i 7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the same ball in the order named. His arm-wound would register 

 its shock first upon the intellect, and it would be of a kind that a 

 soldier in his situation would speedily resolve to " grin and bear " ; 

 and the second, though mortal, would be overlooked, and suffered 

 to do its quiet and fatal work. His first wound increased the ex- 

 isting excitement at the chief nerve-center, and aided to suspend 

 the functions of the center mosff vitally involved in the wounding. 

 The case of the beheaded man is again anomalous. Spasmodic 

 action or discharge of the motor-forces stored in the nerve-centers 

 of the trunk may have produced the phenomena. 



Incidentally there arise from the consideration of the fore- 

 going these two questions : First, could the expenditure of stored- 

 up nerve force, either in sound or injured parts, or in both com- 

 bined, generate all these erratic manifestations, or do impulses 

 issue direct from the brain so long as life holds out ? Second, 

 is there a battle frenzy peculiar to certain natures, and in cer- 

 tain conditions to average men as well, that may lend them ab- 

 normal powers of nervous vigor and endurance ? But, what- 

 ever the efficient cause, at least one compensating thought follows 

 a study of these phenomena, and the poet and orator may extract 

 some comfort from it, cold and speculative though it may appear. 

 The soldier in war bears up under a severer hurt than the same 

 man could endure in every-day life, and collapses under a lesser 

 one than would ordinarily be required to disable him. He bears 

 up longer and collapses more quickly. Therefore, the provision 

 of Nature that renders him insensible of wounds in heated action 

 may be a twofold blessing, in that it spares him pain and terror 

 at the moment of his hurt, and while doing this service rapidly 

 exhausts in his system those reserve forces which might other- 

 wise tide him over the inevitable prostration succeeding wounds 

 and warlike ardor, and embitter him with a sense of his vulner- 

 ability and weakness. How many noble fellows, missing the 

 lethal stroke, have besought their comrades, their captors, and 

 their medical officers to put them out of misery, annalists of the 

 field would shudder to make known. So the hero's impulse, be it 

 patriotism, fanaticism, or frenzy, in spurring him on, saves his 

 high-strung soul from the rack of physical torture, and brings 

 death in a moment of rapturous exaltation, weaving about his 

 last deeds the halo of that glory which is the soldier's most 

 coveted reward. Not alone soldiers, but men of action every- 

 where, long for a death that shall be but a pause no, that could 

 be perceptible a lightning leap between a fiery fullness of being 

 on earth and the dazzling dawn of new life beyond the veil. 



