6oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or persecution which afflict the aged and often lead them to take 

 refuge in the martyr-spirit, are sad examples. The state of fatigue 

 or exhaustion is another, and " neurasthenic " insanity is only an 

 expression in greater degree of the morbid mental action found in 

 fatigue and exhausted states. 



The primary and secondary effects of alcohol or other narcotic 

 indulgence is another soil in which the " sense of injury " easily 

 grows. The habitue is notoriously suspicious and irritable, and 

 full of fictitious grievances and unwarranted persecutory ideas. 

 His attitude toward them is that of the paranoiac, vindictive, rather 

 than that of the melancholiac, humiliated. They swell the army 

 of so-called " borderland " cases of insanity, fretting their friends 

 and puzzling the doctor with conduct alternately interpreted as 

 " cussed " or " crazy." 



AYhere there is bodily disease, acute or chronic, the morbid 

 " sense of injury " is much in play. An intelligent patient, on re- 

 covery from a stomach disorder, admitted that whenever her stom- 

 ach had ached she was taken with -a violent hatred of her com- 

 panion with whom she was in affectionate relation. An ignorant 

 Southern colored woman, who had rheumatism in her ankle, be- 

 lieved that she had been "hoodooed," and explained the pain in 

 her ankle by the presence of a snake, which she believed had been 

 put there by a " hoodoo." She was not insane, the idea being con- 

 sistent with her degree of intelligence, training, and early environ- 

 ment. Another patient, a sensible, cultivated woman, while 

 suffering from a non-nervous illness, in which she had received 

 all the consideration that love and money could furnish, be- 

 lieved herself to have been constantly and deliberately abused. 

 After her recovery, now some years, she still maintains the belief. 

 Instances could be multiplied, for doctors continually meet this 

 atmosphere in the sick-room, from ugly little grievances to delu- 

 sions of persecution. They are not surprised when a patient tells 

 them in mingled confidence and complaint that he is hungry and 

 neglected, that " they " will give him nothing to eat, etc., to find 

 that his wife has been most attentive, has been pressing him to 

 eat, and has stocked the pantry in anticipation. Dr. Johnson had 

 plenty of ground for saying that a sick man is a rascal, though the 

 modern doctor has reversed the formula. 



Persons who suffer from actual trouble or ill treatment easily 

 develop a morbid sense of injury, just as under similar conditions 

 they may become insane. Unable to estimate the precise amount 

 of their real grievance, there is an easy mental overflow into the 

 fictitious ones. It is for this reason that the narrative of a real 

 trouble or quarrel is so fraught with calumnious arraignment of 



