Makcii 17, 1882.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



'J 27 



completes the circuit. The subject will be continued next 

 week. 



p.S. — The engraver made a little mistake in last week's 

 Fi". 2. The fourth needle (from the left) should have 

 been deflected to the left, so as to point to the letter " B." 



BRAIN TROUBLES. 



The Echo Sign. 



V SYMPTOM called the "arho" sign, which usually 

 indicates very serious brain mischief, has, like other 

 s-iioh signs, its analogue among the symptoms of minor 

 Tiii'utal trouble. Most of us have noticed how, when we 

 are weary and overworked, we are apt to repeat mentally 

 words or sounds which we have heard or had occasion 

 to utter. Sometimes the tendency becomes exceedingly 

 annoying — a circumstance which, though not necessarily 

 indicating serious mischief, must be regarded as a warning 

 not to be neglected. On one occasion, a time of great 

 domestic trouble, the writer was haunted for two or three 

 days in succession by these three chords, repeated in the way 



B.C. ad inf. ^ 



il^^i^ 



here indicated. They had been first heard (or imagined) 

 perhaps) during church-time on a calm still Sunday, when, 

 .if ter several days of cold and bitter winter weather, the sun 

 sli one brightly, and the air was warm and pleasant There 

 was illness " even unto death " in the house, and a loss sucli 

 as changes the colour of life was approaching. But, pro- 

 1 'I'ly, long and anxious night-watching had more to do 

 with this strange affection of the mind than fear or 

 -1.1 row. The haunting chords ceased only during sleep (a 

 trained nurse had the evening before taken the writer's 

 place) ; when consciousness returned after heavy, dream- 

 less sleep, the chords were heard again, now loud and 

 rlf-ar, anon distant and indistinct, usually in slow succes- 

 sion, with rather long intervals between each triplet, Viut 

 at times less slowly and with scarcely the intermission of 

 a single bar's rest. At another time, the writer would 

 probably have been rendered exceedingly anxious by the 

 monotonous repetition of these mental sounds, though he 

 nii;;ht have found it difficult to determine whether they 

 indicated or were the cause of mental mischief. As it 

 was, other thoughts engrossed his mind too much to allow 

 of any anxiety on this account : and after a few days the 

 chords ceased to trouble him ; though to this day he is 

 careful not to allow the mental voice to utter these sounds 

 to the mental ear, lest again the chords should begin to be 

 mnnotonously repeated. It is probable that this particular 

 mental trouble ceased as it began, apart from any act on 

 the writer's own part ; still it may be worth mentioning 

 tliat he obtained relief, and was, at the time, under the 

 impression that he had driven away the haunting chords 

 l>y adding, mentally, after each set of six chords, a series 

 of others, as follows* : — ■ 



-mbi-endo, ^ 



Sli^SiS. 



-^ 



"¥3- 



• It is probably not necessary for the writer to explain to 

 mnsicians that he knows nothing whatever of harmony. Perliaps 

 the above arrangements of chords is full of mistakes, eo far as the 

 laws of harmony are concerned, but it represents exactly, first, the 

 chords which trcnbled the writer, and secondly, those which he 

 I added to put the former ont of his head. 



He noticed that the interval before the paired chords began 

 to be mentally heard again, gradually increased, after the 

 above plan had been followed, until the intervals of silence 

 became so long that the mind could, as it were, forget that 

 it was troubled by these haunting notes. 



The " echo " or repetition sign, as we have said, is com- 

 monly indicative of serious cerebral mischief. Dr. Winslow 

 was of opinion that it arose, to some extent, from that 

 sluggish and abstracted state of thought, amounting to 

 reverie, which is so often seen in cases of long-existing and 

 sometimes undetected affections of the brain. ''The mind 

 seems incapable," he says, " of apprehending, under these 

 circumstances, the most simple questions, and, parrot-like, 

 repeats them. I have noticed this symptom in other con- 

 ditions of depressed vital and nervous power, but it more 

 particularly accompanies softening of some portion of the 

 brain." It can scarcely V)e doubted that the monotonous 

 mental repetition of words or sounds is indicative of mental 

 trouble ; yet not necessarily or proliably of any really serious 

 mischief. Rest or change of occupation will in general prove 

 a sufficient remedy. If not, it is time to seek for advice, 

 though rather from a sensible general practitioner (pre- 

 ferably a family doctor) than from those who have directed 

 special attention to cerebral diseases ; for the latter are 

 apt to alarm patients by stiggesting the possibility, or even 

 the probability, of approaching mental derangement. 



As an illustration at once of the morbid phenomena of 

 speech, and of the tendency among certain students of mental 

 disease to exaggerate the significance of such phenomena, we 

 may take the following passage from Dr. Forbes Winslow's 

 book : — " It will not be out of place," he says, ''to direct 

 attention to a precursory symptom, not only of approaching 

 paralysis, but of insanity. I allude to the practice of many 

 patients suffering from incipient brain and mind disease, 

 of talking aloud when alone. A distinguished physician 

 observed this .symptom to precede an attack of paralysis, 

 in the case of a nobleman who for many years was Prime 

 Minister of this country. In many cases of irritation of 

 the brain, as well as of structural disease, the patient is 

 observed to talk to himself, and the commencement of 

 insanity is often detected by this symptom " True, Dr. 

 Winslow goes on to say that this eccentric habit is con- 

 sistent with a perfect state of health of body and mind ; 

 but these few words suggesting comfort to those who 

 occasionally talk to themselves, are likely to be overlooked 

 in a long passage indicating this common habit as one of 

 the signs of approaching insanity. 



Science ano Religion. — The coiTuption of philosophy, by the 

 mixing of it up with theology, is of wide extent, and is most 



injm-ious to it, both as a whole and iu parts This folly 



is the more to be prevented and restrained, because not only 

 fantastical philosophy, but heretical religion spring from the 

 absurd mixture of matters divine and human. It is wise, therefore, 

 to render unto faith the things that are faith's.— Bacon's " Novum 

 Organum." 



EvEsicnT OF Dogs. — Kindly allow me to add my testimony to 

 that of " G. S. S.," under above heading in your issue of March 3. 

 Having been present at many sheep-dog trials in Merionethshire. 

 Montgomeryshire, and Cardiganshire, I am able to assert that sheep- 

 dogs at least have better sight than the average man. I have seen 

 these remarkable dogs, notably at Machynlleth Park, when the 

 signal has been given, run straight to where two sheep had been 

 let loose about half a mile distant, up a hill, covered in places with 

 gorse. Oftentimes the sheep have been out of sight to the spec- 

 tators when they have been seen by the sheep-dogs, and brought to 

 the bottom of the hill. My experience of dogs leads me to the 

 belief that they are anything but near-sighted. When in the Isle 

 of Wight, I had in my possession a large retriever bitch, that would 

 see me coming along the Whippingham-road long before I was able 

 to recognise the animal. — Veritas. 



