Transient Delusions Due to Syphilis

Richard was fifteen years old and had obtained his working papers but he could not keep a job. He had trouble with his employers, and bore grudges toward his fellow employees. He was insubordinate, refusing to carry out instructions because of his unreasonable fear of the dark where skeletons and ghosts flit. He could not serve his apprenticeship as a shoe clerk satisfactorily because the stock room was in the basement and it is common knowledge that spooks haunt the corners of dark basements. When sent there on errands he would think of ghosts of people?people he had never seen in real life?who were covered with cloth. If he heard something moving in the room it would "scare the wits out of him." If voices were heard from the adjoining room he knew they were the voices of ghosts. "They were always scrapping with me," he said, "and going to kill me. They had a knife something like a burglar's, and