Providentia

Lawyer Says Client Not Criminally Responsible for 2016 Stabbing Death of High School Student

An attorney for a man convicted of stabbing two high school students in Abbotsford, one fatally,  stated that his client lacked the mental capacity to understand what he did was wrong.    In his argument at the New Westminster B.C. Supreme Court hearing for his client, Gabriel Klein, Martin Peters stated that Klein's psychotic state caused him to believe that Klein believed he was stabbing a witch and a zombie with maggots coming out of its back, not two teenage girls.  " Klein did not appreciate the nature and quality of his actions. Klein certainly did not appreciate the consequences of his actions were the fatal harm to Letisha Reimer and the maiming of (her friend)," Peters said.

On November 1, 2016, the 20-year-old Klein stole a knife and subsequently entered a high school where he saw 13-year-old Letisha Reimer and her friend who was not named by the press.   He then  stabbed Reimer thirteen times and seriously injured the second student.    Despite his history of mental illness, Klein refused to have his psychiatric history admitted as evidence and was subsequently convicted last March of murder and attempted murder.  The case has generated intense publicity across British Columbia given the brutal nature of the crime and the age of the victims who were apparently selected at random.

In a new sentencing hearing, Klein testified that hat he was following the directions of voices in his head which told him that his victims were monsters and that stabbing them was "just."  He also told  the court that he hadn't understand the moral consequences and had been diagnosed as psychotic during a pre-trial assessment.    Despite Klein's claim of having been undergone a forensic assessment, no defense witnesses were called during the hearing.   Klein has also shown significant problems recalling essential details during cross-examination and his responses have been inconsistent, something that the Crown prosecutors maintain undermined his credibility.  For example, Klein  that he  crossed the border into Washington state two days before the attack at the school because he thought the RCMP and Hells Angels were after him, but admitted in cross examination he told border guards he had crossed by accident because he didn’t want to get in trouble.   He also admitted to lying to police about having previously been robbed because he believed it might have made him more sympathetic.

Despite public interest in the case, COVID restrictions limited actual seating in the courtroom.   As a result, most of the attendants watched a livestream of the hearing at a closed room in a local community centre.   In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson for Letisha Reimer’s family said that he is hoping the judge will find there’s not enough evidence to find Klein not criminally responsible for his actions.  “That would be my hope, and that way it would spare the families all this sort of grief that they’re re-experiencing just after the anniversary of the murder,” he said. “At the end of the day, Letisha’s not here, and Gabriel Klein is permitted to sit on a stand and basically rewrite history of what took place. He’s introducing seemingly new information to try to minimize what he did.”

The trial is proceeding.

 

 

The Electric Doctor Abrams (Part One of Two)

By the turn of the 20th century, electricity was all the rage. 

Newspapers were filled with stories about technical geniuses  like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse working to bring electricity into every home.  Certainly, the prospect of new and improved labour-saving devices, all run by electricity, must have seemed miraculous enough.  So was it any wonder that more and more medical hucksters began turning out health products promising to cure every ailment under the sun using the power of electricity?  A full listing of the various "devices" being offered through newspaper ads and through mail order would likely fill a good-sized book.   Still, he leading figure of 20th century electrical quackery had to be Albert Abrams., the dean of bogus electrotherapy, and likely the most famous name ever to be associated associated with  electrotherapy.

Born in San Francisco in 1863, Abrams was the son of aa prominent banker and distinguished himself from an early age due to  his brilliant mind.   By the  time he turned nineteen, he had earned his medical doctorate from the University of Heidelberg (one of the world's foremost medical schools) and went on to become a professor of pathology at Cooper College (later absorbed into Stanford University Medical School) before he turned thirty.  Along as serving as a consultant at numerous prominent hospitals, he also authored a slate of medical books and research papers that still stand up to medical scrutiny even today.   Aside from making money with his private practice, he became independently wealthy through his marriage to two different heiresses, both of whom died young and who bequeathed their sizable estates to him.

Despite his eminent medical reputation, not to mention being a member of California's high society, Dr. Abrams' career eventually veered into a decidedly different direction by 1910.   After developing a strong professional interest in orthopedic medicine, he published two books focusing on the role of spinal treatment in curing disease.  Abrams also began training other doctors in Spondylotherapy, i.e., manipulating the spine to treat various medical conditions  and had a strong influence on the chiropractic movement.   But really, his foray into alternative medicine was just beginning...

For whatever reason, he soon gave up on spinal manipulation after developing what he called his Theory of Electronic Medical Analysis.   According to this theory, every disease had a signature electronic vibration that could be measured using specialized instruments.   This led to the invention of the dynamizer - a device developed by Abrams which became the cornerstone of his Electronic Reactions of Abrams diagnostic system (ERA for short).

In a nutshell, ERA worked by putting drops of the patient's blood onto blotting paper (the blood was first "cleansed" by treating it with a horseshoe magnet) and then placing it into the dynamizer. A wire was then attached to the forehead of a second, healthy person who stood on grounded plates (this second subject was known as a "reagent"). The reagent was stripped to the waist and placed facing westward.   When the dynamizer passed the vibrational frequency of the blood sample to the reagent, Abrams or one of his disciples tapped the reagent's abdomen. Based on the tapping, Abrams claimed to be able to pinpoint the nature and location of any disease in the patient's body.   On those few occasions when a dynamizer wasn't available,  he was able to diagnose patients by using his hands to find "rough areas" of the skin to find the affected body part that he insisted was responsible for whatever symptoms they were experiencing.

Visitors seeking out Dr. Abrams could find him at the luxurious medical office he maintained at 2151 Sacramento Street in San Francisco.  There the patient would be escorted to the reception area by Dr. Abrams' extremely androgynous assistant.  Not even bothering with gathering a medical history, the assistant simply asked each patient what they "thought" was wrong with them.  At this point, Dr. Abrams would come in and collect blood and saliva samples, not to mention a sample of the patient's handwriting, all of which would be placed in the dynamizer for a proper diagnosis.  After calling in the reagent, usually a young man stripped to the waist, the good doctor would then recite a complex series of numbers based on what he learned by tapping the young reagent's abdomen and which his assistant would dutifully record.   Once the diagnosis was made, Abrams then dismissed the reagent and proceeded with giving the patient a diagnosis and recommending the proper treatment.

Though Abrams often prescribed different medications to cure the supposed disease he had diagnosed in his patients, the treatment Abrams provided  usually involved his other great invention, the oscilloclast.  Basically  a boxlike gadget with electrodes to be placed on the patient's body, Abrams claimed that his oscilloclast could be used to cure patients by "duplicating and neutralizing the signature vibration of disease".  In extreme cases, he also rubbed his patients with assorted colored salves (the ingredients of which remained a proprietary secret).    

Though he maintained his own busy practice, Abrams hardly stopped there.  Through aggressive marketing, Abrams recruited and trained various "electronic practitioners", all of whom treated disease using machines leased from Abrams' company. Not only did Abrams collect a hefty sum from everyone undergoing his training, he also rented all necessary machines to his graduates, including their own dynamizer and oscillocast (Abrams maintained a strict legal license banning anyone else from producing them).  All of this would become a factor in later lawsuits, bit we'll get to that later.   

 It was quite a lucrative business for a while. Not only did Abrams become a favourite of osteopaths and chiropractors of the time, but he also made numerous friends in the media. His supporters included novelist Upton Sinclair and Pearson's Magazine.  A perennial showman, Abrams proudly boasted that his Electronic Medicine could cure a dizzying array of diseases, including hypertension, pneumonia, liver problems, cancer, skin problems, etc.   He even claimed that the Soviet government had called him in to consult on the treatment that the dying Lenin was receiving in Moscow and that he could diagnose patients remotely by using "electronic waves" going through telephone wires.  Not only did he insist that his machines allowed him to predict how long a patient might live by examining their vibrations, but he even used handwriting samples from people who were long dead to diagnose them as well.   For example, he used autographs from writers such as Samuel Johnson and Samuel Pepys to conclude that they had both developed syphilis prior to their deaths (he said the same of Henry Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe).  

But that was hardly the full extent of the kind of "medical advice" that the good Dr. Abrams dispensed.   He was a rabid anti-vaccine advocate who insisted that all white people were susceptible to syphilis due to the widespread use of vaccines, something that he insisted led to white people being prone to "vibratory" medical problems (no word on what it did to other races, though).   He also insisted that all surgery was inherently dangerous and that people who have been operated on would inevitably develop cancer due to the damage that surgery did to the body's vibrations.   

Though there have always been a plethora of medical hucksters dispensing questionable advice, the sad part was that people often listened to what Albert Abrams had to say.   Not only did he have a widespread following  but his appeal as a medical showman virtually guaranteed enormous publicity whenever he made a formal pronouncement about medicine.   Even in the United Kingdom, visitors to the venerable Trafalgar Square in the heart of London could see an electric sign proclaiming the benefits of Electronic Medicine.   The outcome of one famous paternity case in San Francisco actually hinged on the evidence that Abrams provided which determined (through electronic analysis alone) that the defendant was the father of the child in question.

Whatever the actual benefits of Abrams' miracle cures, there was no disputing that they made him a very wealthy man.  Evidence of this wealth included a magnificent mansion in San Francisco, lavishly decorated with expensive furnishings and a stunning collection of Oriental art and rare books.   He also maintained an enormous wardrobe, complete with expensive jewelry which he wore during his many lecture tours abroad.    Though Abrams'  fame as a medical huckster peaked in the years immediately following World War I, he even found a way to profit from Prohibition when it began in 1920 (he claimed that his devices could duplicate the vibrational frequency of alcohol to produce an "electrical high" without the hangover).   

Still, it was only a matter of time before the backlash set in for Abrams' movement. More on that next week...

To be continued

 

The Rise and Fall of The New Messiah

Whatever else you can say about the Reverend Homer Aubrey Tomlinson, he was definitely a showman.   As for his other achievements, real and self-proclaimed, you will have to decide that for yourself...

Born in 1892 in Westfield, Indiana, he was the oldest son and presumed heir of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, the founder of the Church of God of Prophecy, one of the earliest Pentecostal denominations.     Despite an early career in an advertising agency, Homer joined his father's ministry in 1922, reportedly after a life-changing experience when he was "almost struck by lightning."    Along with establishing a congregation in Jamaica, New York and evangelizing across the Northeast, Homer Tomlinson also became well-known for grandiose stunts.   This included conducting the world's first parachute wedding at the New York World's Fair.   Along with Tomlinson, the bride and groom, best man, maid of honour, and four musicians all took part in the ceremony after they jumped out of a plane together.  

Possibly due to his controversial antics, Homer Tomlinson was passed over as his father's successor following Ambrose's death in 1943.   The church elders claimed to have received a message in tongues to "bring forth the younger son" and Homer was left out in the cold when his legal battle to control the church failed.   Bouncing back from this disappointment,  Homer Tomlinson went on to found his own denomination, the Church of God based in New York city.  

With his usual flair for self-publicity (did I mention he was a former ad-man?),  Homer announced that his mission was to usher in the Kingdom of God by getting church members elected to public office.   With little hope of securing a Democratic or Republican nomination as a presidential candidate,  he decided to found his own political party instead.    The platform for the Theocratic party he founded in 1952 was straightforward enough:   unification of church and state, abolishing taxation in favour of tithing, and creating two new cabinet posts, a secretary of righteousness and a secretary of the Holy Bible.   Despite running for president in 1952, 1960, 1964, and 1968, his support was never particularly strong.  Best estimates suggest that he only got 20 votes in 1964 alone. 

Despite the failure of his presidential ambitions, Homer Tomlinson moved on to more grandiose goals.   After a 1954 convention of his Church of God reportedly acclaimed him a "almost a new Messiah", he declared himself to be King of the World.    Traveling to more than 100 countries, he staged numerous coronation ceremonies to proclaim his royal status.  With his gold-plated crown, his blue silk robes, an inflatable globe that he held in his hands,  a 15-inch flag featuring the "scepter of righteousness", and a cheap folding chair which served as his surrogate "Throne of David",  Tomlinson's coronation ceremonies were certainly picturesque, if nothing else.  

Though most of these ceremonies took place at local airports, one of them was held in Moscow's Red Square to the bemusement of the Soviet government (Pravda referred to it as a publicity stunt by "an American actor").    He later claimed that his 1958 Red Square coronation "melted the Iron Curtain" and fostered peace (not that anyone else noted an easing of Cold War tensions afterward).   In the years following his first coronations as King of All The Nations of Men, he stated: "I crowned myself in every state, and at 67 colleges, and I visited 101 nations and crowned myself King in every one, including Russia in Red Square, in Moscow on July 12, 1958.  Crowds greeted me everywhere."    Homer insisted that his traveling to different countries helped usher in the Kingdom of God by preventing revolutions, encouraging world peace, and ending droughts.

As part of his grandiose plan to reshape the world, Homer planned to move the seat of the United Nations to Jerusalem where its ambassadors would be replaced by preachers.   Not only would Jerusalem become the world's centre of finance and culture, any nation that waged a war would be struck by drought and plague.   The Ten Commandments would be formally enacted into law everywhere and taxation would be replaced by tithing.   All laws everywhere would be replaced by his own "48 laws" which, among other things, banned liquor and tobacco, provided equality for all, offered forgiveness for repentant criminals, and promoted love. 

The actual size of Homer Tomlinson's congregation, all of whom he dubbed "saints", was always hard to calculate but he confidently placed it at 75,000 with 600 ministers under his control.    At other times, he assumed that all the world's Pentecostalists were under his dominion (though they likely didn't share this opinion).   As for his actual congregation, many of his followers were apparently dissatisfied with his leadership and one of them, Grady R. Kent, formed a separate denomination, Church of All Nations in 1957.  

When he wasn't travelling, Homer ran his world-wide empire from the two-story frame house in Queen's Village in New York City where his "mission" continued right up to his death in 1968.  According to an obituary in the New York Times,  he died quietly in a Manhattan hospital after a long illness.   Described as the "portly, pink-faced, cheery leader of the Church of God",  he was survived by his wife Marie whom he had met in an Aimee Temple McPherson revival tent in 1919.   Along with their two sons, he was also survived by their six grandchildren.   He is buried in Long Island cemetery. 

Though the Church of God still exists, the church website rather downplays the eccentric life of Bishop Tomlinson.   After his death, he was succeeded by Voy M. Bullen who then moved the church to Huntsville, Alabama to be closer to the centre of the movement.    While Tomlinson's church has undergone various moves and schisms since his death, the Church of God is reported to have over 70,000 followers at present but this figure is considered to be likely inflated.  

So, was Homer Tomlinson prone to grandiose delusions or was his "King of the World" campaign nothing more than an elaborate publicity stunt?   While his various "coronations" had no actual validity, they certainly kept him in the public eye.   Stirring up controversy ensured that Homer A. Tomlinson had greater name recognition than the other competing denominations, even if he picked up a reputation for being a crackpot along the way. 

And, perhaps that was enough for him.

Is There a Suicide Narrative?

The Narrative Crisis Model of suicide posits that when individuals with trait vulnerabilities for suicide face stressful life events, they may develop distorted perceptions of themselves and society that culminate in a sense of no future. Referred to as the suicide narrative, these perceptions makes them more likely to experience the Suicidal Crisis Syndrome, an acute affective condition that increases the risk of engaging in suicidal ideation behaviors. The goal of a study recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders was to assess the stage components of this model. The stage components of the NCM were assessed among adult psychiatric inpatients (N = 223; listwise N = 85) aged 18–65 years old and admitted for suicidal ideation or attempts. Suicidal outcomes were assessed at one month follow-up. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the model and its prediction of prospective suicidal outcomes. Results showed that the model was supported by the SEM and proved to be a good fit for the data. Each temporal stage was significantly predicted by the precedent stage in the model and 13% of the variance in suicidal ideation and behaviors (when assessed conjointly) were explained by the model. When suicidal ideation and attempts were assessed separately, the amount of variance explained was 10.8% for suicidal ideation and 40.7% for suicidal attempts. The progression from trait vulnerabilities to suicidal outcomes proposed by the NCM was supported by the research findings. These findings have clinical implications in the assessment and treatment of suicide risk and will need replication with larger samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Why Are Dementia Patients Filling Psychiatric Beds?

"Sometimes it's very difficult for a person with dementia to get their thoughts across, then they get agitated and upset," said Dr. George Heckman, associate professor at the University of Waterloo and Schlegel Research Chair in Geriatric Medicine in a recent interview. "They have behaviours that are very difficult, sometimes, to manage, and when that happens you need a lot of specialized work to be done. Unfortunately we just do not have the resources."  

In what Ontario mental health experts are describing as a worsening trend, dementia patients are being increasingly assigned to hospital beds reserved for psychiatric patients.    According to the latest data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information,  a third of all psychiatric beds in Ontario hospitals are  being filled by dementia patients, largely due to a shortage in regular hospital beds and long-term health care facilities.    Unfortunately, psychiatric treatment staff often lack the necessary training to diagnose dementia properly, let alone providing the necessary treatment.   This means that dementia patients may end up receiving treatment that does more harm than good, including the overuse of psychiatric medications that may worsen their symptoms. 

Since anti-psychotic drugs and major tranquilizers are frequently used as "chemical restraints" for agitated patients, being forced to take these medications can lead to adverse side effects as well as potentially dangerous drug interactions with other medications they are taking.  Also,  many dementia patients have additional medical problems such as coronary disease and hypertension which psychiatrists and mental health nurses may not be properly trained to treat.  "I've never seen a person come back from a psychiatric admission with dementia who didn't have at least one other major psychotropic drug added or increased," said Dr. Allen Power of the University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging . 

 Over the past ten years, psychiatric admissions for dementia patients has more than doubled  in Ontario hospital as dementia becomes more prevalent in seniors.   The current COVID-19 pandemic is expected to make the problem far worse due to the reduced number of beds available as well as the increased care needed by residents in long-term care facilities.   Also, due to current pandemic control guidelines,  care facilities are no longer allowed to house patients in close proximity to one another.  That means that residents can no longer be placed in open wards but only in dedicated rooms that can only accommodate one or two residents at a time.  Even before the pandemic began, the average time patients needed to wait for a spot in a long-term care home can be as long as a year or more.   While the average wait time across the province is around ninety days according to Health Quality Ontario ,  this will certainly soar since the number of dementia patients is expected to double by 2038.

Tying up psychiatric beds with dementia patients also means fewer beds being available for people experiencing mental health crises or who are actively suicidal.   And having been in a psychiatric hospital may actually reduce the likelihood of getting a long-term care bed for many patients.   Though there are hospitals such as Ontario Shores in Whitby, Ont., and Baycrest Centre in Toronto, that have created units to  house such patients, these units lack the capacity to meet the current demand, not to mention the increased demand will will be seeing in future.  

For now, the lack of beds across Ontario, especially in smaller communities means that the problem will become far worse as hospitals and the provincial government continues to wrestle with this dilemma.

For more information.

 

Orfeo Ascending

For Orfeo Angelucci, his strange career as a spokesperson for the aliens watching Earth reportedly began on August 4, 1946 with an amateur science experiment.  

Born in Trenton, New Jersey to a working-class Italian American family, Angelucci was a sickly child with a history of childhood illness.    Diagnosed with “constitutional inadequacy” as a child, his poor health left him with recurring migraine headaches as well as a peculiar sensitivity to thunderstorms.   Despite having to leave school early due to poor health and family financial problems, he continued to study science in his spare time until a complete physical breakdown forced him to give up his job.   After nearly two years in hospital, he eventually returned to work and resumed his amateur science experiments.   While his experiments may have been somewhat offbeat, there was no doubting his enthusiasm.   Angelucci had a particular fascination with how electricity and thunderstorms affected humans and even wrote an enthusiastic letter to then-President Franklin Roosevelt about his discoveries.   In the letter, he insisted that the “range paralysis” he saw in chickens was related to atmospheric static conditions  and suggested that this might be relevant to the treatment of polio.   He never received an answer.

In the fateful 1946 experiment,  Angelucci tried to launch samples of the fungus, Aspergillis clavatus, into the upper atmosphere in a homemade weather balloon.    He hoped to study how the fungus was changed by atmospheric conditions but the balloon broke away from the mooring and was lost along with his fungus samples.  As he would later relate, Angelucci and the family members who had gathered to watch the balloon launch saw what appeared to be a flying saucer hover overhead.   When the balloon went up, the saucer apparently followed it until both were lost from sight.    No trace of the balloons or the fungus samples were ever found.   

After moving to California (where he heard there were fewer thunderstorms), Angelucci  attempted to break into the movie industry by writing his own script about a trip to the moon (no studios expressed any interest though).  He finally went to work for the Lockheed Corporation doing fabrication work while continuing scientific research in his spare time.  Along with self-publishing a thesis titled “The Nature of Infinite Energies” describing his theories on “atomic evolution, suspension and involution”,  he also wrote several letters to Linus Pauling outlining his theories on biology and nuclear causation.  Pauling wrote several letters back politely thanking him but adding that he had no comments he could make on these theories. 

With the advent of the “flying saucer” craze in 1948, Angelucci became fascinated with the various sightings being reported.  His own flying saucer event occurred on May 23, 1952 after he left the Lockheed plant early in the morning (he was working the night shift.)     In the statement he later wrote about his experience,, he described experiencing “prickling sensations” while driving home that felt as if his old medical problems were returning.    Angelucci then saw a “red-glowing, oval-shaped object” in the sky which he decided to follow.    On a deserted part of the highway, he saw two smaller objects detach themselves and approach his car.  A clear voice told him, “Don’t be afraid, Orfeo, we are friends” and instructed him to get out of the car.  The two smaller objects were apparently meant for communication.  

After reassuring him of their friendly intentions, he was told that the aliens had been watching him ever since his 1946 balloon experiment.    The voice then told him to “Drink from the crystal cup you will find on the fender of your car, Orfeo!”   And, sure enough, there was a goblet on his car fender filled with a liquid.    Angelucci reported, “It was the most delicious beverage I had ever tasted. I drained the cup. Even as I was drinking a feeling of strength and well-being swept over me and all of my unpleasant symptoms vanished.”   The goblet vanished after he replaced it on the fender.

The twin disks then formed into a luminous screen which showed two “oddly familiar” beings, a man and a woman.  “There was an impressive nobility about them,” he wrote.  “Their eyes were larger and much more expressive and they emanated a seeming radiance that filled me with wonder.”    The screen then vanished.   He was then told that “the road will open” and that they had been watching the Earth for centuries.  They also told him that he had been chosen for first contact and that the “flying saucers” were their own ships which were powered and controlled by tapping into “universal magnetic forces.”      Though “Cosmic law prevented one planet from interfering with the evolution of any other planet and that Earth needed to work out its own destiny”, they had been trying to help the human race move forward.   Perhaps not surprisingly, they also informed him that his numerous unconventional theories on nuclear causation and biology were absolutely correct.  After promising to be in contact again, they then left.

And thus Orfeo Angelucci’s strange mission was born.  Never as famous as other flying saucer enthusiasts such as George Adamski, the message he relayed in books such as his 1955 classic, The Secret of the Saucers, seemed to resonate with his early Catholic upbringing.   In the book (which was co-written by science fiction author Ray Palmer), Angelucci described his early experiences with the aliens as well as later trips on board flying saucers which seemed more like spiritual experiences.  Angelucci also became part of the lecture circuit along with other contactees and became a popular guest with radio show hosts as he described his flying saucer journeys.

On one later trip, he was told that Christ had been an “infinite entity of the sun” who had become “flesh and blood and entered the hell of ignorance and woe and evil” due to “compassion for the world’s suffering.”     During that same journey, Angelucci underwent a death and resurrection experience after which he heard the voices tell him, “Beloved friend of earth, we baptize you now in the true light of the worlds eternal.”   He also learned that the flying saucers were symbols of mankind’s “coming resurrection of the living death.”  

His message was also strongly influenced by many of the political and cultural ideas that were in vogue at the time.  The aliens appeared strangely concerned about communism which they described as a symbol of the earth’s fallen state and something that humanity needed to overcome (nothing about capitalism, however).    They also warned that the human race was living in a state akin to Purgatory and that a Great Armageddon was approaching unless humanity could reform.  Whether this was a nuclear war or something even more dire was left to the imagination of his readers. 

In a later book, Son of the Sun, Angelucci expanded more on his meetings with the angelic aliens and the mystical nature of his experiences on board the flying saucers.   He also described living for a week in the body of his “space brother” Neptune on a large asteroid while his usual body went to work in a waking dream state.  Angelucci published several other pamphlets expanding on his space-brother ideas and also claimed to be in contact with other people who had met the same aliens that he had. 

While Orfeo Angelucci remained part of the flying saucer movement until his death in 1993,  his cult following was never very large.   His books, complete with audio CDs of him describing his experiences, are still available on Amazon.   Carl Jung devoted part of his 1978 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies to him and regarded Angelucci’s account as being the most compelling of all the first-person contact narratives  published during that era. 

It is tempting to try explaining Angelucci using his medical history and how his “encounters” resemble the type of hallucination seen in certain neurological patients.   Unfortunately, there is not enough information available to make a real diagnosis in his case.   That his claimed experiences strongly reflected his own Catholic upbringing and personal beliefs (including pep talks with Jesus Christ himself) seems to be one of the common features that he shared with fellow contactees.   His other chief claim to fame was that he is believed to have been the first to coin the term, “New Age.” 

Aside from his books on Amazon and the few web pages dedicated to him, Orfeo Angelucci has been largely forgotten by believers and skeptics alike.   Ultimately, what impressed people most listening to his fantastic accounts was the utter sincerity he displayed at all times.   Whatever you might make of his strange claims, he seemed to believe what he was saying and that was enough to convince others as well.   If nothing else, he remains an object lesson in the power of belief.

Shooting Mussolini

It was 1926 and Benito Mussolini was on top of the world.

Four years after the March on Rome which brought his National Fascist Party to absolute power in Italy,  "Il Duce" (The Leader) was not only greatly loved and admired by devoted followers in Italy but  his international reputation seemed secure as well.  Despite unsavory publicity over the violent tactics of Mussolini's Blackshirts in dealing with his political foes,  active opposition to his rule was surprisingly limited.   Direct Fascist control over radio stations and newspapers as well as a vigilant  propaganda network likely helped with that as well.    Considering Il Duce's popularity at the time, his security was fairly muted.   Not only was Mussolini fond of giving long public speeches from a public balcony overlooking Rome's Piazza Venezia, he often rushed from one public event to another in an open car.

Whatever security arrangements were in place to protect the popular leader, nobody was expecting him to be shot by a 50-year old Englishwoman named Violet Gibson.    A titled aristocrat, the Honourable Violet Albina Gibson was a daughter of Edward Gibson, First Baron Ashbourne and a former Lord Chancellor of Ireland.   She never married (though she had once been engaged) and her life seemed unremarkable except for her conversion to Roman Catholicism relatively late in life.   At the time of the shooting,  she had been living quietly in a convent in Rome where she reportedly spent her time doing crossword puzzles with her Irish maid.    

Her exact reason for attempting to kill Mussolini was never clear but the assassination attempt itself was certainly blatant enough.   On April 7, 1926, Il Duce was at the palace overlooking the Piazza del Campidoglio where he had just delivered a speech to a meeting of the International Congress of Surgeons.   Stepping out on to the balcony overlooking the Piazza, a group of students broke into song praising their leader and he bowed his head in their direction.    At was then that the bespectacled and shabbily-dressed Gibson shot him three times with a small pistol at point-blank range, less than a meter away.   None of the  shots were life-threatening but Mussolini was immediately taken back inside and treated for his wounds (did I mention that there was a meeting hall filled with surgeons present?).     He reappeared to the crowd shortly afterward wearing a bowler hat, a frock coat, and an adhesive bandage on his nose. 

Violet Gibson was not as lucky since the enraged mob nearly lynched her on the spot.  She was badly beaten by the crowd before the police dragged her to safety and revived her with brandy.   Immediately taken into custody (more for her protection than any real concern about her danger to society),  Gibson was later interrogated over the shooting which she insisted was on God's orders.  The assassination attempt (which would be one of four that Il Duce would face in that same year) turned out to be a major propaganda coup for Mussolini.   Just a few days later, he would make the famous statement, "Pistol shots pass, Mussolini stays on".    He was also awarded a special decoration by the Italian government for suffering "a wound of the Fascist revolution".   Beyond that, Mussolini showed no particular interest in Violet Gibson once he realized that there was no political advantage in her prosecution.  Upset that the frail, English spinster was not a sinister assassin (he described her as “one of the old, ugly repulsive women who come from abroad in groups"), Il Duce ignored her.   Still, he used the various assassination attempts against him that year as an excuse to have his Blackshirts crack down on the country even further. 

The question of what to do with Violet Gibson still remained though.   While 15-year Anteo Zamboni would be lynched later that same year for attempting to shoot Mussolini, she was treated far more leniently.  Criminal prosecutors were at a loss of what to do with her when they concluded that she had been acting alone and was not part of some international conspiracy.    The great Italian criminologist, Enrico Ferri, took a special interest in Violet Gibson's case and attempted to prove that she was insane.   As a widely known authority on criminal behaviour and a student of Cesare Lombroso, Ferri's opinion was well-respected (although his political background might have been unfortunate since he was a former member of the Italian Socialist party).  

In the now-classic case study that he provided to the military law court, Ferri argued that Violet Gibson was highly suggestible and even hinted that her assassination attempt may have been due to the influence of "some criminal who, with cruel ferocity, thought to avail himself of a mad woman as his agent"  (no evidence for this was ever found).    While ruling out obvious signs of mental illness such as hallucinations or delusions, Ferri acknowledged that Gibson was fully aware of what she was doing,  His review of her life history showed that she had been hospitalized numerous times before in England due to "homicidal ideas and to attacks of acute violent mania."    Along with a previously knife attack on a young girl (she had been stopped before doing any permanent damage), Gibson had also tried to shoot herself.     Ferri  also drew on the psychological testimony of two forensic psychiatrists who had evaluated Violet Gibson after the assassination attempt.  They had both concluded that she had been "in a state of mental infirmity" when she had shot Il Duce and was suffering from "lucid insanity".

Unfortunately, Ferri's report was also filled with the same propaganda about Benito Mussolini that marked most official documents of that era.   He spoke at length about Il Duce's great accomplishments and his love for his country which the disturbed woman seemed incapable of appreciating.   Although Gibson had given no sign of what she had been planning,  enough of her letters to her family survived to give an idea of the moral and religious mania that motivated her actions.   

Eventually released without charge at Il Duce’s request, Violet Gibson was promptly deported.   Accompanied by her sister, Violet was carefully escorted back to England by train and an entourage of nurses and security agents.   Once in England, she was immediately certified as insane by two different doctors.   After being shipped to St. Andrews Hospital in Northampton, she was bathed, drugged, and placed in restraints.   She would spend the rest of her life there as a mental patient.  Even her prominent family had no idea what to do with her occasional episodes of violence and made no attempt to have her released..  

According to Stonor Saunders, in his awesome biography, The Woman Who Shot Mussolini, Violet spent her remaining years writing letter after letter to family members, Winston Churchill,  and members of the Royal Family (including then-Princess Elizabeth).   The letters, which were never mailed, included grandiose plans for making the world a better place.   In the years that followed, Mussolini’s popularity in the U.K. plummeted and, with the outbreak of World War II and Italy’s alliance with Nazi Germany, some of Violet’s friends argued for her release.   They pointed out that she had simply been ahead of her time in recognizing Mussolini’s danger.  

Despite their arguments, Violet Gibson stayed in the mental hospital until her death in 1956.  Ironically,  she had long outlived the man she had tried to shoot since Il Duce had been executed in 1945.   There is no actual record of how she reacted to hearing of her former victim’s death but you would think she must have felt some satisfaction at finally being vindicated.

Was Violet Gibson insane when she attempted to kill Benito Mussolini?   Despite her position as a member of one of Ireland’s most prominent families and her history of mental illness, exactly what motivated her to fire that gun in a public square is still a mystery.   

 

The Role of Caregivers in Trauma-Focused Therapy

Childhood trauma exposure is unfortunately common and is associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as a number of other serious medical and mental and health disorders. After experiencing trauma, children depend on their non-offending parents to believe and support them, reframe the meaning of the trauma, and to keep them safe from future harm. Parents are often negatively impacted by their child's trauma which may contribute to the child's risk for developing PTSD and related problems. Including parents in treatment may enhance child outcomes. Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based child and adolescent trauma treatment model that integrally includes non-offending parents or caregivers throughout treatment (hereafter referred to as “caregivers”). A new review published in the Journal of Affective Disorders describes TF-CBT's underlying concepts, principles and core components, as well as the role of caregiver inclusion in this model, and evaluates the extant evidence for caregiver factors in predicting TF-CBT outcomes. Several studies suggest that inclusion of non-offending caregivers is associated with TF-CBT outcomes, and that this may occur through enhancing caregiver support of the child and/or reducing caregivers’ trauma-related maladaptive cognitions. Still, few studies have evaluated whether caregiver factors served as formal treatment mediators but including non-offending caregivers in TF-CBT can improve youth outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Missouri Couple Charged in Exorcism Death of Four-Year-Old Child

Two people living in Missouri's Benton County have been charged with second-degree murder of a four-year-old child who police say was tortured for weeks before her death.   According to a probable cause statement issued by Benton County Sergeant Chris Wilson, the child's body was found at her family home wrapped in a pink blanket and covered in bruises from her neck to her feet.   The child's father, James Mast, 28, had called the police stating that had been beaten and submerged in  a pond neighbours Ethan Mast, 35, and Kourtney Aumen, 21,  to rid her of  a "demon".   

According to the probable cause statement, James Mast told investigators that Mast and Aumen were neighbours who attended the same church that they did.  Despite having the same surname, Ethan Mast is not related to the family of his victim.   The child's ordeal reportedly began when they told the girl's parents that she was possessed in the same way that her mother was and that she and their other two children "would end up just like her if it was not taken care of,"    Mast and Aumen then proceeded to beat the child over the course of two weeks and then threatened to shoot James Mast and his remaining family if he or his wife attempted to intervene.  Mast and Aumen reportedly told them that "Satan would come" if they attempted to protect their children from harm.  Both Ethan Mast and Kourtney Aumen are currently being held without bond.

In his own statement to police, Ethan Mast stated that he and Aumen used a leather belt to beat the girl on Dec. 19 and that she e was then taken to a pond behind the home and "dunked" in the water in near-freezing temperatures.  Though she was returned to her home, it still isn't clear exactly when she died.   James Mast and his wife, Mary Mast, 29, were also severely beaten as was the couple's two-year-old son.   Their youngest child was not harmed.   After being taken to hospital to be treated for their injuries, James and Mary Mast were arrested for felony child endangerment resulting in death and are jailed without bond.   The two remaining Mast children have been taken into protective custody.  Though James and Mary Mast asked permission to attend their daughter's funeral, this request was denied.  

In an official statement released by the Benton County Sheriff's department, the killing and abuse was a "“religious-type episode" by the people involved and not the activity of a larger cult despite earlier speculation.   Hearings are scheduled for January 5 to determine how the case will proceed.

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The Heart of a Soldier

The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 meant new challenges for the medical doctors treating the wounded on both sides of the conflict.   But with these new challenges came timely new  developments to help diagnosis and treatment of injured soldiers.   This included morphine,  the hypodermic needle and the stethoscope. 

Being able to listen to a patient's heart meant a new appreciation of how the heart worked and, to some extent, how it didn't.    Though the heart was recognized primarily as a muscle that pumped blood, old notions about the heart being the centre of emotion and personality in humans had not been completely forgotten by the mid-19th century.   Physicians already recognized that strong emotion could affect heart activity but, rather than simply relying on patient description of how stress affected them, physicians could listen to the heart directly and draw their own conclusions.   Conflicting ideas of what a heart actually did came into play during the Civil War as doctors began monitoring the vital signs of soldiers under combat conditions.  It was through studying soldiers that three physicians independently described what would be known as the "Irritable Heart Syndrome" or  more simply as "Soldier's Heart."   

Early reports of Soldier's Heart began in 1862 following the first attempt of the Army of the Potomac to invade Virginia.   If the soldiers expected an easy victory, they quickly learned otherwise as Robert E. Lee's Confederate troops managed to beat them back and eventually forced a retreat.   The shock of this defeat was a major blow to Northern confidence and the high casualty rate, including wounded soldiers who were simply abandoned as the army withdrew, added to the number of dead.    With defeat after defeat at Antietam and Fredericksburg came more casualties and physicians began noting unusual symptoms among the soldiers being treated.

Along with battlefield injuries and diseases such as malaria, dysentery, and typhoid, army physicians also observed severe heart palpitations in the soldiers who had survived combat.  According to one physician, Alfred Stille, the soldiers themselves attributed the strange symptoms to the rigourous campaigning, including long marches with heavy backpacks.    Based on his own observations, Stille concluded that the palpitations were due to "a state of extreme exhaustion, especially when produced by prolonged and violent muscular effort."   Other physicians reported on the "cardiac muscular exhaustion" seen in soldiers and expanded on what Stille was observing.   Henry Hartshorne described what he was seeing as "soldier's heart exhaustion."  Specific symptoms included a rapid, feeble pulse rate,  an abnormally fast heart rate (even when the solder was at rest),  and breathing problems.     Hartshorne argued that the symptoms were caused by overexertion, lack of rest, and poor nutrition though he was careful to distinguish the new syndrome from ordinary nervous exhaustion.

The name most commonly associated with the irritable heart syndrome seen in soldiers was Jacob Mendes Da Costa who was the first physician to link the symptoms he was observing to psychological factors.   The condition he described is often called Da Costa's Syndrome in his honour.   Essentially, he regarded the condition he was seeing in patients as a "cardiac neurosis" since "the mass of cardiac disorder is not organic, but functional. And of these again a very large proportion belong to the group which I have designated 'irritable heart'"    Since there was no physical signs of actual heart disease involved, the symptoms themselves represented the condition he needed to treat.   Along with the heart symptoms, soldiers were also describing "jerking during sleep" ,  disturbed sleep, and nightmares.    While Da Costa was careful not to label the new syndrome as being a mental disorder, he did insist that the condition was not easily faked (even then, military authorities were wary of possible malingers).  He also acknowledged that the condition was being seen more frequently in soldiers as the war dragged on, however.   Treatment with conventional heart medications such as digitalis showed little real effect.

After the war ended,  Da Costa continued writing about the condition which he saw in civilian patients as well.   He maintained that the symptoms could be caused by any significant strain which, among other things, could mean emotional shock.   Many of the case histories he presented described how his syndrome could develop even in non-soldiers.   Based on his cases, Da Costa wrote:  

We can understand how even mental emotion, acting through the nervous system on the nerves of the heart, may produce real trouble, and how the worry of life, and strain on the feelings, when long kept up, may give rise to conditions which, in figurative language, we call “heart-weary,” and “heart-sick,” and which, not as a figure of speech, but in truth, may be the beginning of actual cardiac malady.

Da Costa also  suggested that irritable heart symptoms could be caused by anything that resulted in overexertion of the heart including sexual disorders, abuse of tea or coffee, irregularity or excess in eating or drinking or, "long matrimonial engagements."    In other words, virtually anything that caused nervous irritability could cause irritable heart syndrome.  For treatment, Da Costa recommended rest about all else though he also advocated medication (especially digitalis for the heart).     Despite the lack of real evidence that "irritable heart syndrome" actually involved heart disease,  Da Costa's based his ideas about the syndrome on patients becoming "heart-weary" due to chronic overexertion.  

Though Da Costa and his colleagues came close to realizing the role that traumatic stress could play on the body, they never quite managed to make that final connection.   According to Robert Kugelmann,  physicians such as Da Costa mainly focused on the role that overexertion and fatigue had on the heart since these were things they could observe directly.    Acknowledging the role of psychic factors that could only be inferred likely seemed a step backward.  Da Costa described the rigours of combat that soldiers faced as well as lack of sleep, poor nutrition,  and exposure to disease.   All of these were potential factors for irritable heart syndrome as far as he was concerned.    That soldiers were also constantly afraid was something he failed to mention in his writings.   Whether because he did not want irritable heart patients accused of cowardice or  simply refused to consider other factors besides overwork, Da Costa never wavered in regarding fatigue as the culprit.  

And fatigue was certainly a problem in 19th century medicine.   In an era before labour legislation or safety regulations, many workers were obliged to work long hours under unsafe conditions we nowadays see only in Third World factories.   That many of these workers also developed irritable heart symptoms seemed to prove Da Costa's hypothesis about overwork being the culprit.   There were also the inevitable racist comparisons with some ethnic groups deemed to be hardier and less vulnerable to irritable heart symptoms than others.   As Roberts Bartholow pointed out in an 1867 Sanitary Commission report on military health, soldiers of Anglo-Saxon descent were the most immune to fatigue.  For African-American soldiers, he regarded them as "less enduring than the white soldier; less active, vigilant, and enterprising, and more given to malingering. The Mulatto is feebler than the Negro."   As the very bottom of the heap were the Spanish-American soldiers coming from states such as New Mexico who were "cowardly, unreliable, and difficult to control, in consequence of a very mercurial temperament.”

As the memory of the Civil War faded and new wars arose, the Irritable Heart Syndrome gave way to later diagnoses including "shell shock" which became popular during World War I.    With each new case, physicians also recognized that it was not a heart syndrome at all.     As cardiologist James MacKenzie pointed out in 1916, such cases " were overwhelmingly non-cardiac, the most likely etiology being the strain and exhaustion of life in the trenches superimposed on some 'toxic influence' caused by infection."  Once again, physicians were extremely reluctant to attribute the symptoms they were seeing to psychological factors such as acute stress given the stigma attached to anything suggesting that soldiers lacked courage.   Though "shell shock" made its introduction as a diagnosis during World War I, it would not be until well after World War II that the devastating impact of posttraumatic stress on soldiers would be grudgingly recognized.

Even today, the true diagnosis of the Irritable Heart Disorder symptoms described by Da Costa and other physicians is likely impossible based on the limited information available.   Though Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) remains the most popular explanation for what Da Costa was describing,  physical causes such as poor nutrition and infection cannot be ruled out either.   That the horrors of war take a terrible toll on soldiers and civilians caught in the crossfire seems obvious enough now. Recognizing that constant threat of death could lead to "legitimate" medical conditions rather than the type of symptoms associated with "cowardice" would take much longer.