P. H. The patient was always a nervous child, had very bad
dreams, but she was smart at school up to ten or eleven, and played with other girls. Then she began to work less well, got thin, more nervous, complained of headaches. It was about that time that her mother died. (The reaction to the death was said not to have been different from that of her sister.) She was kept at home and was quiet.... "You could see something was working on her." She began to menstruate at 14, and it was claimed that she then wakened up a little. It was further stated that she was always "stuck up" about her clothes.
At 16 she went to work in a factory, but her sister thought the work was too much for her, so she was taken home. Thereafter she lived alone with her father, doing his housework, her sister having married about that time. At 17 her hair began to come out excessively, so that she had to cut it, and when it grew again it was gray. She became very sensitive about this, even refused to take positions because she thought people would remark about it.
For two years before admission she evidently was different. Although she did her father's housework well enough, she turned against her sister and refused to speak to her because, she alleged, the sister had not come to help her in her housework. Another pronounced manifestation during that time was her frequent talk about her bowels. She complained of constipation, creepy, crawling sensations in the stomach which she thought was a "tapeworm." She got pamphlets and took patent medicines. She was taken to a physician nine months before admission, who operated on her for piles. While still in the hospital she asked her father to take her home to die (although there was no reason for such a request). Again she said the gauze had been left in the rectum too long and that the rectum was full of wind. Later she said the rectum was closing up. After this, the sister stated, she was extremely nervous if she passed a day without a movement of the bowels. She was quiet henceforth, went out less and said little, claiming it was better for her head if she said little. She often sat, head in hand, in the hall. All through the summer she frequently remarked, "I am a good girl." Four months before admission during a period of five weeks she would let her bowels move when standing up. This was relieved by enemas. The father states that she was cranky to him, that sometimes when
he merely asked a question she would say, "You hurt my feelings," and once, "You break my heart." Occasionally she seemed to worry about the money spent for her on doctors and medicine.
About two months before admission she said everybody was looking at her. Ten days before admission she said, "I have been sick all this time and thought I was going to die. Now I think Tom (her brother) is going to die." She became fearful of being left alone. Finally she went to the priest, who told her to go home. Then she prayed, leaving the candles burning in the room. That night she was found kneeling before a church in her nightgown. Again she threw a lot of articles into the yard, saying a curse had been put on her by her father, and she did not wish to give him anything. When she was taken to the Observation Pavilion she said, "I am a good girl—my mother is dead—it is all my father's fault."
At the Observation Pavilion she put her arm under a hot water faucet "to save the world," prayed and laughed—again sank back and appeared as if asleep. She said, "I hear angels telling me how to pray when I lose my thoughts—sisters and nuns are all around me here, to save and purify the world now and forever, and at the hour of our death."
Under Observation: On admission the patient kept her eyes closed, sang hymns in measured tones, or prayed, or showed a certain ecstasy in her face while her lips quivered and tears ran down her cheeks. On the whole, she answered few questions. When asked how she felt, she said she was happy. (Why do you cry?) "I was crying when I asked God to save souls." (Are you afraid?) "Not now, I have been afraid of everything on Earth ever since my mother died." (What do you mean?) "No one would look at me or talk to me—they said I was a bad girl, but I was pure." Again she said, "They laughed about me, talked about me—and they drew up a play about me—Devil's Island." Or she spoke about having had stomach trouble, bowel trouble, teeth trouble, eye trouble, compound, complicated trouble. (What do you mean?) "Father scolding all the time, he sent me to get bug medicine (true). God gives that medicine to the one that started all the trouble—Devil's Island."
She soiled her bed and was asked why she did it. She said "I have been transformed into a baby, the Lord said I was too
pure to be a woman—I had to become a baby to save the world." Or when asked her name she called herself "Baby Chadwick of the whole world—divine Irish Catholic World—Amen," or again "I am the Roman Catholic Irish Divine Baby."