The illness had begun with depression and inactivity, Bridget’s friends accounted for these conditions on the ground that a lover had departed for Ireland. A few days after the depression began, Bridget became dizzy and refused to give a boarder his breakfast, stating that she had lost her memory and had begun to hear bells ringing and people talking. She then became greatly excited and was brought to hospital, where the prolonged baths quieted her.

It seems that Bridget had had stomach trouble and headaches at the top of her head or sometimes in her temples. Physical examination showed the left pupil to be larger than the right, a slight tremor of the lips, a slight systolic murmur at the apex, slightly irregular pulse, and moderate edema of ankles. The blood serum was negative to the W. R., but lumbar puncture was executed and the fluid showed a positive W. R.

The patient was tested by the Binet and other methods, and although 35 years of age, seemed to be by the mental tests hardly over 11 years old. She was inclined to be feverish, somewhat restive, and pugnacious; rather slow of speech, sometimes refusing to answer and grimacing. Her pugnacity was, however, easily controllable, and the excitement was largely at night. This excitement subsided rapidly in the course of a few days.

1. What is the diagnosis in this case? The following diagnoses and suggestions for diagnosis were made at the staff meetings:

2. Is this a case of syphilitic paranoia? The so-called syphilitic paranoia of Kraepelin is a rare and uncertain type of syphilitic mental disease. Delusions and hallucinations are prominent. As a rule, the onset is stated to be slow and insidious, or at any rate there are a variety of indefinite prodromata. Jealousy is a prominent feature, sometimes attended with marked sexual excitement. Auditory hallucinations and ideas of persecution are particularly in evidence. The most striking feature in Kraepelin’s group was a sudden occurrence and equally sudden disappearance of violent excitement, with or without external cause. Thus, an excitement would be produced by a few words spoken, and immediately after, the phase of excitement would pass and the patient would become entirely friendly and accessible once more, as if nothing had happened. About half of Kraepelin’s cases showed a positive serum W. R. He does not report lumbar puncture findings, and grounds the existence of disease upon certain autopsied cases. The speech and writing disorder of paresis as well as the characteristic disorientation for time and muscular weakness of general paresis were absent in the group. It appears that most cases of the group have hitherto been placed in dementia praecox.

The clinical symptoms of CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM are sometimes largely identical with those of PARETIC NEUROSYPHILIS (“general paresis”): differentiation by means of the laboratory findings.

To demonstrate this proposition, the cases of Francis Murphy (60) and David Collins (61) are in point, being sharp foils to one another.

Case 60. A laboring man about 44 years of age was brought to the Psychopathic Hospital one summer day, in a stupor. This patient, Francis Murphy, had been at his regular work as axeman in the Park Service, when he suddenly fell in a heavy convulsion. He was carried to a general hospital, still in convulsions, and ether was administered to quiet the movements. The convulsions shortly ceased, but the patient’s consciousness failed to clear; hence his transfer to the Psychopathic Hospital.

Here he remained much disturbed and was placed in a room with a mattress on the floor. On this mattress he would crouch on all fours for a considerable time, looking fixedly downward as if at an object on the floor, unresponsive to questions but compliant with efforts to place him on his back. He gave the impression of daze and either disorientation or confusion.