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college professors, who frequently meet about such a table to exchange 
ideas, or get new ones, or both. Then my thoughts went to England, to 
its old coffee houses and the influence on the English writers who met 
there. That in turn brought to the mind the relative merits of beer and 
wine and coffee as aids to thought stimulation, and this again brought 
up the thought of the influence of tobacco smoke, whether this at bottom 
had anything to do with the matter, and that again brought me back to 
America, to our newspnrper offices, where reporters often work in dingy 
offices densely filled with tobacco smoke and where many of the so-called 
‘pipe dreams’ are concocted.” 
HEALTH, ILL HEALTH, CuHronte ILL HEALTH, DISEASE. During the last 
ten years I have been occupied more especially with adults in chronic ill 
health, as distinguished from real disease, and very naturally I have fol- 
lowed the subject of thought stimulation among this class. There is one 
very practical aspect, one, however, that is largely neglected by the ay- 
erage practitioner of medicine; that is, long sleepless nights during which 
the mind of a patient may be thinking all sorts of thoughts, usually dis- 
agreeable; if there is sleep there may be much disagreeable dreaming. 
The physician who is able to give patients of this kind restful nighis is 
usually accomplishing something that his predecessors failed to do. 
Individuals in chronic ill health often have very active minds and 
react acutely to certain drugs, such as opium, alcohol, caffeine; similarly 
to the salicylates, which are largely used in counteracting infection and 
inflammation. Many react acutely to the influence of travel. Thus while 
travel at home may disagree, travel in a foreign country may be bene- 
ficial. One can, of course, readily understand how in the case of literary 
persons one country may be preferred to another. But even common peo- 
ple who do not lead much of a mental life may notice the influence of 
travel, as when a farmer living in isolation complains of active dreaming 
or of restlessness at night after a trip to town. Among my case reports 
are at least four in which there was active stimulation of the mind while 
traveling on railways—in one case the thoughts or ideas were used in 
literary work. It may also be said that individuals with lively minds, 
literary people generally, react acutely to their surroundings, or to influ- 
ences that scarcely produce an effect on the average man. 
During the past few years I have been trying in my practice to dis- 
tinguish between individuals who lead an active ‘“Seelenleben” and those 
