CONSCIOUSNESS AS A VITAL FUNCTION 291 



university will accept his monthly pay check, for he 

 verily believes that he has earned it. The discovery 

 by a mathematician of a new and "elegant" solution 

 of a recondite problem is followed by bodily changes 

 at once evident to a by-stander, who may character- 

 ize them as a "glow of satisfaction"; and it may later 

 be followed by a revolution in engineering practice of 

 great commercial value. A causal sequence which 

 omits the mental work of the computations from this 

 series of events is a scientific perversion. 



The belief so widely prevalent (unfortunately 

 even among physicians) that because an event is 

 mental it is negligible or even non-existent as a cause 

 is responsible for much tragic misunderstanding in 

 the practical treatment of mental disease. Imaginary 

 ills are by no means unreal, as is graphically shown by 

 one of Babinski's cases/ in which the patient with 

 hysterical (that is, purely imaginary) paralysis of one 

 leg leaned so heavily on the crutch as to cause a 

 crutch paralysis of an arm with organic injury to the 

 tissues. Here we have a mental process causing a 

 functional disorder which in turn is the cause of a 

 physical injury. The cure of the hysterical paralysis 

 may be effected by appropriate mental treatment, 

 but the organic paralysis remains and can be cured 

 (if at all) only by physical agencies. 



In developing the thesis that the pathology of in- 



^ Cited by E. E. Southard, Shell-shock and after, Boston Medical 

 and Surgical Journal, vol. 179, pp. 73-93, 191 8. 



