FEIGNING of DISEASE is much practiced in the army and navy, and also by con victs and others anxious to escape from discipline, or procure a discharge from compulsory service. In the army, it is technically called malingering. The detection of feigned disease,- of course, necessarily belongs to the highly educated physician, and is impossi ble without a thorough knowledge of the reality, unless, indeed, the imitation be very coarse and badly studied. The diseases most commonly simulated are epilepsy, cata lepsy, convulsions, blindness, deafness, palsy, insanity, indigestion, neuralgia, rheuma ism, palpitation of the heart, and generally all disorders which may exist without lead to any distinct external appearances. Ulcers of the legs, however, have often been made, and kept open artificially through the application of irritant substances; and vomiting or coughing up of blood is very easily simulated, if the supposed patient can get access to the necessary materials in the slaughter-house or elsewhere. The detec
Lion of such impostures is easy or not according to the opportunities and knowledge and skill of the deceiver, as compared with those brought to bear on the discovery of the fraud. Many men in the public services, and women affected with hysteria, have become so expert as to deceive even men of high character and skill. The writer has known of an instance in which a man submitted to successive amputations of the arm upwards nearly to the shoulder, for an ulcer produced and kept open at will by local applications; and a case was some time ago recorded by Dr. Murchison in the Medico. chirurgical Transactions, in which there is no reasonable doubt that a large opening into the stomach was the result of caustic substances deliberately applied to the abdomen, with the view of exciting sympathy.