Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1890 — Morbid Craving After Sympathy. [ARTICLE]

Morbid Craving After Sympathy.

Carious instances are related of this attitude of mind. A young lady ■once waited upon a surgeon for treatment ■of a wound upon the arm. He gave her a lotion and on ointment, neither of which had any beneficial effect. The origin and ■the obstinacy of on apparently trifling injury puzzled the doctor. At last he had 'the curiosity to take a piece of the black onatter that covered the wound and sub* mit it to analysis. To his astonishment he found it nothing more than licorice •or Spanish juice. Once upon the right iscent, he made inquiries tnat confirmed his theory, and was soon able to inform •the mother that her daughter made the wound by scratching the skin deep enough to draw blood and then rubbing in Spanish juice. The lady, naturally indignant that her child should seem an impostor, <wrote the surgeon down a fool, and consulted a specialist. She came soon afterward to apologize to the local practition■er, and to await with patience the result of a firm course of treatment, which removed her daughter’s craving for sympathy, and with it any reappearance of the self-inflicted wound. At Atlanta, Tuesday, two well-dressed men stopped on the comer of Broad and Marietta streets and began pointing upward, one of them often pointing to a telephone wire with his cane, as if trying to make his companion see something he was looking at. The other shaded his -eyes with his hands, but shook his head, at which the first man mentioned caught him by the arm and led him backward a few steps. They kept up their antics until a big crowd collected. Finally, when asked, they said: “We were just experimenting to see how many gaping idiots we could collect in ten minutes.” An incandescent lamp arrangement for •showing the interior of boilers while under steam has been made by a German inventor. The device is likely to be of .practical as well as of scientific value. “I’M going to feed that hen of mine on eugar of lend.” “What an idea!” “I want to see if I cnn’t make a typesetter of her.”— Harper’ B Bazar.