178 



♦ KNONATLEDGE ♦ 



[July 1, 1886. 



papers are now before us, and they exhibit a wonderful 

 amount of ingenuity in their manufacture. Hero is one 

 faced with a surface of china clay. Upon this surface is 

 described a series of close parallel black lines, such as a 

 wood-engi-aver would employ on a block to indicate a blue 

 sky. These lines are in relief, so that, as an artist executes 

 his drawing upon the paper in soft lithographic chalk, the 

 lines catch hold of the black composition and retain it, 

 forming eventually a network of microscopic dots, which 

 will readily lend themselves to the requirements of the 

 zincographic process just detailed. But the paper can do 

 more than this. With a scraper or knife the artist can 

 work upon the surface, so as to cut away the lines, leaving 

 pure white underneath. The white scraped portions then 

 indicate the high lights of his drawing, the chalk-raarks 

 lepresent the deepest shadows, while the untouched lined 

 surface of the paper atibrds the half-tones. Other eflects 

 can be produced by using grained pa2:)ers of different kinds, 

 and ordinary chalk drawings on paper can be well imitated 

 for production in the printing-press by these methods. 



The pi-oduction of "process blocks," as they are called, 

 to distinguish them from wood engravings, is now becoming 

 a very important branch of commercial enterprise. Broadly 

 speaking, we are bound to admit that very few of these 

 blocks equal in beauty a fine wood engraving. But the 

 attention of inventors has been aroused to the importance 

 of the work, and new processes are constantly being brought 

 forward. In the hands of Angeier of Vienna, Goupil of 

 Paris, Meisenbach in this country, and many others, some 

 very beautiful results have been alread}' achieved. It is 

 evident that perfection is not far of}'. In this brief notice of 

 a new but important phase of photography, wo have been 

 necessarily confined to bare outlines. It may be said, how- 

 ever, that .all these processes depend in the first instance 

 upon the fact that certain chemical salts render gelatine 

 insoluble after exposure to sight. This imi>ortant discovery 

 was made by Mungo-Ponton so long ago as the year 1839. 



MIND ACTING ON BODY. 



By Eichard A. PROfTOR. 



HAT might be hoped from minds of excep- 

 tional power we maj' learn from several 

 instances which have been recorded in the 

 history of medicine. Among the most re- 

 markable is the case of Andrew Crosse, the 

 electrician — a case so remai-kable, indeed, 

 that, were it open to doubt, one might be 

 disposed to reject it as incredible, or at any rate as ex- 

 plicable in any other way than as an instance of the power 

 of the mind over the body. 



Crosse had been liitten severely by a cat, which on the 

 same day died fiom hydrophobia. He seems resolutely to 

 have dismissed from his mind the fears which must naturally 

 have been suggested by these circumstances, Had he 

 yielded to them, as most men would, he might not improb- 

 ably have succumbed within a few days or weeks to an 

 attack of mind-created hydrophobia — so to describe the 

 fatal ailment which ere now has been known to kill persons 

 who had been bitten by animals perfectly free from i-abies. 

 Three months passed, during which Ci'osse enjoyed his usual 

 health. At the end of that time, however, he felt one morn- 

 ing a severe pain in his arm, accompanied by severe thirst. 

 He called for water, but " at the instant," he says, " that I 

 was about to raise the tumblei' to my lips, a strong spasm 

 shot across my throat ; immediately the terrible conviction 

 came to my mind that I was about to fall a victim to hydro- 



phobia, the consequence of the bite that I had received from 

 the cat. The agony of mind I endured for one liour is inde- 

 sciibable ; the contemplation of such a horrible death — 

 death from hydrophobia — was almost insupportable ; the 

 torments of bell itself could not have surpassed what I 

 suffered. The pain, which had first commenced in my 

 hand, passed up to the elbow, and from thence to the 

 shoulder, threatening to extend. I felt all human aid was 

 useless, and I believed that I must die. At length I began 

 to reflect upon my condition. I said to myself, ' Either I 

 shall die or I shall not ; if 1 die, it will only be a siniilar fate 

 which many have suffered, and many more must suffer, and 

 I must bear it like a man; if, on the other hand, there is any 

 hope of my life, my only chance is in summoning my utmost 

 resolution, defying the attack, and exerting every effort of 

 my mind. Accordingly, feeling that physical as well as 

 mental exertion was necessary, I took vay gun, shouldered 

 it, and went out for the purpose of shooting, my arm 

 aching the while intolerably. I met with no sport, but / 

 W-dkeil the whole afternoon, exerting at every step a stroiif) 

 mental effort against the disease. When I returned to the 

 house 1 was decidedly better; I was able to eat some 

 dinner, and drank water as usual. The next morniug 

 the aching pain had gone down to my elbow, the follow- 

 ing it went down to the wrist, and the third day left me 

 altogether. I mentioned the circumstance to Dr. King- 

 lake, and he said he certainly considered I had had an 

 attack of hydrophobia, which would possibly have proved 

 fVital had I not struggled against it by a strong effort cf 

 mind." 



It seems to me not unlikely that this case, besides 

 illustrating the power of the mind in arresting disease, might 

 serve, if carefully studied, to throw light on the nature of 

 hydrophobia. We must assume, it should seem, that the 

 mind can only act on the body by means of the nerves, 

 which indeed may l)e regarded as simply outlying branches 

 from the grand nerve- trunk — the brain. By strong mental 

 effort the nervous system, either as a whole, or in some 

 special region, is thrown into some condition which is not 

 its normal condition, and in this abnormal state influences 

 in .some special manner the other tissues, either of the body 

 as a whole, or of the part of the body in which the nerves 

 are thus thrown into an abnormal state. Now, it seems by 

 no means impossible to ascertain experimentally what is the 

 change of condition thus brought about by mental eftbrts to 

 direct attention to special parts of the body. The recognition 

 of the possibility that the progress of the hydropholiic disease 

 in the body may be arrested by interposing in its way, as it 

 were, a barrier of nervous system in this abnormal condition 

 might conceivably suggest some specific remedy for the 

 disease, some process or medicament by which this abnormal 

 condition might be brought about in cases where the mind 

 and will were not sufliciently powerful to produce such an 

 effect without aid from without. 



Remembering the resemblance between some of the 

 phenomena of hydrophobia and of lock-jaw, the following 

 case, in which the cure of lockjaw was attributed to the 

 use of metallic tractors, further illustrates this particular 

 point, for it was sufficiently demonstrated subsequently that 

 all the results of metallic tractorism could be equally well 

 produced with wooden or bone tractors painted to resemble 

 metallic ones — in other words, that they were simply efleets 

 of imagination, strongly excited by the belief that metallic 

 tractors have a powerful curative influence. The account is 

 given Ijy the late Jlr. John Vine Hall, of whom l)i'. Todd 

 remarks that his veracity was unimpeachable : — " Mrs. P., a 

 poor woman in Wharf Lane, Maidstone, was seized with a 

 lock-jaw four days ago, and continued in a most deplorable 

 state, attended by a physician and a surgeon, till this morn- 



