H6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



be but few — on the second mode. The results 

 of civilization, the gains of human tradition, from 

 the savage of glacial epochs to Londoners and 

 Parisians of the nineteenth century, are con- 

 densed, in the shape of faculties, emotions, de- 

 sires, aspirations, instincts, activities, within a 

 storehouse of energy which we call the Human 

 Brain. This brain is either at one with itself, or 

 it is at discord with itself. Its reaction on the 

 body will vary accordingly. The complicated 

 social environment; the complicated brain. 

 These are the two aspects of the matter. The 

 first is the political side of health, the second the 

 moral side. 



There is a great deal of discussion about the 

 brain in our time, and some of it is curious. 

 There are people who open the skulls of animals 

 (not yet of men, which would be more rational 

 possibly) and thrust electric wires into the brain, 

 and then watch to see what happens. They 

 think much light will be thrown on human nature 

 in this way. I say nothing here of the right or 

 wrong of this, but one word as to its sense or 

 uonsense. To me such people seem like a man 

 who, instead of standing in front of one of Ra- 

 phael's pictures to look at it, should go behind 

 the frame, pick out a few fibres from the canvas, 

 and, by the help of great botanical knowledge 

 and a strong microscope, should decide what 

 species of hemp or flax it was made of. You re- 

 monstrate. " Oh," he says, " your way of stand- 

 ing there looking at the picture is mere superfi- 

 cial, empirical observation ; that is not the scien- 

 tific way of proceeding. Let us first decide the 

 species of the flax and the chemical composition 

 of the pigments, then, perhaps, a thousand years 

 hence we shall get to know something of the way 

 in which they were put together." So be it. 

 Let us go our way, and him his. Let us be con- 

 tent to follow far behind in the track of Aristotle 

 and Shakespeare, and study the brain as it shows 

 itself in thoughts, energies, and feelings. 



Our first question, then, is this : Do thoughts, 

 energies, and feelings, act upon bodily health at 

 all? 



In novels people always die of broken hearts ; 

 in real life it is said they never do. Very shallow 

 practical men rather pride themselves in exposing 

 the flimsy fallacy ; yet the common-sense of man- 

 kind in general, and the less common sense of 

 poets, philosophers, and experienced physicians, 

 is not so entirely against the novelists as might 

 be supposed. Where does the truth lie ? 



I suppose, the truth is pretty well illustrated 

 by what occurs in Indian famines. No one in an 



Indian famine, as we know, ever dies of starva- 

 tion. This would be contrary to official rule. 

 There are deaths, of course. Somehow or other 

 the death-rate rises a little, then it rises a good 

 deal, and at last enormously above the aver- 

 age ; but these are deaths not from famine, but 

 from liver-disease, dysentery, fevers of various 

 kinds, and so on. We are all of us so wonder- 

 fully willing to submit to the dominion of words 

 that this account of the matter is very apt to sat- 

 isfy us. Such a person dies of bronchitis. Bron- 

 chitis is a respectable medical entity, with a reg- 

 ular set of symptoms, with a proper set of drugs 

 appropriated to it, with a recognized place in the 

 records of the registrar-general; so that, when 

 we have set it down that a man dies of bronchi- 

 tis, what more can be wished for ? So in India 

 — "No deaths from famine have occurred this 

 week." What energy on the part of the ad- 

 ministration ! 



Yet, without disparaging this energy, which 

 every candid man knows to be very great, often 

 heroic and self-sacrificing, it may be permitted to 

 go one foot deeper below the surface, and to ask 

 what brought this bronchitis or this dysentery 

 on ? Was it that the tiny cells that form the 

 outer coating of the membrane that lines the air- 

 tubes had become more short-lived, more liable 

 to decay, reproducing themselves in unhealthy 

 multitudes more rapidly than usual, and thus 

 forming the substance that we know as purulent 

 matter ? And is this rapid growth of unhealthy 

 cells, that ought to have developed themselves 

 into healthy fibres and membranes, but could Dot, 

 a symptom or outcome of poor blood ill supplied 

 with fat or starch or gluten ? And, if this be so, 

 is it very important which was the particular por- 

 tion of the mucous surface, whether in lung or 

 intestine, which some slight outside irritant, or 

 some slight inherited weakness, caused to give 

 way first ? Death from insufficient food — surely 

 that is the right answer — whether it was in the 

 bronchial membrane or the intestinal membrane 

 that the mischief first revealed itself. Throw a 

 cricket-ball along the turf, and ultimately some 

 one particular little tuft of grass stops it ; but I 

 suppose the explanation of stoppage lies in a 

 very great number of similar grass-tufts, insuffi- 

 ciently resisted by the hand that threw. 



So it is with the moral antecedents of disease. I 

 There are cases where the sudden shock of un- I 

 foreseen calamity is transmitted with such in- 1 

 tense violence from the brain to the heart as to I 

 stop its action there and then, and the man falls 

 down dead. But such things are as rare as 



