Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra11121883roya).pdf/162

 men I have met out here who habitually passed nights in the jungle alone. There was here no question of the superstitious reverence which Malays have for this animal, or of their dislike to hearing it called by its regular name. The man's fear was latah, and his friends, though apparently much amused, told me that this was his peculiarity, and I was careful not to offend again.

With regard to snakes, perhaps the horror with which these sufferers hear the word, is more marked still,

Such cases, however, as I say, must be familiar to most readers of these pages. The class of cases in which those afflicted are led to believe in the actual presence of a reptile, where the sane only see a bit of string, or a piece of rotan, belong to another—the fourth—division of my subject.

To this class seem to belong all those persons who, without encouragement, and involuntarily, imitate the words, sounds or gestures of those around them.

These latah subjects cannot, I think, be widely classed under the head of "village idiots."

Their disease is, I have gathered from experience, as a rule, spasmodic, by which I mean that it is marked by intervals of mental regularity, while all other phases of this complaint are, so far as I have observed, persistent.

This imitative propensity is often combined with the other characteristics of latah, but I have marked many cases in which it stands by itself.

I have tried, but tried in vain, to lay down any rule for the periodicity of these attacks. They appear to vary in the period of their recurrence, not only as regards one latah compared with another, but also in the case of any individual sufferer.

Here I may remark, that the Malays themselves draw a distinct line between latah and insanity proper.

Their definition of the narrow border line which separates madness and mental health, does not satisfy me, still less would it