MENTAL ASPECTS OF ORDINARY DISEASE. 573 



the intellect becomes servile. It is usually shown by elderly people, 

 who are utterly dependent on the bounty, and therefore on the will, of 

 others. That such a condition of helpless submission should obtain 

 under these circumstances, and especially in women, is readily to be 

 conceived. The utter helplessness and entire abolition of self-confi- 

 dence so induced have a most pernicious effect upon the mental pro- 

 cesses ; the intellect becomes restricted, and solely directed toward ob- 

 serving and accommodating themselves to the varying moods and 

 passing caprices of those upon whom they depend. Chameleon-like, 

 they change color with every new shade of opinion with which they 

 come in contact, until at last they lose their individuality altogether. 

 The mental condition of these unhappy beings is pitiable in the ex- 

 treme ; there is a paralysis of all volition. " Everywhere and ever, to 

 be weak is to be miserable," and cunning is the only refuge of the 

 feeble. This mental attitude is a matter of moment, and needs recog- 

 nition when such persons become objects of medical care, and must be 

 included in the formation of a prognosis ; the mental instability and 

 tendency to oscillate being very troublesome, and interfering with the 

 working of every systematic plan. Under totally different circum- 

 stances, a similar brain-starvation is manifested by those persons who 

 voluntarily cultivate a mental predisposition to religio-melancholia. 

 Their aspirations, originally directed by their surroundings, are ulti- 

 mately guided by an artificial substitute for the will which they in 

 time develop. It is the psychical side of a question of which the 

 physical side has been discussed before. The intellectual imbecility 

 eventually reached under these circumstances is something pitiable. 

 The intellect is prostrated before an irritable conscience, rendered 

 morbidly sensitive by persistent self-introspection fostered by vigils, 

 developed by fasting, and misdirected by a cramped and imperfect 

 education. The influence exercised by this condition of intellectual 

 enfeeblement also becomes practically important when any line of 

 treatment has to be pursued, and especially so in that complex com- 

 bination of dyspepsia and constipation to which such persons are so 

 subject. With such persons, the plainest and simplest truths of the 

 natural man seem to take on the aspect of most abstruse and difficult 

 problems ; the fullest explanations and clearest directions are insuffi- 

 cient to enable their enfeebled intellects to grasp the subject. Super- 

 stitious credulity displaces reasonable belief, and enervates the mind 

 until it can evolve no healthful thought; the morbid activity of 

 pseudo-religious sentiments induces such a palsy of the moral nature, 

 that it becomes incapable of rising in revolt or of seeking to escape 

 its intellectual thraldom. 



In those who are exhausted and worn out by toil, either mental or 

 physical, or both combined, but usually by strenuous bodily labor, 

 united with petty mental anxieties and fretting, wearing thought, 

 a condition of brain-degeneration is produced, which exercises much 



