Oji the Scientific Study of Human Nature. 465 



the faculty of speech may be partially or wholly destroyed, 

 the memory of words confused, or entire parts of speech 

 lost. 



Mental perversions are also caused by certain changes 

 in the properties of the blood. A fluid of amazing com- 

 plexity, holding in exquisite balance the constituents from 

 which the whole being is elaborated, all delicacies of feel- 

 ing and niceties of thought depend upon its purity. '•'■ Pol- 

 ished steel is not quicker dimmed by the slightest breath 

 than is the brain affected by some abnormal conditions of 

 the blood." 



If the poisonous products of bodily waste are not con- 

 stantly swept from the system, the cerebral changes are 

 disturbed and the mind stupefied. Foods, drinks, and 

 drugs affect specifically the appetites, passions '^us^ and 

 thoughts. To become exhilarated and \o '^^^iybus, man 

 charges his blood with wine ; to exalt ^■^-- ^^^J/?e sensations, he 

 takes hashish; to secure a br=^^' ^'^^^filia'nt fancy and luxurious 

 imagination, he uses opiuT^^"'^^'-*.!!!!] to abolish consciousness of 

 pain, he breathes vaT---^^^ ^pour of chloroform. Swedenborg had 

 a peculiar class c"^^^ ^"ft visions "after coffee." "A person I 

 know," observes. P^^ticu-p^ Laycock, "after taking morphine, in 

 a fever, was h?"/^^.^^^.?unted by hideously grotesque and fiendlike 

 spectres; the *^^ ^^\y then shortly changed into groups of comical 

 human face/^ ^^^'^is. and finally altered to forms of the human fig- 

 ureof the^. .most classic beauty, and then disappeared." And 



this learnt, . *3d inquirer maintains that the pictorial productions 

 of the ir . isane vary in a definite order, the early stages of 

 excitenr"^^. ^"^.lent enabling the artist to execute beautiful concep- 

 tionF^^^ '^ of figures and landscapes; then, as the disease ad- 

 van' . ices he passes into comic delineations, and ends with 

 ^, sation f ' ^ ... 



the grotesque, or hideous. 



Those fluctuations of feeling with which all are more or 



1^ f^ jss familiar, the alternations of hope and despondency, 



are vitally connected with organic states. In high health, 



