KAISER AND EMPEROR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11332, 9 March 1915, Page 3

KAISER AND EMPEROR.

HAVE TAINT OF MADNESS SAYS SWISS DOCTOR. In the "Revue de Psychotherapy," of Geneva, Dr Neipp, vice-president of the Swiss Academy of Medicine, and a well-known specialist on nervous and mental diseases, publishes a curious analysis of the physical and mental characteristics of- the two allied Emperors. He considers these two potentates, who are politically and morally responsible for the catastrophies under vdhich the world is suffering. to be medically scarcely responsible for their acts.

THE AUSTRIAN RULER. The oaso of the Emperor Francis Joseph is simple. \Yith an oxtraordinarily robust; physical constitution, ho possesses a nervous and sensitive equipment below the iavorage. His retreating, low forehead, small brain capacity and thick skull are apparent signs of this inferiority. Pie seems never to have understood, and hardly to have felt, what has been going on around him. The most fearful dopies tic tragedies and public dramas have left fhim with ail untroubled digestion and a mind free for ordinary occupations and amusements. After summing up a technical diagnosis of his case, Dr Neipp predicts that the Emperor-King will vegetate for a few more years after the inevitable dismemberment of the monarchy and end his days in senile imbecility. THE CASE OF THE KAISER j- more complicated. Hero w© have a nature exceptionally endowed with intellectual faculties, enough to have mado him a good officer or jniblio servent if he had been born in private life. But his childhood and youth were passed in the intoxication of the Prussian triumphs of 1866 and 1870, which turned his head, until Teutonic pride was cubed in his bram, at the same time that will power degenerated to such a degree that it watt not equal to restraining the abnormal growth of unbridled ambition. To do him justice, it must be allowed that this pathological condition of the Kaiser's intelligence is probably due in a great, measure to the state of his physical health, arising from hereditary taints. The symptoms of congenial ailments are numerous—one arm atrophied, swellings of the joints and ear trouble. The Kaiser suffers from agonising headaches and frequent insomnia. ]>r Neipp concludes that if Francis Joseph is a victim of want of will power the Kaiser Wilhclm is a hporacute stave to caprice, and liable to intermittent attacks of melancholy madness or dangerous lunacy. The Professor is of opinion that the Kaiser will either s>ut an end to himself hj; tattle or finish in an asylum.