94 PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



occupied, but seldom continuously ever seeking fresh 

 fields to work in, without in any of them pursuing his 

 work to the end. Highly intelligent, often precociously 

 so in youth, the mind is not well-balanced, so that the 

 individual is excitable in temperament, and both unduly 

 depressed by failure or unduly exalted by success. 



Another term, also handed down to us from antiquity, 

 and far too widely employed, is " habit," or its correlative, 

 " constitution." For example, we talk of people being of 

 a " gouty constitution," or a " rheumatic habit," or as 

 being of a " strumous type," or u consumptive tendency," 

 judging in these and many other instances from appear- 

 ances, but meaning no more by the phrases than that the 

 individuals in question are disposed to such and such 

 particular class of disorders. In a broad and general 

 sense no doubt as in the above-quoted instances true 

 conclusions may be arrived at simply from such observa- 

 tion, for the affections they denote are generally de- 

 pendent upon some inherited constitutional defects, and 

 are stamped upon the individual. But too rigid re- 

 liance upon certain prominent characters as indicative 

 of such tendencies is liable to lead to much erroneous 

 inference, and it is noteworthy that even the same 

 " habit " may be presented under wholly different cha- 

 racters. For example, the " gouty " man is quite as 

 often pale, thin, and flabby-textured, as plethoric and 



