Suicide of a Madwoman Who Cut Her Tongue and Her Throat

Perhaps the strangest case investigated by the Egyptian public prosecution this month is the case of 'the madwoman's suicide.' The story, in brief, is that a beautiful young woman was afflicted, before her marriage, with a slight disturbance of her mental faculties; her family placed her in the asylum for the insane for treatment, and when she was cured, her cousin, who was madly in love with her, came forward to ask for her hand. The marriage took place, and the married life continued for three years, troubled only by nervous fits that came over the beautiful wife from time to time; but these fits went no further than screaming, or going out naked into the road, and when the fit was over, things returned to their normal state!

On the night of the incident, after supper, the couple went to sleep in a normal state. But at midnight the husband felt violent pains in his eyes and woke in terror, to find that his wife had set about thrusting the fingers of one of her hands into his eyes, by the light of a lamp she had placed at his side... and in her other hand was a drawn knife. He sprang from his bed screaming and went out to call the neighbors for help; then he came back to cast a glance at the room, still screaming, and found that his wife had put out her tongue to its full length and had begun cutting it with the knife to its very end; then she flung the severed tongue into a corner of the room!

The neighbors had crowded at the door of the room, but no one dared go near her, for she was in a state of violent frenzy. The people's screams rose when they saw her sit down in the middle of the room, then take her head in her hand and saw at her neck with the knife, with insistence and obstinacy; and when the knife reached the middle of her neck she lost consciousness, and then died! Doubt entered the mind of the deputy public prosecutor as to whether a human being could possibly inflict all these injuries upon herself before losing consciousness.

The forensic physician, however, ruled that this is possible 'if the person is insane, disordered in mind and nerves; for what causes loss of consciousness is the sensation of pain, which is the center of stimulus in the nervous system. If that system is disordered, consciousness may remain until the spirit passes away.'