People who uncontrollably utter obscenities may be more sick than sickening. Doctors have long known (TIME, Aug. 29, 1949) that such compulsive cursing, often accompanied by a violent muscular tic, may precede insanity.
Writing in the current British Medical Journal, London's Dr. Richard P. Michael gives the case history of a 28-year-old man who was a spectacular example of the Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (named for the French doctor who outlined the symptoms in 1885). The patient developed a tic at the age of seven, was an accomplished curser at 13, when even the reading of Tom Sawyer would set him...