Providentia

Behaviour Changes and Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is commonly associated with noncognitive behavioral changes (NCBCs). In a study recently published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, researchers systematically reviewed whether neuroimaging has helped with understanding the pathophysiology, diagnosis, or management of NCBCs associated with AD, including depression, aggression or agitation, anxiety, apathy, psychosis, and sleep disorder. The authors identified dissociable neural substrates with multimodal imaging: depression implicates the lateral and superior prefrontal cortex; apathy and agitation implicate the dorsal anterior cingulate; psychosis implicates right lateralized frontal and medial temporal areas; and anxiety implicates mesial temporal regions. Frontal white matter changes appear to underlie many NCBCs, emphasizing the preventative management of vascular risk factors. Further delineation of underlying neurocircuitry and pathophysiology in larger data sets might lead to biomarker identification for diagnosis and optimizing treatment targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract.

Investigation Underway in Guyana "Pig Pen" Case

Acting on an anonymous tip, members of the Guyana police force and the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) raided the North Sophia, Greater Georgetown home that Clement Etwaroo shared with his wife Parbatie Sukhu.   To enter the backyard, police had to break down a padlocked fence nearly ten feet high with permission from a neighbour.   What they found in the backyard lot was a padlocked enclosure containing a naked man pleading with them not to beat him.   Since they were unable to break through the chains on their own, police finally found Sukhu at her job selling snow cones at a local school to unlock the enclosure and free the traumatized prisoner.

The GWMO workers on the scene were appalled at the condition of the imprisoned man.  “He just kept pulling himself to the back. He seemed unable to communicate, just mumbling and all we could make out is ‘Don’t beat. Don’t beat," a representative later said in a media interview.  "He stopped talking completely once she [Sukhu] came.”     The emaciated man turned out to be 22-year-old Gopaul Etwaroo, Clement's son and Sukhu's stepson.   After being released from captivity, he was oddly compliant as police and GWMO workers provided him with clothing and food which he ate ravenously while police investigated further.

Not only was the space in which Gopaul was being kept too low for him to stand, but there was only a trough which he could use to relieve himself.  The only food and water he received came from two recycled bleach bottles.  Police also commented on the state of his hygiene and the excrement surrounding the enclosure, all signs that he had been routinely neglected for years.   

While Gopaul had never received any medical diagnosis (or had any history of medical treatment), he was well-known in the neighbourhood for being "crazy."  One neighbour told news media that he had often been targeted for violence when he started "jumping fences and taking people thing.”   "He would be around the area and people would beat him," the neighbour added.  "People would lash him. One time somebody lash him in his back because he would jump people fence and yard because he’s not righted and so his father keep him home....We don’t know what condition… I thought maybe he had him in a room and he would clean it and so…nobody don’t want their loved one to be beat up on the road no matter their illness but maybe he should’ve gotten help, gone to a doctor or something,” 

According to Gopaul's stepmother, the Human Services Department of the Ministry of Social Protection used to visit their home regularly to monitor his condition but the visits eventually ended along with any government support.  She and his father had to resort to extreme measures as Gopaul became more destructive.   While police are still investigating, Gopaul has been placed in a local hospital for medical care and his father and stepmother have both been arrested.   The Ministry of Social Protection will have the final say in his future care but the Berbice Dharamshala, an extended care facility near New Amsterdam, has already indicated that they would take him.

 For more information

 

When a Town Goes Mad

The picturesque southern French village of Pont Saint Esprit is hardly the place you'd expect anything out of the ordinary to happen.   With a population of nearly 11,000 people, the little town takes its name from a historic bridge crossing the Rhone river and, aside from being the birthplace of the well-known Bouvier family (as in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy) seems just like numerous other towns in the region.   

But a bizarre epidemic that struck the town in 1951 would forever change all that.   For reasons that nobody could determine at first, many people in the town began experiencing strange hallucinations and violent hysterics that proved to be life-threatening in some cases.   One of the first cases occurred on August 16 when postman Leon Armunier was suddenly struck by nausea and wild hallucinations as he was doing his rounds.   "It was terrible,"  Armunier later told reporters.  "I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms."  While Armunier was taken to hospital in Avignon where he needed to be forcibly restrained, other cases followed almost immediately.  In the week that followed, hundred of patients began to report the same symptoms:   nausea, stomach cramps, insomnia, and diarrhea and, in some cases,  hallucinations and violent behaviour.   

Almost immediately, reporters were on the scene to cover the strange outbreak in the town and to speculate on the possible cause.   Many of the news stories about what was happening in Pont Saint Esprit provided eyewitness accounts of the collective madness that seemed to grip the town.  One doctor even likened what was happening to the scenes from hell show in Hieronymous Bosch's painting, Night of the Apocalypse.   

As these patients flooded the hospital, reporters watched medical staff trying to keep patients from hurting themselves.But they weren't always successful.  One eleven-year-old child, Charles Granjhon, began strangling his mother and needed to be forcibly restrained while another girl began screaming that she was being chased by tigers.   A third patient, Gabriel Validire, screamed that he was dead.  He added that his "head is made of copper and I have snakes in my stomach!”.  Another man screamed that he was an aeroplane and threw himself out of a second-floor window of the hospital.  While he only got a broken leg from the experience, he still managed to get up and run another fifty metres before hospital staff caught up with him.  

By the time the strange epidemic ran its course, there were more than 300 cases reported, most of whom managed to recover after a few days.  Of these, thirty would develop more serious symptoms and five villagers died.   Though an epidemic of colic striking the village later that same year raised new fears, all of the cases were successfully treated and released.

Which still left medical experts floundering for an explanation for why so many people had been affected in the first place.   The most popular explanation was that a consignment of rye flour from Poitiers had been contaminated with a particularly nasty strain of claviceps purpurea (rye ergot fungus).  The fungus, which is most common in tropical regions, produces powerful alkaloids that can cause a medical condition known as ergotism (aka St. Anthony's fire).   Epidemics of ergotism have occurred throughout history and historians have even suggested that the Salem Witch Trials may have been caused by accusations of bewitchment linked to ergotism.  Not only had all of the affected people eaten bread made from the same consignment of flour but witnesses reported that some of the bread had been thrown into the Rhone river and killed many of the fish.    To contain the outbreak, government inspectors ordered a ban on fishing as well as issuing a warning to consumers to avoid bread and other bakery products for the duration of the emergency.

As part of a formal investigation, the French government sent Dr. Francois Olieu, an inspector general with the National Health Service to determine how contaminated wheat bypassed normal quality controls to be sold to consumers.  Dr. Olieu, along with his team managed to trace all of the contaminated loaves to a several bakeries in Pont Saint Esprit. They also managed to secure some uneaten loaves from the same shipment to determine what the ingredients were that had caused the outbreak.    But the investigation soon took on a more sinister tone as health officials began to suggest that the flour had been deliberately contaminated with unknown ingredients.   

While this was ruled out eventually, a Poitiers miller named Maurice Mailet was  charged with manslaughter after admitting that he had bought grain that he knew to be of suspicious quality and, not wanting to sell it locally, arranged for the grain to be shipped to Pont Saint Esprit.  A second man, Roland Bruere, admitted to helping him unload the grain for profit.  Though the entire tragedy was dismissed by many newspapers as a case of criminal negligence, other conspiracy theories  soon formed.   

The paranoia that soon sprang up was helped along by the fact that researchers had difficulty isolating whatever was in the bread that caused the strange outbreak.   Though ergotism remained the official cause, the entire episode was soon labelled "Le Pain Maudit"  (cursed bread),  medical experts argued that what happened seemed different from previous descriptions of ergotism outbreaks.  Instead, experts suggested, the flour had been contaminated with something else entirely.  Among the possible culprits named were mercury (which was commonly used as a food preservative at the time), nitrogen trichloride that was used as a bleaching agent, contamination from some other fungus, or even the accidental mixing of cannabis sativa into the grain used to make the bread (cannabis sativa is known to grow wild in part of Europe though this isn't as implausible as you might think).  

As the years passed, the memory of what had happened in Pont Saint Esprit soon faded.   While families of the people who had died in the outbreak still demanded an explanation, all they were ever told was that the contaminated grain was responsible somehow.  But the mystery of "Le Pain Maudit" wasn't completely forgotten. 

In 2009, writer Hank P. Albarelli Jr published a book which provided the most sinister explanation yet for the Pont Saint Esprit outbreak  In his book, Albarelli argued that "Le Pain Maudit" was linked to the CIA experiments into mind control that were taking place at around the same time.  This included obtaining declassified CIA documents that referenced the "Pont-Saint-Esprit incident” and the possibility that it had been one of the rogue operations carried out by CIA chemist and spymaster, Sidney Gottlieb, who was later found to have carried out a series of rogue LSD experiments during that same era.  

Despite there being no direct evidence linking Gottlieb to Pont Saint Esprit, Albarelli pointed out that Gottlied, with full backing from the CIA, carried out illegal experiments on a wide range of test subjects (mostly involuntarily), including Vietnamese prisoners, college students, and prostitutes.   That he may have experimented on the inhabitants of a town in France back in 1951 seemed too far-fetched for most academic researchers, almost all of whom rejected Albarelli's book as paranoid fear-mongering.  

Whatever the real cause for the strange events of the summer of 1951, repeated investigations have failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation.  Still, whether the cause of the outbreak was accidental or man-made, what happened in Pont Saint Esprit remains a sobering reminder of how vulnerable we are to contaminants in our air, food, or water.   Have any lessons really been learned from what happened?   

Stalking Queen Victoria

Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, was definitely not amused to find herself the target of what is likely the first known case of celebrity stalking.

In 1838, a fourteen-year old boy was caught by a porter in Buckingham Palace's Marble Hall.  The boy, later identified as Edward Jones, had sneaked into the palace dressed as a chimney-sweep.  After the porter raised the alarm, Jones (who later became known in the newspapers as "the Boy Jones") managed to escape the palace and was later captured by police in St. James Street.  A search revealed that he had somehow managed to steal various samples of the Queen's underwear, which he had stuffed down his trousers.  Despite evidence that Jones had also stolen linen and a regimental sword from the palace, the court was lenient and he was later acquitted by a jury.  

But that was hardly the last anyone would hear of the Boy Jones...

It's hard to say for certain when Edward Jones first developed what would later turn out to be a serious obsession with Queen Victoria.   He was born in 1824, the son of a Westminster tailor and was, by all accounts,  rather unattractive and unpopular with woman.    According to Cardiff University lecturer Jan Bondenson, who wrote a book about Edward Jones and Queen Victoria,  "He was a very solitary character but he was not schizophrenic or classed as mad, just odd.  He was extremely ugly, with a wide mouth and low brow and he never washed, which is why people thought he was a chimney sweep."    Although Edward Jones never confessed any sexual feelings for the Queen (which likely would have gotten him committed to Bedlam),  his obsession with her took some odd turns. 

On November 30, 1840,  just nine days after the birth of Queen Victoria's first child, the Boy Jones managed to scale the wall of Buckingham Palace, just half-way up Constitution hill.   Although he managed to get away, a more serious incident happened on December 1 when he managed to sneak into Queen Victoria's dressing room.   This time he was caught hiding under a sofa and dragged out by police.   Queen Victoria, who was getting more apprehensive about the "Boy Jones", later recorded in her journal of how frightened she would have been if he had managed to enter her bedroom.

And she wasn't the only one leery about Edward Jones' antics.   Not only did newspaper coverage turn "the Boy Jones" into a national celebrity, but palace security staff felt, well, royally humiliated by his success at invading the palace.   He certainly seemed to have no trouble getting in as he pleased and later boasted about sitting on the Royal Throne on at least two occasions.   Jones also claimed to have lived at the palace for more than a year and that he managed to enter by sliding down a chimney.  While nobody quite believed his grandiose claims, the fact that he had been caught inside the palace was damning enough.   The palace security was beefed up and three additional guards were hired.  If the courts had been lenient with Edward Jones before, the 1840 incident was enough to get him sentenced to three months in prison (although his father had tried to argue at his trial that his son was insane).   

Edward Jones'  jail term didn't make him any less of a celebrity.  Charles Dickens and other prominent Victorian writers were fascinated by his story and his strange obsession with the Queen.   After his release from prison, Jones was offered a chance to join the music hall circuit and talk about his exploits.   Despite the tempting sum offered (four pounds a week), he turned the offer down.    Palace staff and London police were as apprehensive as knowing that the Boy Jones was still at large.    After he was caught loitering near Buckingham Palace,  government officials decided that they had enough of Jones and he was ordered, without benefit of a trial, to do involuntary service on board a British warship.    Although "press gangs" had been common enough during the 18th century, forcing men to serve on navy ships had become largely illegal by Jones' time.  Still, the risk that he posed to the Queen overrode any concerns about his legal rights. 

Not that Edward Jones made it that easy for them.  Although the ship that they placed him on was bound for Brazil, he managed to escape when it stopped at Portsmouth and he walked back to London from there.   Recaptured near Buckingham Palace,  the navy took no more chances with him and he was placed on a prison ship that was never allowed near shore.    After six years, Edward Jones finally managed to return to England and his obsession with the Queen had managed to fade by that time.    Never being able to live down his "Boy Jones" reputation and the continuing jokes at his expense, he eventually became an alcoholic and was later transported to Australia for burglary. 

Although Jones managed to support himself by selling pies and even becoming town crier in Perth for a time, he never really settled down for long.  When he later returned to England, his family  eventually persuaded him to go back to Australia since he represented a continuing embarrassment to them.   According to Jan Bondenson, "He was very annoyed about always being known for being the queen's stalker and felt persecuted by the jokes, even in Australia".   The finger-pointing and publicity hounded him for years and people would follow him shouting, "There's the boy who went to visit the Queen."    Not surprisingly, Edward Jones' drinking grew steadily worse and likely killed him in the end.   Alcohol was a probable factor in his fatal fall from a Perth bridge on Boxing Day, 1893.  

Did Edward Jones suffer from erotomania?   Whatever his feelings toward Queen Victoria, he doesn't appear to have ever been involved with any other woman during his life.   Although he was examined by medical doctors after his various arrests, there is no actual clinical evidence of the erotic delusions that usually accompany celebrity stalkers (the courts would have likely treated him more harshly if he had confessed to something like that).     The nature of his obsession seemed not to focus on Queen Victoria herself but on Buckingham Palace (he was never caught stalking her anywhere but the palace).   While Jan Bondenson argued in his book that Edward Jones suffered from a "schizoid" personality,  the available information on Edward Jones seems surprisingly limited (no official records on his trial or imprisonment still exist). 

If Edward Jones represented the first known case of celebrity stalking, he was hardly the last.  Much like the Michael Fagan incident in 1982, the relative ease with which Edward Jones entered a supposedly secure palace was a humiliating wake-up call for palace security and the British government.   If locking him away in a prison ship for years seems like an extreme solution for dealing with his strange obsession, it likely reflected the lack of any better alternatives.  

While the "Boy Jones" case seems relatively benign, more recent celebrity stalking incidents have highlighted the real threat that obsessed fans can pose to the object of their affection.   As the risk of violence becomes greater, the question of how to prevent potential tragedies still remains. 

The Psychology of Living Life Fully

"I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."  Henry David Thoreau

What does it mean to live life more fully?   

When Randy Pausch delivered his "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007,  he modeled his talk after a series of lectures by top academics asked to give a "final talk" as if it were their last opportunity to speak to the world.  In Pausch's case, his providing a"last lecture" was all the more poignant given that the popular teacher and lecturer was dying of pancreatic cancer.   Though he lived long enough to repeat his lecture on the Oprah Winfrey show and to co-author a book based on his talk(link is external) which became a best-seller, the message he imparted, and his central theme "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" continues to resonate with fans and admirers around the world.  

It was one of these admirers, David Dozois of the University of Western Ontario, who was inspired  by Pausch's message to write a new article about positive psychology and the art of living fully.  Based on his outgoingaddress as president of the Canadian Psychological Association, Dozois decided to step outside the "comfort zone" of his own research (he is a clinician specializing in the cognitive roots of depression) both with his address and the article, which was recently published in the journal, Canadian Psychology

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Understanding Cotard Delusion

Cotard’s syndrome, a condition in which the patient denies his or her own existence or the existence of body parts, is a rare illness that has been reported in association with several neuropsychiatric diagnoses. The majority of published literature on the topic is in the form of case reports, many of which are several years old.  In a paper recently published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, the authors evaluated associated diagnoses, neuroimaging, and treatments recorded in patients diagnosed with Cotard’s syndrome at their institution. A search of the Mayo Clinic database for patients with mention of signs and symptoms associated with Cotard’s in their records between 1996 and 2016 was conducted. The electronic medical records of the identified patients were then reviewed for evidence of a true diagnosis of Cotard’s. Clinical and neuroimaging data were also recorded for these patients. The search identified 18 patients, 14 of whom had Cotard delusions. Two of the 14 were excluded due to them being under age 18. The resulting 12 patients had a median age of 52 years (range: 30–85 years). On neuroimaging, four patients exhibited frontal lobe changes, four demonstrated generalized volume loss, and five had ischemic changes; seven patients demonstrated right-sided or bilateral hemisphere lesions. Treatments included ECT, pharmacotherapy, behavioral therapy, psychotherapy, rehydration, and removal of offending drugs. To conclude, Cotard delusions occur in the context of a relatively wide spectrum of neurological, psychiatric, and medical disorders and present with various neural changes. Nondominant hemisphere lesions may play a role in the pathophysiology. A number of effective treatments are available.

For the abstract

Remembering the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting

"First of all, I'm not OK. It took me a while to admit that."

In sharing his own experiences of the shooting rampage that took place in Las Vegas, Nevada last year, Jesse Gomez wasn't afraid to describe the trauma that has changed his life.   Appearing as one of the the keynote speakers at the A. Michael Mullane Health and Safety Symposium at Florian Hall in Dorchester, Nevada, Gomez remains adamant about the need for better mental health care for firefighters following similar traumatic experiences.

The 45-year old Gomez had been with the Clark County Fire Department for over fifteen years but what happened on the evening of October 1, 2017 was unlike anything he had ever encountered before.   For reasons that remain unclear, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock barricaded himself in his room at the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel and began firing more than 1100 rounds into the crowd of music-goers that could be seen from his hotel balcony.  After killing 58 people and leaving 851 injured,  Paddock killed himself as police attempted to close in.  It remains the deadliest mass shooting committed by a single individual in the United States.

As for Gomez, he wasn't even on duty that night.   Instead, he and his wife were attending the country music festival on the Las Vegas strip when the shooting began.  "The band, everyone, they don't know what's going on. ... And then you just hear more pop, pop, pop, and all of a sudden ... Jason Aldean and his whole band takes off. Everyone at that moment knew what was going on -- that someone was shooting," he said.

He jumped on his wife to protect her and they both began running, he recalls.  "I just wanted to get out of there. I needed to get my family. ... At one point, there was a lady on the ground, and her head was bloody, and she was a mess. ... At that moment, my brain switched from running away to helping people."   As one of the only trained emergency responders on the scene, Gomez knew he was needed though it meant becoming separated from his wife as he carried wounded people to safety.  He also contacted dispatch and provided an on-the-scene estimate of number of people injured or killed.

Despite his training, Jesse Gomez admits that it took him months to admit that he needed professional help to deal with the trauma of that night.  Something that has made him an outspoken advocate of the need for better mental health care for firefighters and other emergency service workers.  His personal account of the shooting remains one of the highlights of the Symposium.   And people in the audience were outspoken in their praise for Gomez and the other responders who helped save lives last October.  "That was one of the bravest things I've ever heard. ... To go back in and save all those people, it's just an amazing feat," said Lieutenant Jim Campbell, a Staunton firefighter who attended the symposium and heard Gomez' story.    

As more mass casualty events take place, the need for mental health treatment services for victims and emergency responders alike will become ever more acute.   Making those services available will a critical challenge in the years to come. 

 

The Man Who Would Be God (Part Three of Three)

Continued from Part Two

 Finally, after weeks of hiding in the brush around town, Joseph Dylkes made a semi-public reappearance at the home of one of his followers.   While he was naturally suspicious of any strangers, he grew confident enough to arrange for more meetings and his band of followers slowly began to grow again as Dylkes made more recruits.  Finally, towards the end of October, 1828, heannounced that the time had come to establish his new kingdom on Earth.   But, given the persecution he and his followers had already faced, he decided that some important changes needed to be made.

First of all, he decided to move his followers to Philadelphia which he felt would be a much more receptive location and far away from the mob that was still hunting for him.   He also decided to appoint "apostles" to travel with him to Philadephia and assist him in his holy quest.   Robert McCormick was formally named Dylkes' "Paul" while Michael Brill (who owned the house where they were meeting) was renamed "Silas" and a third man was appointed "Peter."   These were the men who would travel with him while a fourth man, John Brill, was placed in charge of the "little flock" that would stay behind in Salesville.

During his absence, the remaining followers were to continue their prayer meetings and continue facing east while they prayed (since that was the direction Dylkes would be traveling).  Soon, he promised, he and his apostles would return to bring them all to the glorious new city he would build in Philadelphia.   In describing this new Jerusalem, Dylkes outdid himself with the vision he presented to his followers:  "Its light would eclipse the splendor of the sun,"  he said.  "The temples thereof and the residences of the faithful would be built of diamonds excelling the twinkling beauty of the stars.  Its walls were to be of solid gold and its gates silver.   The streets were to be covered with green velvet, richer in luster and fabric than mortal eye could behold."     He went on to describe how the faithful "would ride in chariots of crimson drawn by jet black horses that need no drivers...the air of the city would be redolent with the aroma of shrub and flower, while ten thousand instruments, attuned to the symphony of heaven, would fill the courts, streets, temples, residences, and gardens with music ineffably sweet."   Exactly how the poverty-stricken Dylkes would accomplish all of this was left up to the imagination of his listeners (who had long since learned not to ask awkward questions).  

With this final sermon, Dylkes and his three apostles set out for Philadelphia.  Having no money, they traveled on foot the entire way and managed to scrounge whatever food and shelter they could find.   Still, they made it as far as a few miles outside the city when they came to a forked road and Dylkes decided to go down one road with only his faithful Peter (Davis) while the other two took the other fork.  His final instructions to Robert McCormick and Michael Brill before leaving them were:  "Faithful apostles, it is now necessary for us to separate for a time.  Paul (McCormick) and Silas (Brill) will take the south road of this fork, I and Peter will pursue the north.  We meet again where the light of heaven shall shine within the city for there will be the new Jerusalem begin to expand to fill the earth."

While McCormick and Brill reached the city after a while, they were troubled to see no sign of the light Dylkes had promised.   Even after searching all through Philadephia, couldn't find Dylkes or the other man, Davis, and eventually walked to Baltimore where they found the funds they needed to travel back home.  Even after they made their report to the rest of Dylkes' followers, nothing really changed for the faithful community that had stayed behind in Salesville.  Everyone, including McCormick and Brill, continued to believe in Dylkes and his eventual return to them.  Finally, after seven years, the man Dylkes called "Peter", a.k.a. Reverend Davis, returned to Salesville.  After arranging to give a sermon in the Temple, Davis announced that he had personally seen Dylkes ascend to Heaven and that he would soon return to establish his new Jerusalem.  He also denounced all other religions, including Christianity which he called "a hotchpotch of Judaism and heathenism."   After this amazing sermon, he left town and was never seen again.  Neither was Joseph Dylkes.

As the years passed, the "Dylkites" (which is what the rest of the town called them) continued to live and worship as they always had.  Nobody seemed inclined to take Dylkes' place as head of the community and they simply met privately with no attempt at spreading their peculiar faith.  Since there were no new converts, the community slowly dwindled as the believers died off.  With no real legacy left behind, Dylkes might have been forgotten completely had it not been for William Dean Howells who published a fictionalized account about this peculiar religion in 1916.  Titled, "The Leatherwood God", the book generated a flurry of interest, mainly because of Howell's solid reputation in American literature, though it isn't considered to be one of his best known works.  

And, that was it really.  Though he promised to found a kingdom that would last forever, Dylkes' religious legacy didn't even last more than a few decades once he disappeared.  Was he a huckster all along or did he genuinely believe in his own divinity?  If so, he likely didn't last long in Philadephia before being packed off to the local lunatic asylum, the likely fate of any would-be messiah in more jaded cities.   Whatever his ultimate fate,  he can still be viewed as an object lesson in the dangers of excessive belief and the need for healthy skepticism when dealing with incredible claims.   Perhaps now, in an era of religious and paranormal claims being made ever more frequently, the case of the Leatherwood God deserves to be much more widely known.

The "Arsenic and Old Lace" Murders

When Joseph Kesserling's play Arsenic and Old Lace was first produced in 1939, the dark comedy about a pair of eccentric spinsters poisoning lonely men and burying the bodies in their basement became an unlikely hit.  Later adapted by Frank Capra into a 1944 comedy movie starring Cary Grant and Boris Karloff, the film is still considered a classic.    Despite the humorous overtones of the movie, few people realize that the play and film are both based on a real-life case that is not quite so lighthearted.

The woman at the centre of the case was born in 1868 in Milton, Connecticut (other sources say 1873).  Though little is really known about her early childhood, Amy E. Duggan apparently had a normal enough childhood until her marriage to James Archer in 1897 and the birth of a daugher shortly afterward.    By 1901, she and her husband were estabished as caretakers for an elderly widower, John Seymour, at his home in Newington, Connecticut.   After Seymour died in 1904, the Archers stayed on at the house caring for elderly boarders until the Seymour family sold the house in 1907.   Moving to Windsor, Connecticut, Amy and her husband pooled their savings and purchased a large brick house which they renamed "The Archer Home For Aged People."  

One of the first private homes for the elderly in the United States, the Archer Home allowed residents to pay on a weekly basis or a special flat rate of $1000 for which the Archers guaranteed care for as long as the residents lived.    Known to her residents as "Sister Amy", Amy Gilligan had a reputation for humane care and the Archer Home was never short of people wanting to live there.   Though neither of the Archers had any formal training in geriatrics, their business was apparently successful enough until John Archer died in 1910 of Bright's Disease.    Within three years, Amy had remarried a wealthy widower, Michael Gilligan, who had children of his own.  This marriage was destined to be short, though since  Michael died February 20, 1914 of an "acute bilious attack" (i.e., severe indigestion).   That Michael had left his entire estate to his wife raised few suspicions.  At least, not at first.

What did attract attention was the large number of deaths taking place at the Archer Home from 1907 to 1917.   Up to that time, the cause of death was always listed as "old age" and the local physician, Dr. Howard King, had no reluctance signing the death certificates.   When relatives of the dead residents became suspicious, they took a closer look and discovered that most of the deaths happened over a five-year period (1911 to 1916).  While the deaths typically  involved elderly clients with known health problems, one death stood out in particular.    Franklin R. Andrews had suddenly collapsed and died on May 29, 1914 despite being apparently healthy.   Though the official cause of death was gastric ulcer (despite his having no history of ulcers), Andrews' sister, Nellie Pierce, learned that he had given money to Amy Gilligan shortly before his death, apparently after she coerced him to pay her.    Nellie and other relatives of Amy's dead clients noticed a sinister pattern of deaths occurring shortly paying her the special flate rate that supposedly guaranteed  lifelong care.  

When the district attorney refused to investigate, Nellie Pierce went to the local newspaper, The Hartford Courant.    After a series of articles on Amy's establishment came out, which was described as a "Murder Factory", police finally took an interest in the deaths.   One police officer even went undercover as a resident to investigate the care patients received first-hand.   Police took a closer look at Michael Gilligan's death as well.   Once the bodies of Michael Gilligan, Franklin Andrews and several other questionable deaths were exhumed, autopsies found strong traces of either arsenic or strychnine.   Local merchants also reported that Amy Archer-Gilligan had purchased large amounts of arsenic from them (she claimed it was for killing rats).   Michael Gilligan's will in which had apparently left his wife his entire estate was also found to be a forgery.   

Amy Archer Gilligan went on trial for five counts of murder which her lawyer successfully argued down to a single count, the murder of Franklin R. Andrews.  Despite open speculation that she had killed as many as twenty people, proving this in court was another matter.  Not that this stopped newspapers from pinning the nickname of the "Connecticut Borgia" on her.   Dr. Howard King spoke on her behalf since he refused to admit that he could have overlooked so many murders.  Despite his defense, the evidence against Amy was overwhelming.

On June 18, 1917, Amy was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.    After appealing this decision, she was granted a new trial which took place in 1919.   This time around, she pleaded insanity with her daughter, Mary Archer, testifying that her mother was addicted to morphine, and various other problems.   The insanity bid failed but a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder.  This spared her the death penalty though she would still be imprisoned for life.

Whether due to preexisting mental heath issues or the rigours of prison life, Amy Archer Gilligan deteriorated in prison to the point of her being declared temporarily insane in 1924.   She was transferred to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane in Middletown (now the Connecticut Valley Hospital) and would remain there until her death from natural causes on April 23, 1962.   Actual records of Amy Gilligan's time in the asylum are limited though she was reportedly a model inmate with no real behavioural problems reported. 

While there have been other murder cases similar to hers, it was Amy Archer Gilligan who apparently inspired Joseph Kesserling to base his play on her murders. (not that he considered her life story particularly funny).  In his play, the murders are committed by two eccentric sisters who kill their victims because of sympathy rather than for profit.   Though there was little actual resemblance between Amy Gilligan and the Brewster sisters of the play (and subsequent film), the connection was enough to ensure that her strange life would earn a place in literature.  

Her own opinion about Arsenic and Old Lace was never recorded for posterity.

Why Do People Mistrust Vaccination?

Strengthening of antivaccination movements in recent decades has coincided with unprecedented increases in the incidence of some communicable diseases. Many intervention programs work from a deficit model of science communication, presuming that vaccination skeptics lack the ability to access or understand evidence. However, interventions focusing on evidence and the debunking of vaccine-related myths have proven to be either nonproductive or counterproductive. A new study published in the journal Health Psychology examines the psychological factors that might motivate people to reject scientific consensus around vaccination.  The researchers sampled 5,323 participants in 24 countries, and measured their antivaccination attitudes. They also measured their belief in conspiracy theories, reactance (the tendency for people to have a low tolerance for impingements on their freedoms), disgust sensitivity toward blood and needles, and individualistic/hierarchical worldviews (i.e., people’s beliefs about how much control society should have over individuals, and whether hierarchies are desirable). Results show that, by order of magnitude, antivaccination attitudes were highest among those who (a) were high in conspiratorial thinking, (b) were high in reactance, (c) reported high levels of disgust toward blood and needles, and (d) had strong individualistic/hierarchical worldviews. In contrast, demographic variables (including education) accounted for nonsignificant or trivial levels of variance. These data help identify the “attitude roots” that may motivate and sustain vaccine skepticism. In so doing, they help shed light on why repetition of evidence can be nonproductive, and suggest communication solutions to that problem.

For the abstract