148 LATAE, 



men I have met out here who habitually passed nights in the 

 jungle alone. There was here no question of the superstitious 

 reverence which Malays have for this animal, or of their dislike 

 to hearing it called by its regular name. The man's fear was 

 latah, and his friends, though apparently much amused, told me 

 that this was his peculiarity, and I was careful not to offend again. 



With regard to snakes, perhaps the horror with which these 

 sufferers hear the word, is more marked still. 



Such cases, however, as I say, must be familiar to most readers 

 of these pages. The class of cases in which those afflicted are led 

 to believe in the actual presence of a reptile, where the sane only 

 see a bit of string, or a piece of rotcm, belong to another — the 

 fourth — division of my subject. 



Class C. 



To this class seem to belong all those persons who, without 

 encouragement, and involuntarily, imitate the words, sounds or 

 gestures of those around them. 



These latah subjects cannot, I think, be widely classed under 

 the head of " village idiots." 



Their disease is, I have gathered from experience, as a rule, spas- 

 modic, by which I mean that it is marked by intervals of mental 

 regularity, while all other phases of this complaint are, so far as 

 I have observed, persistent. 



This imitative propensity is often combined with the other cha- 

 racteristics of latah, but I have marked many cases in which it 

 stands by itself. 



I have tried, but tried in vain, to lay down any rule for the perio- 

 dicity of these attacks. They appear to vary in the period of 

 their recurrence, not only as regards one latah compared with 

 another, but also in the case of any individual sufferer. 



Here I may remark, that the Malays themselves draw a distinct 

 line between latah and insanity proper. 



Their definition of the narrow border line which separates mad- 

 ness and mental health, does not satisfy me, still less would it 



