56 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



velopment of mental pain has become so marked and the results so 

 deeply registered, that it is with great difficulty and only after much 

 time that it can in turn be recovered from, if ever at all. Could we 

 ever have accurate data or skilled experience enough to enable us truly 

 and properly to differentiate the readily impressionable and weakly re- 

 sisting, from the less impressionable and fully resisting, constitution, 

 the problem of what to expect and consequently what to do by way of 

 prevention in these cases would be much simplified. But here as else- 

 where our knowledge respecting inherited traits and tendencies is so 

 vague that practically it is not to be relied upon, at any rate very abso- 

 lutely or very generally. Hence, it follows, beyond question, that the 

 universally better way is to secure complete recovery from every sort of 

 physical trouble, no matter of what nature or how severe or otherwise, 

 as quickly as possible, and likewise during all the time required for this 

 to sedulously guard against the invasion of mental invalidism with as 

 much determination and skill as against renewal of the injury, or 

 against contagious diseases or other purely physical complication ; and 

 if, perchance, mental pain does appear, then promptly to apply such 

 corrective measures as will prevent, so far as possible, its further de- 

 velopment into a permanent after condition. Nipped thus at its in- 

 ception mental disease as a concomitant and resultant of physical 

 trauma or infection can often most surely be; and the outcome to the 

 sufferer is of the nature of a benefit that is simply incalculable. 



Important, however, as this theoretically must appear to every one, 

 how frequently, notwithstanding, is exactly the opposite seen. During 

 the process of recovery from physical injury, not only is there incredibly 

 often little or no thought given to the possibility of an original simul- 

 taneous psychical " insult," or to subsequent consequences which may be 

 owing to necessarily prolonged distress and confinement and weakening ; 

 on the contrary, how often likewise does it seem as if everything un- 

 toward was most unwittingly allowed, or made, day by day, to conspire 

 to deepen the impressions of the original experience and whatever 

 immediately follows, as well as to make doubly sure that what was at 

 first but truly accidental and comparatively harmless, shall almost 

 designedly be made to develop into something which in the end must 

 prove to be as permanent and blasting as it was unexpected. Into this 

 conspiracy, not only do the immediate friends and acquaintances of the 

 sufferer often most thoughtlessly enter, but, and it is strange so fre- 

 quently to note, do those higher in authority and responsibility likewise 

 as unwittingly enter and remain, with a resulting summation of con- 

 sequences to the sufferer, which in the given case simply defies antici- 

 pation or even estimation. Nor in this connection should the rather 

 too frequent untoward outcome of ordinary operative procedures and 

 post-operative care be thoughtlessly passed by. Sometimes, even on the 



