POISONS OF THE INTELLIGENCE. 741 



will be necessary, for in such cases syncope is very frequent. Besides, 

 such a patient resists the action of the drug for a long time, and it 

 must be administered in far greater quantity than in the other case. 

 The chloroform always retains its power, but the cerebral excitation 

 to which some patients are subject enables them to resist its toxic 

 action, as though the will could, so to speak, brace itself up to resist 

 the action of the poison on the nerve-centres. The same occurs in 

 the use of alcohol. One who will not be intoxicated may drink a 

 large quantity without being drunk. At length, however, his will is 

 conquered, and he falls to the ground, but he will not have experienced 

 the exhilaration, the mad excitation, of the man who gives himself up 

 to the influence of the liquor. 



Thus, then, under the action of chloroform we find an antago- 

 nism existing between the various intellectual faculties on the one 

 hand the voluntary, and on the other the unconscious faculties. The 

 latter are slowest to disappear ; ideation, its guide and check, being 

 deranged or destroyed, follows its habitual laws : association of ideas 

 persists. External sensations are still borne in upon the mind, each 

 one awaking a long series of ideas. As the sense of hearing is the 

 last to disappear, the patient, though he can no longer either see 

 or feel, hears every word that is spoken, and is set a-thinking at 

 once. The same thing occurs in ordinary sleep, rarely in adults, 

 but very frequently in young children. In fact, a certain degree of 

 natural somnambulism is nearly always to be found in children. The 

 child speaks out aloud without waking, he laughs and talks ; more 

 frequently he is frightened and cries. The course of his thoughts may 

 be altered, diverted into another channel, by speaking to him gently, 

 and this without arousing him from sleep. On awaking, all recollec- 

 tion of this has vanished. This method has been tried in mental alien- 

 ation, to divert the thoughts of melancholies and hypochondriacs. 



But soon these external phenomena which indicate the preserva- 

 tion of the intelligence, if not its integrity, disappear in their turn. 

 The period of excitation is succeeded by the period of relaxation, 

 and then the patient is in a deep sleep. However violent the ex- 

 ternal excitations, however painful the surgical operation, nothing 

 can arouse the patient out of the comatose state into which he has 

 fallen. His respiration is regular, his pulse slow and full, his pupils 

 are motionless, and his features, paralyzed as it were, no longer wear 

 that convulsive grimace which may be regarded as the last trace of 

 sensibility. Intelligence is now destroyed. The coma of chloroform 

 and that of alcohol appear to be essentially one. And, yet, what a 

 difference ! The former saves man from pain, the latter drags man 

 down to the lowest depths of degradation ; yet in both all signs of 

 intellectual life have disappeared there is a temporary death of the 

 mind. It may be that, in the inmost nerve-tissues, brain-work still 

 goes on, unconscious and silent, but whether this is so we know not. 



