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daughter to the man who appeared to him the most suitable; he betrothed her, and often promised his chilq at a time when she, even if it had been allowed her, could not have expressed her will.

"The nuptials arranging,

The bride-gifts exchanging,
The young pair unminding,
In marriage close binding,
They strengthen the bond."

So it is said of the holy Elizabeth and Count Louis of Thuringia, and yet she had just entered her fourth year and he his twelfth. How then could there be any question about their choice?

Such early marriages, however, at least in the olden times, -were rather exceptions, and commonly a bridegroom of thirty years led home a wife of the same age. Yet even such a wooer did not carefully inquire as to whether he was sure of the inclination of the maiden of his choice; with cool calculating look, in the manner of our present peasants, he weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed marriage against each other, He sought no love, and he offered none.

He desired a housekeeper for his home, a mistress for his farm, and a mother for his race; and in return he gave her protection and peace. In all this, his intellect was essentially active, the heart did not speak to the heart.

It would, however, be foolish to assert that all the marriages of that time were concluded without love; but the love of those days was of a substantial and masculine kind, even on the side of the woman. It was the conscious and sure surrender on her part to the man, with all the submissiveness that custom and right of the time imperiously demanded from her. But it was just this real side of the contract of marriage which constituted a sum of valuable rights, and these passed from the father or guardian to the husband; and this necessarily led to an indemnification which the latter had to perform to the former. Henceforth the daughter was no longer to be actively engaged in the household of her parents, nor was she longer to ply the spindle for the benefit of the paternal house; nor from this time had the father any longer the right to dispose of her by sale. All these advantages were now to be enjoyed by the husband, and,

in order to acquire them, the wife had to become his own; and thus he had to buy his wife.

Such a mode of wife purchase, however, which has been the subject of reproach as a sign of the special barbarism of the Germans in ancient and modern times, can only be ascertained from a few faint survivals of the custom. For although the laws and the chroniclers and poets all agree in mentioning the purchase of the bride, yet the more ideal view had then everywhere arisen, so that it is not the person of the woman herself that is sold and treated of, but only the rights that pertain to the guardian in relation to her. In this sense, the pecuniary advantages which flowed from the guardianship were taxed at certain fixed sums which it was necessary to pay to the guardian, and in this sense we are to understand the phrase which still occurs late in the Middle Ages: "He bought himself a wife."The purchase of guardianship (mundkauf), however, was essential to the conclusion of the marriage, so that for instance among the Alemanni and the Bavarians, the guardian was free to dissolve the marriage again at will where such purchase had not taken place, and he could demand an indemnity, while among others the popular rights stopped with the latter condition.

These were the original forms of the German marriage. Crude and hard as they were, they were not without moral elements, and they were gradually smoothed and polished and transformed by the waves of civilization.

Attention has already been drawn to the fact that the nature of the paternal and marital power experienced deep changes from the influence of the Church, and the moral habit which was diffused by it. The more this was the case, the less became the extent of the paternal rights, and so much the more did the value of the guardianship diminish. And al though it was only after the flood of the popular migrations had settled down, and the streams of the national life had found their calm bed, that the true value of the wife for the peace and prosperity of the household could become rightly known, yet this very knowledge brought immediately and necessarily with it a greater emancipation of the women.

Department of Medical Jurisprudence.

SCOTT HELM, M. D., EDITOR.

SIMULATION OF INSANITY BY THE INSANE.

BY D. R. BROWER, M. D.,

Prof. Mental and Nervous Diseases, Woman's Medical College; and in the Post Graduate Medical School, and Lecturer on the Practice of Medicine in Rush Medical College.

The fact that insane persons do simulate symptoms of insanity not in accordance with the form of disease which they possess, is not generally recognized by the general practitioner, nor by the legal profession; yet it is a matter patent to all who have spent much time in the daily observation of these persons, and one of great importance in its medico-legal bearings.

In my early experience with the subject, there was admitted to the hospital of which I was then the medical superintendent, a patient suffering with acute mania of a violent type. About three months after his admission he began to improve, and he was transferred to a ward of more orderly patients. Yet he was daily making manifest the delusions of grandeur that had characterized his case from the beginning, but in such a quiet manner as to entitle him to more freedom, and to association with patients who were approaching rationality. On a certain occasion I entered the ward occupied by this patient, at an unusual time. My point of entrance to the hall was at the opposite end from the dining room, and as I entered, I heard a crash in the room.

I ran to the place, and there found the dining table upset, the floor covered with broken crockery and a harmless dement with towel in hand standing as if transfixed, looking with

upon

amazement upon the scene. This dement rarely talked, and my appeal to him for the cause of the disaster was fruitless, although I spent some time in trying to elicit an explanation. The dining room opened upon a large veranda used as an airing place. I went out there and found my patient crouched the floor in one of the corners. I hailed him and asked him if he knew who had broken the crockery. He half raised his eyes in a vacant stare but made no reply. I raised him from his position upon the floor but he would not remain standing, assuming as soon as possible the position first occupied, one which is so frequently seen in the wards of the insane occupied by the demented cases. I watched him for some time and began to fear that he was passing into that most unfortunate

state.

That day he had to be taken to the table and fed as a child; it was impossible to get from him any rational reply to a question, and much persistence in the effort seemed to excite him and then he would vociferate in a violent and excited manner. He continued in this demented state for about one week and then gradually returned to his former condition. His convalesence progressed very satisfactorily and in about three months he was ready for discharge. At this time, as was my practice, I took him to the office and there gave him some advice as to what should be his future conduct in order to avoid recurrence of the insanity. When I had finished and the time came to bid him adieu, he said to me, "Doctor, you never found out who broke the dishes that day in the dining room?" I said, "no." He said, "I did it. I went into the room and found the table covered with dishes and I could not resist the impulse to turn it over which I did, not supposing you were anywhere about; you came upon me so suddenly I scarcely knew what to do or say and I thought it best to go crazy, fearing I might be punished." This new form of insanity assumed by this patient, was so perfect in its simulation that it deceived all who were brought in contact with him.

There is nothing in insanity that in any degree improves the moral tone of the. patients. If a person is disposed to

simulate, before he becomes insane, he will have the same disposition afterward.

The simulation of sanity is of frequent occurrence-the most astute physicians have frequently been deceived in this way. Delusions are so effectually concealed, and conduct seems to be so perfectly rational that patient after patient has been discharged long before recovery was reached. The insane are governed by motives just as the sane are; although the disease may modify their actions more or less, yet when it becomes an object for them to escape punishment or secure favors they can, and often do appear more insane or more sane as the case may be, than they really are.

Now this simulation of insanity by the insane must be confined to those forms of insanity that present more or less rationality. In cases of imbecility, in cases of dementia, in cases of mania during the violent stage, simulation would be impossible. But in all those cases that are sometimes called partial insanities, that are called moral or affectional forms where there is present more or less intellectual capacity, differing at times but little from a condition of normal mental activity, simulation is not only possible, but frequent.

Dr. Charles H. Hughes, in an admirable article published in the transactions of the International Medical Congress for 1876, says: "It is not difficult to suppose that a real'y insane person finding himself arrested and in the hands of the law on a charge of murder or other crime, which he knows he has been seen to commit, and from the penalty of which there seems to him no escape except through the plea of insanity, might conclude to simulate such a form of insanity as in his opinion would secure his exculpation. Such a person might not believe in the existence of his own real mental disease and might fear that those who were to try him would be equally incredulous. The insane are not conscious of the extent and degree of their own mental derangement. Admitting then the existence of a sufficient degree of rationality in an insane person to prompt an effort at self-preservation through the act of feigning, would he probably assume a more exaggerated form of mental disorder, just as sane men show it, with a view of making a favorable im

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