Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1916 — MENTAL TESTS. [ARTICLE]

MENTAL TESTS.

If You Cannot Rhyme “Day” Your Sanity Is Doubted. "What is the difference between a fly and a butterfly?” A fly is a baseball batted to a certain altitude. Buckwheat cakes make the better fly. > This is one answty. But if you utter it to any police lieutenant yo t will be conducted politely to the mental studio of Dr. Louis E. Bisch of Columbia university official psychologist and alienist to the New York police department. Dr. Bisch has given to every one of the 552 police lieutenants a list of questions a lieutenant must ask any person arraigned before him whose mental balance he doubts. The doctor has also presented to every lieutenant a blackboard and 10 simple problems, which are to be submitted to the subject who appears to be a "nut.” If the suspected person fails to answer most of the questions and problems—then turn to Dr. Bisch. Here are some questions or commands the lieutenants are instructed to ask or deliver: “What is a book?” "What is a table?” "What is a horse?” "W’hat day is this?”

Some highly intelligent persons could not answer that at 12:03 a. m. “What is the difference, between wood and glass?” “What is the difference between paper and cloth?” “Count backward from 20- to 1.” “Give me the days of the week, the month, the year.” “Repeat these numbers, 64,932, 62,138, 437,159, 6,419,386.” “What-ought one to do when one has missed a train?" “What ought one to do when one has been struck by some one who did not do it on purpose?” "What ought one to do when one has broken something that, does not belong to him?” "Why does one judge a person more by what he does than by what, he says?” "Make up a statement using the words ‘New York,* ‘money’ and

‘river’ and other words that may be necessary to form a complete thought.” “Give three words that rhyme with ‘day,’ with ‘spring,’ with ‘ill,’ ” Dr. Bisch has been at the lineup of prisoners in police headquarters (every morning recently. took the prisoners who appeared mentally or morally defective to his brain laboratory and examined them carefully. The punishment of medical ; treatment of the prisoners depended upon Dr. Bisch’s diagnosis. Thus, if a man answered eorrectely, “Twice two makes four,” he was merely fined five. If he said “Minus ten ’equals two cold bottles,” the I psychopathic ward at Bellevue opened for him,—New York World.