520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in other (" symptomatic ") diseases, is often aggravated by the sup- 

 pression of its external manifestations. In other words, Ai't is here 

 competent to deal with the hostile " power behind phenomena," and 

 Instinct resigns its mission to Reason. 



It is still a mooted question if tuberculosis can be included among 

 the " germ-diseases " of this class ; but attention has been called to the 

 circumstance that a certain stage of pulmonary consumption stimulates 

 the sexual instinct to a degree which can hardly be supposed to benefit 

 the exhausted state of the organism. The study of that indubitable 

 fact offers a curious problem, but also a solution which considerably 

 modifies the apparent paradox. The truth seems to be, that the tend- 

 ency alluded to manifests itself only in a far advanced and practically 

 hopeless stage of the disease, when Nature sacrifices the interests of 

 the individual to those of the species. Moths, impaled in the collector's 

 show-case, often pay an interest on the debt of Nature by a deposit of 

 numerous eggs. Many plants ripen their fruit just before the end of 

 the season. At the brink of Styx doomed men are apt to renounce 

 individual cares and become eloquent for the benefit of posterity. It 

 is Nature's law of reversion. It is also true that far-gone consumptives 

 are very apt to indulge in exuberant hopes, belied by an event which 

 they can hardly have helped to postpone. 



But it is equally certain that, in a far larger number of diseases, 

 instinct is the safest guide to recovery. The overloaded stomach re- 

 jects food ; the exhausted system at last accepts no compensation but 

 sleep. "Wounded animals crouch motionless in their hiding-places ; 

 instinct infonns them that rest increases the chances of recovery. The 

 unrest of asthma-patients intimates the surest remedy — change of air 

 and outdoor exercise. Fever-patients pant for refrigeration. Dyspep- 

 sia can be avoided by heeding the premonitory symptoms — the want 

 of appetite that accompanies the first stage of chronic indigestion. In 

 the incipient stages of scurvy, and many enteric disorders, the organism 

 demands a change of diet as urgently as the perspiring skin clamors 

 for a change of temperature. But when has that instinct ever clamored 

 for drugs ? If suppuration fails to dislodge a thorn, the skin of the 

 inflamed parts becomes tenuous, and at last prurient, and not only 

 tolerates but invites excision. We see, then, that instinct can adapt 

 itself to abnormal circumstances, and the question recurs : In what 

 state of distress does our stomach cease to protest against the com- 

 pounds of the drug-monger ? Or, shall we believe that our protective 

 instincts, at the most critical moments, become false to their mission, 

 and urgently warn us against the means of salvation ? Yet, against 

 ninety-nine of a hundred remedial drugs they protest with a persist- 

 ence which can be overcome only by such juggles as lozenges and 

 sugar-coated pills. That protest is a cliff which will ultimately wreck 

 all the arguments of the castor-oil school. Ilomc-sickncss, if curable 

 only by a counter-poison, inspires its victims to seek relief in friendship 



