Word: feign
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Throughout last week the man who wanted to stay at Malmaison sought to feign madness before a trinity of famed French psychologists, Professors Truelle, Claude and Heuyer. Their verdict: "M. Klotz presents no signs of mental illness. Nothing indicates that he was in an unbalanced condition at the moment when the acts were committed. He is therefore responsible and must render an accounting for these acts...
Readers of Stevenson will recall, in "The Master of Ballantrae", the Hindu servant who taught his master to feign death by "swallowing his tongue". The experiment, in that case, was not altogether successful, and the author leaves doubt as to whether the Hindu really remained alive, after two week's burial in the ground, or not. But the trick was founded on an actual oriental superstition, of which many others have likewise appeared to baffle "civilized" doctors. Perhaps later investigators, like this Frenchman, will not only explain them by natural laws rather than supernatural, but also apply them usefully...