Paranoiac

"A woman! Fancy, a woman!" Such was the first, involuntary exclamation of Signer Benito Mussolini, when an old, white-haired Irishwoman attempted to assassinate him (TIME, April 19, 1926), as he strode out from addressing the International Congress of Surgeons, in Rome.

The old woman edged through the crowd unnoticed, holding a small revolver between her cupped hands which she extended toward Il Duce, as though in adoring supplication. Taking careful, point-blank aim she pulled the trigger; but at that same instant a band struck up the Fascist hymn "Giovinezza," and Signor Mussolini threw back his head proudly to listen. The bullet sped, but not into his brain. He had thrown back his head far enough so that the leaden slug only clipped an atom of flesh from the tip of his nose. . . .

Powder burns stung Il Duce's lips and cheek, the pistol had been fired so close. Yet he interposed to prevent a mob from lynching his would-be assassin, the Honorable Violet Albina Gibson, sister of the irish peer, William Gibson, second Baron Ashbourne. Dictator Mussolini, just, secured for Miss Gibson a safe refuge in jail. She was pronounced insane by Italian alienists (TIME, Aug. 16); but Fascist feeling ran so high that it was necessary to give her continued jail protection. Last week, one year and one month after her irresponsible act, Miss Gibson was put aboard a train at Rome, attended by four nurses and his sister, the Honorable Constance Gibson. Thus guarded, she left Italy for an English destination kept rigidly secret lest misguided vengeance follow her. . . .

She is afflicted, said alienists, with chronic hallucinatory paranoia. This is a disease which develops very slowly, coming to maturity in middle life, and characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur. To the persecution type belong persons such as Miss Gibson who are driven by fear and hate to attack their imaginary persecutors. The grandeur type develops, in rare instances, into such "supermen" of genius, energy, and egotism as Napoleon (now generally considered a paranoiac). This opinion is not shocking if it be recalled that science no longer conceives of two classes of persons: the "sane" and the "insane." The "sane" are simply that large, vague mass of humanity which neither rises sufficiently above the normal to attain "genius" or sinks sufficiently below it to become the object of restraint. The action of so-called "mental diseases" may either benefit or harm humanity, may bring the "diseased" power and wealth or lead to the madhouse.