336 MUSGRAVE AND SISON. 



is not the insufficiency, but the inequality of their mental development. Their 

 aptitude for art, literature, poetry, less often for science, is sometimes remarkable; 

 they may fill a prominent place in society; many are men of talent, some even 

 of genius; yet what surprises is the embryonic condition of one or other of their 

 faculties. Brilliance of memory or of conversational gifts may be counteracted 

 by absolute lack of judgment; solidity of intellect may be neutralized by the more 

 or less complete absence of moral sense." 



Meige and Feindel 3 call particular attention to the practically constant "mental 

 infantilism" as a feature in the character of the patient suffering from tic. 

 Mental infantilism is evidenced by inconsequence of ideas and fickleness of mind, 

 reminiscent of early youth, and unaltered wth the attainment of the years of 

 discretion. 



Mere repetition does not, can not, evolve a tic except in patients 

 with psychic predisposition in the shape of volitional enfeeblement. 

 This degeneracy may consist of decrease, absence, arrest or delay, or in 

 overgrowth, increase, exaggeration; and these contrary processes may 

 coexist in the same individual. 



Muscular spasm and other requirements of true tic are present in such 

 conditions as Gilles de la Tourette's disease, and to them are added 

 echolalia, echokinesia, echokimemia, and other forms of mimicry. In 

 some of the saltatory spasms, particularly latah, and positively in 

 mali-mali of the Filipinos, the autospasm which is the distinguishing 

 feature of true tic is absent and we have in its place only an uncontrol- 

 lable mimicry, manifesting itself in various ways, but principally as 

 echolalia and echokinesia or ecbokimemia. 



Meige and Feindel,* in discussing tics, ' state that echolalia and echokinesia, 

 in spite of their frequency among those who are addicted to tic, can not be 

 enumerated with the tics, because their exhibition is -dependent on the actions of 

 others; whereas once a tic is established it requires no stimulus from without for 

 its manifestation. Of course, their affinity to the tics is very close; they spring 

 from the same soil; they represent in the adult the persistence and amplification 

 of the child's propensity for imitation, and, therefore, in their own way postulate 

 a degree of mental infantilism. 



Although these and other forms of mimicry are thus recognized as 

 being independent of auto-stimulation, they are generally classified as 

 tics and, except in the discussions of latah of the Malays by O'Brien, 

 Guinon, Scheube, and others, we have found no literature recognizing 

 the existence of the condition, except as a manifestation in patients 

 suffering from some form of tic. 



The "running amok" common among some tribes of the Malays is of 

 particular interest to medical men in the Far East. This disease or one 

 very similar to it is quite common among the Moros of the Philippine 

 Islands, and a number of soldiers and others have fallen victims to 



3 Tics and Their Treatment (1907). 



' Loc. tit. 



