7 o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



very sort of life has been led and the very habits indulged in which are 

 most likely to produce a weakness and fragility in the coats of the 

 vessels of the brain. What is to be done? Clearly to diminish and 

 keep the tension on these vessels by the blood at a low rate all the time. 

 As remarked at the commencement of this article, this is fully in our 

 power by cutting off the supplies. A prudent fire-engineer, when his 

 water-hose are old and weak, would not try to force as much water as 

 he could into them. No ; to prevent a rupture he would work them 

 at a low pressure. But men seldom think of carrying out the same 

 simple mechanical principle when there is reason to believe that the 

 vessels of the brain are getting weak and brittle. They eat and drink 

 just as much as they feel inclined to, and sometimes a little more. 

 With a good digestion, nearly all they consume is converted into 

 blood, to the yet further distention of vessels already over-distended. 

 This high-pressure style of living produces high-pressure results. Its 

 effects were painfully illustrated by the death of Charles Dickens. 

 The brain-work he performed was immense; he lived generously, 

 taking his wine as he did his meat, with a liberal hand. He disre- 

 garded the signs of structural decay, forcing his reluctant brain to do 

 what it had once done with spontaneous ease, until all at once, under 

 a greater tension than ordinary, a weak vessel gave way, flooding 

 the brain with blood. 



Medical writers on this disease all refer to the fact that a stroke 

 of apoplexy quite frequently occurs just after eating a full meal. The 

 experience of physicians also is that violent attacks of vertigo often 

 attend a deranged or inactive condition of the liver. To explain in 

 detail the causes of an unusual pressure of blood on the brain from 

 certain states of the digestive organs would be somewhat tedious. 

 Suffice it to say that it is produced by what may be termed a back- 

 water action of an obstruction to the circulation of the blood, whereby 

 distention occurs in one of the most distensible of the internal organs 

 of the body, the brain. We have already stated that the distribution 

 of blood to the brain is the most irregular in the body ; that its blood- 

 vessels are subject to be weakened by improper habits, and that the 

 pulpy cerebral substance gives very little if any support to a weak 

 vessel in it, so that all the conditions favorable to a rupture by a little 

 more distention than ordinary very frequently coexist. 



A not uncommon condition of the arteries of the brain, especially 

 at its base, in those far advanced in years, is the displacement in 

 places of the middle coat by lime-particles, which, of course, renders 

 them easily torn. So far as known this condition is incurable, as well 

 as unpreventable. It is one of the changes of structure incident to 

 very old age. The only measure that can be relied upon to prevent 

 a rupture under such conditions is to be cautious about distending 

 them with blood. This is, in fact, the great fundamental principle of 

 prevention when the vessels of the brain are weak from any cause. 



