Birmingham age-herald., 1894-11-09
HOAXINGT GTHEDOCTOR
ILLNESS OFTEN SIMULATED BY SAIL
 ORS AND SOLDIERS.

An Old Army Surgeon Tells of the Tricks
 Attempted to Mislead the Physician.
 How Doctors Expose the Frauds of Their
 Shamming Patients.
 eff any one thinks that all doctor has to do is to Jure diseases be Is very much mistaken" said an old army surgeon in talking to reporter the other day. "One might think that with all the sickness and suffering in the world everybody would be glad to stay well when they had the chance, but the fact is that some of the hardest work doctor has to do is to tell whether his patients are sick at all, or only willfully deceiving him. This is par ticularly the case in the practice of army and naval surgeons, where the incentive to deception is greatest, though there is still considerable of it met with in private practice and in the examining boards of the pension office, where disability is premium that the applicant would often pay good price for If 1t could be obtained in that way. ha
 But the most common place to meet with simulated diseases used to be in the British army and navy in the days of the press and conscript gangs, where 1t took more of doctors time to weed out the shamming patients than to cure the sick ones. The stimulation of disease in tho British army once assumed such propor- tions that it was punished with heavy pen alites, none of which, however included discharge from the service for that was just what the deceivers wanted.
 ''The malingerers, '' as they were termed, had regular secret prescriptions for simu- lating disease, and some of them ran fear full risks and underwent tortures in prac- ticing upon themselves with drugs, such as hellebore, to effect temporary derange- ment of the heart or other organs. The physicians had to be equally crafty to de- tect the simulations, and so this branch of medicine became almost a science in it. self and though not now of such impor- tance has remained an interesting study ever since.
 "A man who is bent upon making him. self appear i'll and disabled either to se- cure a pension or a discharge from tho service, will simulate anything from chronic rheumatism to intermittent fever, and it is hard to tell the imitation from the genuine. There is one case on record where a man assumed lateral curvature of the spine, so that his arms touched the ground when he attempted to walk, and remained in this position for IS months, returning to his normal position as soon as discharged without apparently any i'll effects from his long distortion. l myself once knew of a caso whore a soldier simu lated epileptic fits till the suggestion of using the actual cantery on him was made during one of his paroxysms, when he re- covered with surprising rapidity.
 ''Soldiers have almost as long list of diseases which they simulate as have doc z II. x5; how one in the southern countries, such as In dia and Africa where there is continual intense light, is night blindness. This is a real disease that will often tempors- rily disable half of a command and conse- quentiy is very commonly feigned to se- cure immunity from duty. One of the sim pie ways of detecting the feigned disease when it refuses to yield to treatment is to say that exercise is necessary for the health of tho patients and have them escorted to posts for guard duty by a comrade and left there for their full term of duty
 Blindness is very common feigned affection, and to mako it appear real drugs are used by the malignerers to dilate tho pupil and otherwise give the eye an unnat- ural appearance Stramonium snuff, bel ladonna and other substances are used tho effects of which it is impossible to tell at first from real amurosis. Even when con- fined in a hospital ward the mon will sometimes conceal drugs about the bed clothes and use them periodically when they think they are not observed.
 Watching sometimesdetectst the men in this, and rigorous isolation where no drugs can be obtained follows. But had a case once where man was so clever at con- cealing belladonna that we had to put him in straight jacket for a couple of days, at the end of which time being un- able to tamper with his eyes, they resumed their normal condition.
 Deafness is also frequently simulated and is very difficult of detection, some sharpers with whom have been thrown in contact assuming even the uncertain, stupid expression of countenance habitual to very deaf person. One of the favorite tricks of the medical profession in detect