made by this physician in which he set forth that X-- w

tions to the Maritime Register, for which publication he was a regular correspondent for several years. In these papers he would constantly harp on the irregularities and illegalities of many of the government affairs. At home he always acted in a peculiar manner, never had much to say to anyone, was unreasonable, fault-finding and complaining; he always wanted things his own way. Several years ago he came to live with his sister, accompanied by his wife and child. Although he paid nothing for board and lodging for the three, he complained about the food and had something to say in criticism for every little inconvenience. He would frequently leave town without saying a word to any member of his family, and would reappear just as suddenly. He kept to his room almost constantly, leaving same only for his meals. On one occasion he wrote his wife, who at the time was staying with her child at his sister's house, that she should watch this sister, as h

ses her of being responsible for the death of their first child, and of various other misconduct. However, everything went tolerably well until April, 1906, when their second child was born. The doctor who attended Mrs. Y. during her confinement, a very prominent local physician, testified in open court at that time, that from his observation of the patient's acts he believed him to be insane. This, the patient said, precipitated a lot of trouble between him and his wife. He does not enter into details concerning the difficulties he had with the physician, but the details are extremely illuminating. It appears that the patient refused to pay this doctor's bill and was sued for the debt. At the time of the trial he gave as his defense the following two reasons why he should not pay this bill:-The first one was that inasmuch as this doctor lived in a part of the city which would necessitate the crossing of a railroad grade in order to reach the patient's house, and that on this account there was a possibility of his being detained at the crossing during an emergency call, he had no right to take the case in the first place, and therefore he was not entitled to payment. His second reason was that inasmuch as this doctor wore a beard, he carried more germs into the house than would otherwise have had access to it; therefore he should forfeit his fee. In 1907 his wife obtained a divorce on the grounds of cruelty and non-support, and was given the custody of the child; this had the effect of launching the patient upon a new series of litigation. His first retaliating measure was the abduction of the child, which brought about his indictment by a grand jury and subsequent arrest. The reason he gave for taking the child out of the District was that his wife lived in a house over an old abandoned cellar, and that it was therefore an unhealthy place for the child. Upon reg

ant officials held over from the last administration owe considerable gratitude to him; when he is seen in his self-assumed most important r?le of the man of destiny, flooding Congress, the Courts and many high officials with petitions, charges, writs, and proposed investigations; when one sees the criminal code as transformed by him; then one begins to get a proper perspective of the grandiose phase of this man's mental disorder. It is impossible, of course, with the limited space at our disposa

e consigned many hospital officials to life imprisonment, and the amount of damages which he expects to collect from them and the Government runs into fabulous sums. He soon began to solicit the grievances of his fellow patients, establishing, so to speak, a law office in miniature upon the ward; and whereas formerly these patients in the criminal department merely aired their grievances as they saw them, they now accompany them with quotations from the statutes concerning these points furnished by this legal missionary. Soon, however, even the insane patients on his ward began to distrust him, and at the present time there is hardly an attendant or pat

ual observer. He talks quite rationally, shows a remarkably well-preserved memory, has never exhibited hallucinations or those gross disorders of conduct which to the lay mind form the sine qua non of mental disease. It is only after a close study of the entire li

s litigious career by his dismissal from the Navy. It is therefore but fair to assume that in both instances the disease has existed for a great number of years. Nevertheless, it was only when these individuals faced the bar as defendants in criminal suits that the disease was recognized in either case. One may readily see, therefore, how easily mental disease may remain undetected, especially if one neglects to take an inventory of the individual's past life. I have already alluded to the difficulty frequently experienced in having evidence of this nature accepted in a court of law, and here, it seems to me, is room for a good deal of reform in procedure. Thus far society's side of this problem has been chiefly emphasized; but what about these unfortunate derelicts, X-- and Y? Both of them are at present confined in the criminal department of the Government Hospital for the Insane with criminal charges pending against them. Assuming that our contentions with r

h as are here reported, a better mutual understanding concerning which between the lawyer

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