consciousness was so reduced that he did not know what he was about. These attacks were ushered in by an aura-like pain in the back of his neck. He was then impelled to go out in the air. He did not know where he went. His wife had perfectly satisfied him sexually. For eighteen years he had had chronic eczema (actual) of the scrotum, which had often caused him to have extraordinary sexual excitement. The opinions of the six experts were contradictory (sane,—attacks of larvated epilepsy); the jury disagreed, so that he was dismissed. Dr. Legrand du Saulle, who was called as an expert witness, found that, until his twenty-second year, T. had urinated in bed from ten to eighteen times a year. After that time the enuresis nocturna had ceased; but, from that time, states of mental confusion, lasting from an hour to a day, had occurred occasionally, and they left the patient without any memory of them. Soon again T. was arrested for public immorality, and sentenced to imprisonment for fifteen months. In prison he grew sick, and apparently much weaker mentally. For this reason he was pardoned, but the mental weakness increased. T. was noticed to have repeated epileptoid convulsions (tonic convulsion with tremor and loss of consciousness). (Auzouy, Annal. méd. psychol., 1874, Nov.; Legrand du Saulle, "Étude méd. légale," etc., p. 99.)
The following case of immoral acts with children, observed by the author and reported in Friedreich's Blätter, will serve to conclude this group,[1] so important in its legal bearings. It is the more important, in that a state of unconsciousness was established at the time of the act, and because, for allied reasons, the facts related in Latin show how a complicated and refined act becomes possible in such a state of unconsciousness.
Case 160. P., aged 49; married; hospital beneficiary. He was accused of having committed the following terrible acts with two girls,—D., aged ten, and G., aged nine,—whom he had taken to his work-shop on May 25, 1883.
D. testifies: "I was in the meadow with G. and my sister J., aged three. P. called us into his shop and fastened the door. Tum nos exosculabatur, linguam in os meum demittere tentabat faciemque mihi lambebat; sustulit me in gremium, bracas aperuit, vestes meas sublevavit, digitis me in genitalibus titillabat et membro femina mea fricabat ita ut humida fierem. When I cried, he gave me twelve kreuzers, and threatened to shoot me if I told on him. At last he tried to persuade me to come again the next day."
- ↑ Comp. also Liman, Zweifelhafte Geisteszustände, Fall 6.—Lasègue, Exhibitionists, Union méd., 1877.—Ball and Chambert, Art. Somnambulisme (Dict. des scienc, méd., 1881).
