I also have heard of another man who, after a long fever, got the idea that if he made water the country would suffer from a flood.  No one could make him think otherwise; he said he was willing to die for the common good.  This is how he was cured:  a message was sent to him, supposedly from the commandant, saying that the town was threatened with a siege and there was no water in the moat, and asking him to fill it to keep the enemy out.  The patient was delighted to be able to save both his fatherland and himself; so he got rid of his water and of his sickness both at once.

Second doctor.  I recall another case that occurred in Germany.  A nobleman came to an inn, and when he had dined and wanted to go to bed, he hung the gold chain which he wore round his neck on a nail in the wall of the bedroom.  The innkeeper took careful note of this as he followed him to bed and wished him good-night.  When he thought that the nobleman was asleep, he stole into the room, cut sixty links out of the chain, and hung it up again.  The guest got up in the morning, had his horse saddled, and put on his clothes.  But when he came to put on the chain, he noticed that it had lost half its length, and began to call out that he had been robbed.  The host, who was watching outside the door, ran in, putting on an expression of the greatest consternation, and exclaimed, “Oh, what a terrible transformation!” When the guest asked him what he meant by that, he said, “Alas, my lord! your head is as big again as it was yesterday.”  Then the host brought him a distorting mirror, which made everything appear twice as big as it really was.  When the nobleman saw how big his head looked in the mirror, he burst into tears and said, “Oh, now I see why my chain will not go on!” Whereupon he mounted his horse, wrapping his head in his cloak, that none might see it on the road.  They say that he kept the house for several days, unable to get over the idea that it was not the chain that had grown too short, but his head that had grown too big.

First doctor.  There are countless examples of such illusions.  I also remember hearing of a man who imagined his nose was ten feet long, and warned every one he met not to come too near.

Second father.  Domine Frater has undoubtedly heard the story of the man who thought he was dead?  A young person got it into his head that he was dead, and consequently laid himself out on a bier, and would neither eat nor drink.  His friends endeavored to show him the absurdity of his conduct and tried every means of making him eat, but in vain, for he merely dismissed them with scorn, asserting that it was contrary to all rule for the dead to eat and drink.  At last an experienced physician undertook to cure him by this unusual method:  He got a servant to pretend that he too was dead, and had him laid out in the same place with the patient.  For a long time the two lay and looked at each other.