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menon than an affection of the apparently sentient organ, 

 is probable, from the fact, that forced attention, pre- 

 occupation, or distraction, of the mind, interfere, to a 

 great degree, with the perception of painful impressions 

 made on the body. The extent of this power of the mind 

 over matter may vary much in different individuals, but 

 we all possess some considerable share of it. When the 

 attention is either voluntarily conceded, or involuntarily 

 drawn off in another direction, we obtain, in requital of 

 the effort, or as the result of the distraction, a greatly 

 diminished consciousness of pain. On the other hand, 

 who does not know that the unceasing attention, 

 the unwearied vigilance which the hypochondriac de- 

 votes to his least symptom, aggravates his malaise 

 into pain. It must be partly from alienated atten- 

 tion, (not entirely, for we know that the smart or the 

 throb require an interval before they supervene on 

 the injury ; and we partly apprehend the reason of this, 

 and call it reaction,) that school-boys and pugilists do not 

 feel their bruises till after the fight. Soldiers occasionally 

 discover gun-shot wounds, of a slighter kind, after the 

 battle is over, and I know a gentleman who held the 

 candle while an operation was performing on him for 

 hernia. The .story related in the " Diary of a late 

 Physician," of a lady who bore the amputation of 

 her breast without flinching, by causing her maid to 

 hold before her the letter she had just received 

 from her husband, about to return from India, 

 on which she rivetted her eyes, while the knife of the 

 surgeon divided her flesh, charms us from its air of 

 truth. Mutius Scasvola is related to have thrust his hand 

 into the fire, velut alienato ab sensu ammo, attentive 

 rather to his glory than his bodily suffering. Could the 

 Cramners and the ]Latimers, the saints and martyrs of old, 

 ever have been such, but from the autocracy of the high 

 motives by which their attention was enchained ? and, to 



