The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
to the other were repulsive. Their friendship was not based
so much on desire as on need, they being what they were.
Loeb did not crave the companionship of Leopold, nor did
he respect him thoroughly. But he did feel the need of
someone else in his life. Leopold did not like the faults, the
criminahsm of Loeb, but he did need someone in his life
to carry out this king-slave compulsion.
Their emotions, such as they had, were so diverse that
they did not feel attracted to each other for their personality
worth, nor did their emotions permit them to rebel against
each other. They took each other somewhat as a matter of
course.
Q. Now, will you tell us what was the physical and
neurological examination that you made of Leopold?
A. There is to be found in Nathan Leopold, Jr., considerable
pathology. The hair development is pronounced. The
blood pressure was low. His eyes are somewhat prominent.
One eyelid is lower than the other. His face is not the same
on the two sides, there being asymmetry. His heart sounds
were clear; no disease of the lungs; some curvature of the
spine. He is rather round shouldered. The abdomen pro-
trudes. He is flat-footed. The thyroid gland may be felt.
He has dermographia, or a disorder of the nervous control
of the blood vessels. From all of which it was concluded,
bearing the history in mind, that he has neuro-circulatory-
asthenia. or vasomotor instability.
Q. Give us in full the endocrine findings as to Leopold.
A. From my examination and study of this and similar
cases I believe that the thymus gland involuted unusually
early, for the following reasons: his sexual maturity came
on early, he had a very low resistance to infections, and there
is a tendency to acidosis, confirmed by low carbon dioxide,
by his early permanent teeth, by his early secondary hair,
his short body, stocky frame. The pineal gland has involuted
early, because of the X-ray showing that it has already calcified
at the age of 19; by the muscular fatigue, his mental
precocity, the disorder in his blood, the sugar disturbance;
the thyroid gland has been definitely diseased ; that it has
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