, 284 -MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 



It is true of some monkeys * and of a large proportion of vulgar 

 children, f 



But I repeat that, after careful observation, I have not met with 

 any Chinaman iu the Straits whom I should describe as Latah. 



My remarks upon this section of my former paper were, no doubt, 

 crude and unsatisfactory. But I remember saying that this divi- 

 sion of Latah subjects must not be roughly described as " village 

 idiots." 



Now, I should baldly describe all the Chinese in whom I have 

 noticed this propensity as distinctly microcephalic. 



In two very marked cases which have come under my notice in 

 the last three years, and which, for some time, perplexed me in this 

 very connection, one patient has died insane in the charge of his 

 friends in Penang, and the other is now an inmate of the Lunatic 

 Asylum in Singapore. I can say, with confidence, that these two 

 are the only instances I have met in which I have had any doubt 

 as to the absence of Latah amongst the Chinese. 



That this imitative propensity is common both as the precursor 

 and the accompaniment of certain forms of mental disorder, is well 

 known. 



" In certain morbid states of the brain," says Dr. Bateman in 

 his work on Aphasia, J "this tendency is exaggerated to an extra- 

 " ordinary degree : some hemiplegic patients and others, at the 

 l ' commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, unconscious- 

 " ly § imitate every word which is uttered, whether in their own 

 "ora foreign language, and every gesture or action which is per- 

 " formed near them."|| 



* Noticeably Cercopithecus. 



f Those who read my former paper will be prepared to hear that I deny 

 the existence of Latah before pubescence, while I admit, as an inexplicable 

 fact, that, where present, it is persistent in both sexes long after the powers 

 of reproduction are extinct, and, in the case of women, as a rule, ends ody 

 with life itself- 



% Ed. 1870, p. 110. 



§ There is no unconsciousness, mesmeric or idiotic, in the actions of 

 a Latah. 



|| Similarly vide Voot's " Memoire sur les Microcepales" passim, es- 

 pecially p. 169, Ed. 1867. 



