As an illustration of the conduct aberrations of the thymo-centric personality during adult life, the following extracts from a newspaper report of a suicide are worth quoting.

“An autopsy made yesterday by Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, first assistant to Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, removed any mystery that surrounded the death on Saturday night by pistol bullets of Dr. Jose A. Arenas and the wounding of ‘Miss Ruth Jackson’ and Ignatio Marti.

“Dr. Schwartz said that his post-mortem examination had convinced him beyond doubt that the dead physician-dentist had killed himself after he had tried to take the life of the young woman with whom he had lived and of the youth who was his successful rival.

“‘Besides that,’ Dr. Schwartz said, ’my report to the police will include a statement from the young woman to me that she always had understood that Dr. Arenas had killed some one in Havana, Cuba, before he came to New York.

“The autopsy left no doubt that Dr. Arenas was a case of status lymphaticus (thymus-centered personality).  I made a most complete report because of the scientific value of the autopsy.

“’This confirmed my first deductions after seeing the body on Saturday night in the doctor’s furnished room with alcove bedroom adjoining.  You will remember that as soon as I had seen him I revealed that he was wearing corsets.

“’These cases of status lymphaticus are intensely interesting.  In them the blood vessels are very small, and the lymphatic clement is greatly in excess.  They die suddenly, from ruptures of blood vessels.  Many of them are degenerate.  Most of them are criminals.  All of them are liable to commit crimes of passion.  Among them are found a large percentage of drug addicts.

“’Miss Jackson, in the hospital, confirmed my scientific theory that the dead man was not normal.  She was perfectly frank in her statement.  She said she had left her husband, Elmer Schultz, an automobile salesman in Toledo, several months ago and had come to New York.  She said she had lived with the doctor for some time.

“’About ten days ago she left him to live with Marti, a healthy, normal lad.  Before she went from the doctor’s room she destroyed those colored collars that were found beside the body.  She cut them with scissors.  But that was after, so she states, the doctor had destroyed stockings of hers by cutting them.

“’She told me in the hospital today, and with every appearance of truth, that she had met Arenas in the subway at the station on Seventy-second Street and Broadway on Friday night and that she had asked him when she could come and get her clothes.  He said, according to her story: 

“‘Come to the house tomorrow afternoon—­but come with Marti.’

“’She said that she and Marti went there according to this invitation:  that first the doctor showed her the cut collars and told her that she would get her clothes back in perfect condition, and that the next thing she knew she had been shot.  She couldn’t remember much after that.