104 CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 



young, the power of repair from injury from shaken, 

 or stunned, or bruised, or compressed brain is quite 

 remarkable. Injuries may be either sudden or slow 

 in their infliction ; they may occur from the operation 

 of material or non-material causes ; they may affect 

 the brain directly, or indirectly through the body. 



The more slowly operating injuries are probably the 

 graver though the less striking : among these are pro- 

 longed insufficiency of food, or air, or light, or warmth. 

 Serious injury to nerve and character follows pro- 

 longed exposure to excessive heat ; or, which is much 

 more common in our climate, to excessive cold. In 

 early life the skull is thin, it does not wholly 

 cover the sensitive brain, and very inadequately pro- 

 tects it from thermometric extremes. For one death 

 or enfeebled character from excess of heat there are 

 a hundred deaths and a hundred enfeebled brains from 

 the prolonged action of cold. Toxicologists tell us 

 that cold is the only poison which acts on every organ 

 and every structure, on brain and muscle and 

 bone and skin and blood. It poisons adults too, 

 who resist it however better than children. Every 

 winter sees uncounted deaths from the open windows 

 of rooms and railway carriages and other vehicles, and 

 not a single death from shut windows. It is well that 

 air should be pure ; it is imperative that it should be 

 warm. It would be wiser if the women who send 

 their children into the outer air with bare legs, were 

 themselves to go into the streets with naked limbs and 

 cover up their children's. Diseases, which are strictly 

 speaking injuries having subtler causes, and which affect 

 the brain (and ultimately character) directly or indirectly, 

 suddenly or slowly, are fortunately less common and 

 as a rule more easily recognised. Rickets have been 



