6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



steps by which these wonderful powers were gradually acquired ? is 

 one of the problems presented to the evolutionist. 



Mr. Darwin submits his work wonderfully advanced when com- 

 pared with the state in which he found it, but there remains much to 

 be done. 



INDUCED DISEASE FEOM THE INFLUENCE OF THE 



PASSIONS.' 



By B. W. KICHAEDSON, M. D., F. E. S. 



MANY of the forms of disease previously detailed may be induced 

 by other causes than worry or mental strain. They may be the 

 effects of the unrestrained influence of certain of the passions. I say 

 certain of the passions, because all do not seem to act with the same 

 intensity. Some of them act with a sharpness of intensity that is 

 peculiar, while others apparently excite no physical injury. 



The passions which act most severely on the physical life are anger, 

 fear, hatred, and grief. The other passions are comparatively innoc- 

 uous. What is called the passion of love is not injurious until it 

 lapses int(J grief and anxiety; on the contrary, it sustains the physical 

 power. What is called ambition is of itself harmless ; for ambition, 

 when it exists purely, is a nobility lifting its owner entirely, from 

 himself into the exalted service of mankind. It injures when it is 

 debased by its meaner ally, pride ; or when, stimuUiting a man to too 

 strenuous efforts after some great object, it leads him to the perform- 

 ance of excessive mental or physical labor and to the consequences 

 that follow such effort. 



The passion called avarice, according to my experience, tends 

 rather to the preservation of the body than to its deterioration. The 

 avaricious man, who seems to the luxurious world to be debarring 

 himself of all the pleasures of the world, and even to be exposing 

 himself to tlie fangs of poverty, is generally placing himself in the 

 precise conditions favorable to a long and healthy existence. By his 

 economy, he is saving himself from all the worry incident to penury ; 

 by his caution he is screening himself from all the risks incident to 

 speculation or the attempt to amass wealth by hazardous means ; by 

 his regularity of hours and perfect appropriation of the sunlight, in 

 pi'efereuce to artificial illumination, he rests and works in periods 

 that precisely accord with the periodicity of Nature ; by his abstemi- 

 ousness in living he takes just enough to live, which is precisely the 

 right thing to do according to the rigid natural law. Thus, in almost 



' From advance sheets of a new work in press of D. Appleton & Co., entitled "The 

 Diseases of Modern Life." 



