606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the land has been shaped into its present form, let us realize that these 

 geographical revolutions are not events wholly of the dim past, but 

 that they are still in progress. So slow and measured has been their 

 march, that even from the earliest times of human history they seem 

 hardly to have advanced at all. But none the less are they surelv and 

 steadily transpiring around us. In the fall of rain and the flow of 

 rivers, in the bubble of springs and the silence of frost, in the quiet 

 creep of glaciers and the tumultuous rush of ocean-waves, in the tre- 

 mor of the earthquake and the outburst of the volcano, we may recog- 

 nize the same play of terrestrial forces by which the framework of the 

 continents has been step by step evolved. In this light the familiar 

 phenomena of our daily experience acquire an historical interest and 

 dignity. Through them we are enabled to bring the remote past 

 vividly before us, and to look forward hopefully to that great future 

 in which, in the physical not less than in the moral world, man is to be 

 a fellow worker with God. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical 

 Society. 



SEEPENT-CHAEM. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



THE pathology of spiritualism presents some curious parallels with 

 that of a well-known class of physical disorders the artificial 

 derangements of the alimentary process by the opium-habit, and the 

 abuse of alcoholic or pungent stimulants, which a French physiologist 

 comprises under the name of toxicolatrous affections the poison- 

 manias, we might call them and which, with all their characteristic 

 causes, symptoms, progressive stages, direct and collateral effects, find 

 their analogues in the half -voluntary delusion of ancient and modern 

 miracle-mongers. 



Spiritualistic as well as spirituous propensities can be transmitted 

 by hereditary influences ; both are liable to be aggravated by pro- 

 longed indulgence, to develop the symptoms of chronic diseases, and 

 to end in hopeless delirium. The principal arguments against the 

 use of poisonous stimulants are based upon their adventitious conse- 

 quences. Dull headaches and red noses are mere trifles compared 

 with the negative effects of habitual intoxication loss of memory, 

 energy, and self-respect, and of the relish for healthier food and all 

 healthier and higher enjoyments. The worst of alcoholic blue-devils 

 are the ghosts of departed hopes, for an unnatural passion implies many 

 things, among which the hankering after a special kind of unwholesome 

 stimulant is only a minor item. 



For the same reason, it would be a mistake to suppose that the 



