High Spirits

A unique defense.

Source: Daily News (New York, New York) 08 Mar 1943, Mon Page 219

Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 17, 2021 - Comments (0)
Category: Eccentrics, Police and Other Law Enforcement, Religion, Mental Health and Insanity

Juror Goes Insane

I would totally cite this precedent when trying to get out of jury duty.



Source: The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) 26 Jan 1909, Tue Page 9

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 21, 2021 - Comments (1)
Category: Law, 1900s, Mental Health and Insanity

Donald Campbell, the man who couldn’t stop talking

In 1933, Donald Campbell, a truck driver, fell from his truck and hit his head. A year later he developed a bizarre condition. He started talking incessantly, non-stop. His talking was so compulsive that he couldn't even sleep. His talking was perfectly rational. He answered questions clearly. But he couldn't stop.

Doctors attributed his condition to encephalitis, or brain swelling. After about a month his non-stop talking subsided, and doctors thought he had recovered. But within four months he was dead. Strangely, the cause of his death was cancer and seemed to be unrelated to his non-stop talking.

Pottsville Evening Herald - Aug 17, 1934

Pittsburgh Press - Sep 5, 1934

Cincinnati Enquirer - Jan 6, 1935

Update — A newspaper recorded an example of some of Campbell's rambling monologue:

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 07, 2021 - Comments (4)
Category: Health, Mental Health and Insanity, 1930s

Marion Zioncheck, Bipolar Congressman

Congressman Marion Zioncheck , America ' s crazy MP , is in gaol at Washington after having been accused of standing on his landlady and hurling bottles and a typewriter through the windows of his wrecked Washington apartment uttering wild cries all the time . The incident occurred at the end of a whirlwind honeymoon tour . Mr . Zioncheck has just returned to America with his bride from the turbulent South American island of Porto Rico , which they were requested to leave after figuring in a series of " incidents." On one occasion the Congressman pelted passers-by with coconuts from his balcony . Then the couple arrived back in Washington they were soon involved in the dispute with the landlady , Mrs . Benjamin Young , who told the ambulance men that "Zioncheck ruined my home , called me vile names and stood on me " . It is now stated that Zioncheck intends to run for the US Vice - presidency .

Read the whole sad story--ending in suicide--here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Oct 08, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Bad Habits, Neuroses and Psychoses, Death, Government, Officials, 1930s, Mental Health and Insanity

Mystery Illustration 69

This illustration allegedly depicts a world-famous artist and his path of mad creativity. Who can it be?

The answer is here (page 13).

And after the jump.

More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 07, 2018 - Comments (5)
Category: Art, Mental Health and Insanity

Hardware Diet

March 1934: Forty-year-old Mabel Wolf of Brooklyn showed up at Kings County Hospital complaining of acute stomach pain and a loss of appetite. An x-ray revealed the presence of a large clump of metallic objects in her stomach. In a subsequent hour-long operation, surgeons removed 1,203 pieces of hardware from her stomach. The objects weighed a total of one pound, three ounces. Amazingly, they hadn't done her any serious harm.

Lebanon Evening Report - Mar 21, 1934

The inventory of items removed included:

• 584 fine upholstery tacks
• 144 carpet tacks
• 2 chair tacks
• 1 roundheaded thumbtack
• 3 thumbtacks (ordinary)
• 46 small screws
• 6 medium screws
• 80 large screws
• 1 hook-shaped screw (coat hanger)
• 30 small bolts
• 47 larger bolts
• 3 picture hooks
• 3 nuts
• 2 large bent safety pins
• 1 small safety pin
• 2 stray pins without heads
• 1 matted mass of hair containing screws and pins
• 59 assorted beads
• 4 pieces of wire
• 89 pieces of glass (all sizes)
• 1 piece of teacup handle

Miss Wolf claimed that she had eaten all the objects five years earlier, in a single week, while she had been working at a Manhattan hardware store. (You have to wonder if the store had noticed the loss of inventory.)

When pressed further, Miss Wolf said, "I really don't know what started me on my diet. I guess I was just trying to be funny. Don't ask me any more about it. I only want to get well and go home."

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Mar 20, 1934

Miss wolf had suffered minor stomach pains for five years as a result of the objects, but she had been able to self-treat the discomfort with patent medicine. She finally went to a doctor when the pain became too intense.

One mystery that the doctors weren't fully able to explain was why the metal objects all clumped together in her stomach. Dr. Edwin H. Fiske speculated that "metallic objects in the stomach take on a kind of magnetism, which attracs the individual objects to one another, so that they cling together in one large ball, as if welded together. Thus the danger of the cuts from pointed nails and pins is lessened."

Evidently Miss Wolf suffered from the eating disorder known as pica, which is a compulsion to eat non-nutritive items such as paper, metal, chalk, mud, etc. I suspect that her strange diet hadn't been confined to a single week. She'd probably been doing it for quite a while.

We've previously posted about a few other people who suffered from this disorder, including the boy who ate the Bible and the Human Ostrich.

If you're interested in the subject of pica and people swallowing weird things, you can find a whole bunch of cases discussed (including Mabel Wolf) in Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them by Mary Cappello.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 30, 2016 - Comments (3)
Category: Food, 1930s, Mental Health and Insanity

The Geography of Madness

The notion of Koro, or supernatural penis theft, is practically a NOTW trademark. I'm pretty sure I first learned about this delusion from Chuck about thirty years ago.

Now we can learn even more, thanks to a new book which covers this exotic madness, plus many others.

From the publisher's site:

"The Geography of Madness is an investigation of 'culture-bound' syndromes, which are far stranger than they sound. Why is it, for example, that some men believe, against all reason, that vandals stole their penises, even though they’re in good physical shape? In The Geography of Madness, acclaimed magazine writer Frank Bures travels around the world to trace culture-bound syndromes to their sources–and in the process, tells a remarkable story about the strange things all of us believe."

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 30, 2016 - Comments (4)
Category: Regionalism, Books, Mental Health and Insanity

The Easy Woman:  1963

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 12, 2016 - Comments (8)
Category: Sexuality, Stereotypes and Cliches, 1960s, Women, Mental Health and Insanity

The Electric Pencil

Sounds pretty much like prime fodder for WU-vies.

"Around the year 1910, a patient at State Lunatic Asylum No. 3 in Nevada, Missouri, who referred to himself as The Electric Pencil, executed 280 drawings in ink, pencil, crayon and colored pencil. These beautiful drawings of animals, people and buildings were executed on both sides of 140 ledger pages, each bearing the name of the hospital in official type across the top, thus dramatizing the interface of the institutional and the creative. The Electric Pencil's drawings were sewn into a handmade album of fabric and leather, which shortly afterwards was lost--for a century."

Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 29, 2016 - Comments (5)
Category: Cult Figures and Artifacts, Eccentrics, Books, Twentieth Century, Mental Health and Insanity

Keeping Mentally Fit

Is the narrator drunk? Of just folksy?

The lesson learned: look around you and you will probably spot a lunatic.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Sep 18, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: PSA’s, 1950s, Diseases, Mental Health and Insanity