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3. Those uninfluenced by the privations, hardships, and dangers of the service, are interrupted in their attention to duty by small pique, disappointment as to promotion, and want of confidence in the character, conduct, and professional knowledge of their immediate superiors. Losing thus their interest in the service, and actuated by no higher motives than these personal considerations, they begin the career of imposture by entering the regimental hospital for pretended ailments which rapidly acquire consistence and definite

ness.

4. The vice of malingering is further encouraged by the conduct of the regimental medical officer. A desire to be popular amongst the men, many of whom are his friends and neighbors, renders the surgeon lenient in his judgment, and disposed rather to gloss over and hide impostures than to expose and bring the offender to punishment.

5. The transfer of sick and wounded soldiers to State hospitals, and the giving furloughs to sick, wounded, and convalescent more freely than to the well, contribute to the discontent of the men, and dispose them to feign disease or disability to obtain the same indulgences.

6. The very large number of discharges on surgeon's certificate of disability powerfully contribute to the prevalence of malingering. The percentage of men discharged for incurable disorders, from which they soon after surprisingly recover, is not small: indeed, in every village there are one or more instances of the expertness or perseverance of the malingerer or carelessness of the surgeon.

7. The leniency of the military authorities in the treatment of malingering affords additional encouragement to the practice. Besides the difficulty of demonstrating clearly enough to meet the objections of a military court the nature and character of this offense, the punishment will not, necessarily, be in proportion to the gravity of the crime. In the regular service there have been not a few instances of summary punishment upon proof of feigning, but not one instance, so far as I am acquainted, in the volunteer service. Having no fear of the law before his eyes, the simulator is not hindered in the performance of any of his tricks or stratagems. The worst that can happen. him is to be exposed and returned to duty,-to have an opportunity at no distant day to resume his old imposture and to deceive other credulous medical officers.

8. Besides these causes, there can be no doubt that men sometimes feign disease without reason, a species of monomania; and sometimes it arises in that state of mysterious mental sympathy known as "imitation."

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CHAPTER II.

CLASSES OF MEN FEIGNING, AND CHARACTER OF

THEIR AILMENTS.

OUR service should not be judged, in respect to the vice of malingering, by the standard of the French and English. Under the operation of the conscript law, France is repeatedly drained of her able-bodied men, and the desire becomes wide-spread to avoid a service which entails such calamities upon families. The English army, maintained exclusively by voluntary enlistment, is not popular amongst the middle and lower classes, and "hence recruits rarely enlist in consequence of a deliberate preference for military life, but commonly on account of some domestic broil, or from a boyish fancy, sometimes from a want of work and its immediate result, great indigence. Perhaps nine-tenths of the recruits regret the step they have taken, and are willing to practice any fraud or adopt any means which promises to restore them to liberty and the society of

of very

their former acquaintance."* The same facts are true of our regular army in time of peace. But the gigantic army called into existence by the necessities of the present war is composed different material; yet it need occasion no surprise that in the vast multitude of men who have taken up arms there are many who mistook zeal for the cause for aptitude for a military life. It is even less remarkable that there are not a few influenced by other considerations than patriotism in entering the ranks. Consequently it must be understood at the outset that the social status of the soldier previous to his enlistment has little to do with the determination of the question of feigning, in a given case. My own experience, however, has given me a decided opinion on this point. I have very frequently observed, indeed, that the malingerers in our hospitals are not derived from the class of well-informed educated soldiers, of whom there are quite a large number in the ranks, but from the class of workmen, laborers, and uneducated men. The appearance of the former amongst a flock of "hospital birds" is an anomaly which attracts immediate attention.

* Marshall's Hints to Young Medical Officers on Examination of Recruits, &c. (London, 1828), p. 89.

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