BODILY CONDITIONS MENTAL STATES. 51 



her case and the treatment which he had pursued. I had pronounced 

 the lameness mental before I knew of the circumstance which this 

 physician related to me. A surgeon celebrated as a joint-doctor was 

 consulted soon after the lameness was discovered, who pronounced it a 

 case of hip-joint disease. She was treated by confinement and exten- 

 sion, the weight and pulley being used for the latter purpose. The 

 limb, which had been drawn up very much, quickly came down to its 

 natural position, and, after three months of this treatment, finding eve- 

 rything right, no pain on motion, the limb straight out, etc., the case 

 was considered cured, and the doctor asked some of his friends, brother 

 physicians, to see her put on to her feet and attest the remarkable cure. 

 So, after they were assembled, the bandages were taken off and she 

 was put on the floor and told to walk across the room. " You can im- 

 agine my surprise and disgust," said he, in telling me the story, " to see 

 her go across the room with the leg drawn up precisely as it was before, 

 and without any change whatever in the amount of deformity or her 

 manner of walking." This child has been brought to me from time to 

 time during the past twelve years, but I have alwaj's refused to accept 

 the case as one of disease of the hip-joint. Just one year ago I ex- 

 amined her for the last time. She was then fourteen years old, and 

 anxious to get her leg down. It had been drawn up since she was 

 three years of age. The hip-joint was in perfect condition, and the 

 only reason why she couldn't walk as other persons do was the shorten- 

 ing of the flexor muscles due to the persistent, drawn-up position. The 

 growth had been retarded somewhat, because it had been used less 

 forcibly. But no injury had been done to the hip-joint. 



This child was so young when the affection first appeared that it 

 was never made out what were the particular sensations which influ- 

 enced the volition in the way they did. 



It is necessarily more easy to get demonstrations and illustrations 

 of the various influences of the mind over the sensations and the volun- 

 tary muscular actions than of the involuntary processes of life. But it 

 must not be supposed that sensation and motion are alone influenced 

 or dominated, as the case may be, by mental states, for it is possible 

 that involuntary processes are even more under the same influence. To 

 a certain and very positive extent they certainly are. To merely men- 

 tion the phenomena of blushing, pallor, palpitation, shivering, sea-sick- 

 ness, etc., suggests effects on the involuntary functions which are so 

 common as to be almost overlooked in enumerations of kindred exam- 

 ples. But that the influence of certain sentiments on certain involun- 

 tary functions is very potent and positive is well illustrated in the fol- 

 lowing case : 



A lady friend of mine had for some years been speaking to me, as I 

 met her socially from time to time, with regard to the condition of one 

 of her daughters. Otherwise a healthy young lady of about twenty-four 

 years of age, she had had, all her adult life, the one trouble of inveter- 



