62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



permitted, by "want of due coutrol, to pass into a disposition of almost 

 persistent or chronic anger, so that every trifle in his way was a cause 

 of unwarrantable irritation. Sometimes his anger was so vehement 

 that all about him were alarmed for him even more than for them- 

 selves, and when the attack was over there were hours of sorrow and 

 regret, in private, which were as exhausting as the previous rage. In 

 the midst of one of these outbreaks of short, severe madness, he sud- 

 denly felt, to use his own expi'ession, as if his " heart were lost." He 

 reeled under the impression, was nauseated and faint : then, recover- 

 ing, he put his hand to his wrist, and discovered an intermittent action 

 of his heart as the cause of his faintness. He never comjjletely 

 rallied from that shock, and to the day of his death, ten years later, 

 he was never free from the intermittency. As a rule he was not con- 

 scious of the intermittency unless he took an observation on his own 

 pulse, as though he were apart from himself: but occasionally after 

 severe fatigue he would be subjectively conscious of it, and was much 

 distressed and depressed. " I am broken-hearted," he would say, 

 " physically broken-hearted." And so he was : but the knowledge of 

 the broken heart tempered, marvelously, his passion, and saved him 

 many years of a really useful life. He died ultimately from an acute 

 febrile disorder. 



The eifect of anger upon the brain is to produce first a paralysis, 

 and afterward, during reaction, a congestion of the vessels of that 

 organ ; for, if life continues, reactive congestion follows paralysis as 

 certainly as day follows night. Thus, in men who give way to violent 

 rage there comes on, during the acute period, what to them is merely 

 a faintness, which, after a time of apparent recovery, is followed by 

 a slight confusion, a giddiness, a weight in the head, a sense of op- 

 pression, and a return to equilibrium. They are happy who, continu- 

 ing their course, sufier no more severely. Many die in one or other 

 of the two stages I have named. They die in the moment of white 

 rage, when the cerebral vessels and heart are paralyzed. Then we 

 say they die of faintness, after excitement. Or, they die more slowly 

 when the rage has passed and the congestion of reaction has led to 

 engorgement of the vessels of the brain. Then the engorgement has 

 caused stoppage of the circulation there; or a vessel has given way; 

 or serous fluid has exuded, producing pressure, and we report that 

 the death was from apoplexy, following upon some temporary excite- 

 ment. 



Hati'ed, when it is greatly intensified, acts much like anger in the 

 efiects it produces. The phenomena difler in that they are less sud- 

 denly developed and more closely concealed; they very rarely, in 

 fact, come under the cognizance of the physician unmixed with other 

 phenomena. They are made up of the symptoms of suppressed anger 

 with morose determination, and they keep the sufferer from rest. He 

 is led to neglect the necessities of his own existence ; he is rendered 



