"MYTHOMANIA."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 81, 1 May 1909, Page 3

"MYTHOMANIA."

PATIENTS WHO DECEIVE, THEIR DOCTORS. London, March S. '■As 'lying' is an ugly word, we are thankful .to the inventor of the euphemism "mythomania.''' says the liritish Medical Journal, in warning young medical practitioners against the propensity for inaccuracy often displayed by patients. "There is the gentleman who, with a breath reeking of alcohol, complains of cramps of the stomach, and swears that he drinks nothing but a mineral water even al meals. There is the lady who wishes to be sent to a fashionable health resort, against the wish of her husband.

"There is the official iwho asks for a certificate that will give him a billet in tht! sweet south, which he covets on account of an asthma which has the awkward peculiarity of not mani'testbg itself by any outward and visible symptoms.

"There is a lady with a decayed molar wlio prefers that her siilferirfg should be dignified by the name of neuralgia. There is the lady who wishes for a certificate that will give her a free passage to funics to be cured of an appendicitis on the left side.

"There are many more—but these arc examples of the more ordinary varieties of conscious mythomania., and they are so common thai many doctors in large practice are tempted to say in their haste that all patients are liars. "They lie to excite sympathy, from the wish to pose as remarkable cases, to escape work, to impose on charitable persons, or for the mere pleasure of dcI ceiving the doctors."