1984 



DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



producing some peculiar movement, after which any unlooked-for 

 action may be imitated, and is generally accompanied by bad 

 language. The mildest form of the disease is merely an exclamation 

 or a scream when startled, but in severe cases the patient will 

 imitate any sudden motion or obey any suggestion made to him. 



Fletcher relates that in some parts of the Malay States it is 

 occasionally impossible for a judge to examine the witnesses, as 

 they can do nothing but imitate and repeat the questions put to 

 them. 



According to Abraham, the exciting causes are: (i) Auditory — 

 e.g., an unexpected noise behind the person; (2) visual — some un- 

 looked-for movement ; (3) tactile, such as a sudden touch. 



The predisposing cause would appear to be racial. 



Symptomatology. — On hearing an unexpected noise, seeing or 

 performing a sudden movement, or being surprised by a touch, the 

 patient repeals either the action seen or the words uttered, and at 

 the same time may use foul language. The unfortunate victim is 

 generally conscious of his words and actions, of which he may be 

 ashamed, but he is quite unable to control them. The most graphic 

 account of the symptomatology of the fully-developed complaint 

 is that given by Sir Hugh Clifford in his ' Brown Humanity,' from 

 which we are kindly permitted to give an extract. The disease is 

 best seen in the Malays, and as no white man knows these people as 

 Sir Hugh Clifford knows them, the following is of peculiar value: — 



' The most typical case of latah within my experience was that of a Selangor 

 Malay named Sat, who, in 1887 and 1888, cooked the rice for me and for ten, 

 twenty, or thirty Malays who were then living in my house at Pekai. He was 

 a great big, heavy-featured, large-boned, clumsily-built fellow, very solid, 

 very stupid, very phlegmatic — the last person in the world one would have 

 thought to be the victim of any nervous disorder. To the lay mind any 

 abnormal degree of sensitiveness should be accompanied by a somewhat 

 ethereal physique, a delicate skin, a blue-veined forehead, tiny hands and 

 feet, and a highly-strung organization. To none of these things could poor 

 Sat lay any sort of claim ; and though, no doubt, doctors will say that these 

 are by no means invariable accompaniments of a highly nervous tempera- 

 ment, I must own that Sat looked vastly improbable as the possessor of 

 anything so rarefied. All the other Malays in my household were accustomed 

 to put upon Sat most unmercifully, making him do almost the whole of the 

 work that should rightly have been shared between them all. Sat never 

 appeared to resent this arrangement, and he never made any complaint to me 

 then, or at any later time, of the manner in which his fellows treated him. 



' He spent almost the whole of his day in the great ramshackle room, built 

 out over the river on supporting piles of nibong, in which the large wooden box, 

 filled with baked clay, which served as our simple cooking-range, occupied the 

 chief place in the centre of the tala floor. 



When the others were most noisy, Sat was still silent. When some of 

 my men boasted of the great deeds they had performed in the old days in 

 Selangor, Sat would listen obediently to the thrice-told tales, stolidly, but 

 without excitement. Most of the other men had their own particular chums, 

 but Sat was always solitary, and he never appeared to have any ideas in that 

 great bullet-head of his which he desired to exchange with his neighbours. 



He had been an inmate of my hut for nearly a year before anyone dis- 

 covered that he was latah. The fact came to light quite accidentally, Sat 

 being startled out of his self-possession by the sudden capsizing of a cooking- 



