Persons of a certain type of mind could be really mentally unbalanced by such methods which we had heard outlined, where the mere fact of another trying to exert power over them became known to them. They would, as a matter of fact, unbalance themselves, thinking about and fighting off imaginary terrors.
Such people, I could readily see, might be quickly controlled, and in the wake of such control would follow stifled love, wrecked homes, ruined fortunes, suicide and even death.
Dr. Vaughn leaned forward critically. “What did you conclude, then, was the explanation of what you saw last night?” he asked sharply.
Kennedy met his question squarely, without flinching. “It looks to me,” he replied quietly, “like a sort of hystero-epilepsy. It is well known, I believe, to demonologists—those who have studied this sort of thing. They have recognized the contortions, the screams, the wild, blasphemous talk, the cataleptic rigidity. They are epileptiform.”
Vaughn said nothing, but continued to weigh Kennedy as if in a balance. I, who knew him, knew that it would take a greater than Vaughn to find him wanting, once Kennedy chose to speak. As for Vaughn, was he trying to hide behind some technicality in medical ethics?
“Dr. Vaughn,” continued Craig, as if goading him to the point of breaking down his calm silence, “you are specialist enough to know these things as well, better than I do. You must know that epilepsy is one of the most peculiar diseases.
“The victim may be in good physical condition, apparently. In fact, some hardly know that they have it. But it is something more than merely the fits. Always there is something wrong mentally. It is not the motor disturbance so much as the disturbance of consciousness.”
Kennedy was talking slowly, deliberately, so that none could drop a link in the reasoning.
“Perhaps one in ten epileptics has insane periods, more or less,” he went on, “and there is no more dangerous form of insanity. Self-consciousness is lost, and in this state of automatism the worst of crimes have been committed without the subsequent knowledge of the patient. In that state they are no more responsible than are the actors in one’s dreams.”
The hospital physician entered, accompanied by Craig’s messenger, breathless. Craig almost seized the package from his hands and broke the seal.