66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



on his odd tricks, never, I believe, escapes the effects of organic 

 nervous shock. Some of the worst forms of such shock I have seen 

 have sprung from this cause. 



Political excitements call forth readily the reel of the passions 

 with dangerous energy. A few specially constructed men, who have 

 no passions, pass through active political excitement and, maybe, 

 take part in it without suffering injury ; but the majority are injured. 

 As they pour forth their eloquent or rude sj^eeches, as they extol or 

 condemn, as they cheer or hiss, as they threaten or cajole, they are 

 taking out of themselves force they will never regain. 



It has been observed since the time of Pinel, that when to political 

 excitement there is added the excitement of war, especially of civil 

 war, the effects on the physical life of the people is at once marked by 

 the disturbance of nervous balance. This fact was forcibly illustrated 

 during and after the last great civil war in America, and it formed the 

 subject of several most able reports by the physicians of that country. 

 One report, by Dr. Stokes, of the Mount Hope Institution of Baltimore, 

 was, I remember, a masterly history which, when the time comes that 

 war shall be no more, will be read with as much wonder as we now 

 read of the witch or dancing mania of the middle ages. One victim 

 of the war mania is cursed with fear until he fails to sleep; another 

 believes all his estates are confiscated ; a third imagines himself taking 

 part in some bloody fray ; a fourth, the subject of aural delusions, no 

 sooner sleeps than he wakes up, roused by what he considers to be 

 awful sounds afar off, but approaching nearer. These are the more 

 visible evidences of the injuries of war beyond those inflicted on the 

 fighting-men. They represent much, but they represent little if they 

 be compared with the minor but still formidable physical injuries to 

 the heart and brain which stop short of real insanity, but which reduce 

 life, and which pass in line from the generation that receives them 

 primarily to the generations that have to come. 



The reel of the passions as a cause of diseases of modern life rests 

 not with the excitements of gaming, of political strife, of war. It is 

 stirred up by some fanatical manifestations for the regeneration of the 

 world, which are well meant, but which, missing the mark, plant de- 

 generation instead. 



In a sentence, whenever, from undue excitement of any kind, the 

 passions are permitted to overrule the reason, the result is disease: 

 the heart empties itself into the brain ; the brain is stricken, the heart 

 is prostrate, and both are lost. 



