172 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

140 2. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS

Dr. Worrell reported that his son had another attack in the same year at Winchester, Kentucky. The doctor was stationed there temporarily as a teacher. His son slept with some young men of the town, one of whom called and told the doctor that his son was in a very bad way. The doctor only saw him as the spasm was passing off.

The next and last attack referred to by his father prior to the homicide occurred at the house of a Mrs. Elsay in Baltimore, where the defendant was boarding in 1852. The doctor did not witness the attack and states nothing in relation to it of his own knowledge except that he called in Dr. Dunbar.

From 1853 to the commission of the murder in 1856, a period of four years, we have no evidence whatever of a renewal of the attack.

Here then, gentlemen, you have, according to the evidence, but five instances of supposed convulsions prior to the homicide, ranging from 1845 to 1852, inclusive, averaging less than one a year. Only one of those was pronounced by a physician to be epilepsy, and, what is very remarkable, in no instance did any symptom of epilepsy manifest itself. The conclusion is then irresistible that these attacks were delirium tremens resulting from excessive dissipation, and that epilepsy was the pretext to conceal his habits from his parents.

Dr. Watson, in the work already referred to (page 391), says:

"In the number of feigned diseases, epilepsy is one of the most common—soldiers and sailors pretend to have epileptic fits in the hope of obtaining their discharge from the service. Cases of simulated epilepsy also occur continually in our streets among mendicants and impostors, who think to excite the compassion and pecuniary charity of the credulous. It is easy enough, they think, to throw their legs and arms about, and to grin; and many of them get up a capital show of foaming at the mouth by placing a bit of soap between the gums and cheek."

"Pretenders are not very willing to perform when they know that a medical man is looking on. They choose such situations for their exhibitions as are most suitable for their purpose."

"The epileptics are often seriously hurt by their falls; feigned ones generally come off without much bodily damage."