It is related by O'Brien, an Irishman
serving on an English naval vessel, that an elderly and
respectable Malay woman, with whom he was conversing in an
entirely unsuspecting manner, suddenly began to undress herself,
and showed a most ominous and determined intention of stripping
herself completely, and all because a by-standing friend had
suddenly taken off his coat; at the same time she manifested the
most violent anger at what she deemed this outrage to her sex,
calling the astonished friend an abandoned hog, and begging
O'Brien to kill him. O'Brien, furthermore, tells of a cook who
was carrying his child in his arms over the bridge of a river,
while at the same time a sailor carried a log of wood in like
manner; the sailor threw his log of wood on an awning, amusing
himself by causing it to roll over the cloth, and finally letting
it fall to the bridge; the cook repeated every motion with his
little boy, and killed him on the spot. This miryachit was
observed in Malaysia, Bengal, among the Sikhs and the Nubians,
and in Siberia, whilst Beard has observed it in Michigan as well
as in Maine. Crichton speaks of a leaping ague in Angusshire,
Scotland.
Gray has seen only one case of acute palmus, and records it as
follows: "It was in a boy of six, whose heredity, so far as I
could ascertain from the statements of his mother, was not
neurotic.
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