JAM IN BOOTS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 51, 28 August 1926, Page 20

JAM IN BOOTS

"PERFECT LITTLE DEMONIACS."

Startling instances of the after-effect of sleepy sickness 1 on juvenile patients were given by Dr. 0. P. Symonds in a lecture at the College of Nursing^ London, recently, states the London "Daily Chronicle." It had been' discovered in many cases, he said, that sweettempered, tractable children became transformed, after suffering from the disease, into "perfect little demoniacs." They took to stealing, lying, swearing, and every form of spiteful and mischievous activity. A typical ease was that of a boy who, when other young people were retiring to rost, would enter, upon a night of activity, which included singing, whistling, swearing, attacking his brothers and sisters, and pulling the bedclothes off the sleeping forms' of his parents.

Another youngster showed great ingenuity in devising fresh pranks. His crowning effort was to tire out all the other members of the household so that they.foil asleep from sheer exhaustion, and then to collect their boots, take them to the pantry, and fill them with jam. Sometimes the misdeeds of the juvenile sufferers led them to the Police Court, and thence to the reformatory, but, of course, that did not produce a cure. Roasonaßle moral treatment, however, occasionally had most encouraging results

A certain lad who had an attack of sloepy sickness was so fortunato, said Dr. Symonds, as to have for a mother some 15 stone of solid, purposeful placid womanhood. She neither spared the rod nor spoiled the child, and, thanks to her firmness 'and good sense, the boy to-day, at the age of fifteen years, bbro a good character and was holding a regular job.