TICKING HEAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1938, Page 4

TICKING HEAD

ENGLISH DOCTORS BAFFLED Edward Franklyn, a 19-year-old Coventry motor mechanic, has a head that ticks like a clock. Except when he talks he can’t help ticking. His case has baffled medical experts. Specialists from local hospitals have spent several evening sessions listening to him, but so far have been unable to cure him or to explain why he ticks with such regularity. Mr Fracklyn’s ticks, of which he is rather proud, is not one of those thin weak ticks, but a loud, determined tinny tick which sounds as if he had swallowed a cheap alarm clock. It can be heard distinctly two feet away. His workmates sometimes clamp a piece of radiator hosepipe to is ear .to amplify the tick. It then sounds as loud as a grandfather clock. “I first noticed it when I returned from a holiday at Falmouth about 18 months ago,” he said this week. “My doctor said it would wear off, but it didn’t, so he sent me to a specialist. He has been just as mystified. It stops when I talk,” he added, but a fellow cannot keep on talking all day and night. “The most embarrassing part,” he went on, "is when I am sitting in a 'bus or a cinema. People seem to think I am either playing a joke on them or else carrying a time bomb about with me. They edge away and even change their seats.”