53 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Like the Wandering Jew, again, these neuropathic wanderers 

 are shabbily dressed in a great cloak or a long robe reaching 

 nearly down to the ground. They are nearly always men thirty 

 or forty years old, but whom we might, from the wrinkles on 

 their faces, suppose to be double that age. Their beards are long 

 and uncombed. The beard of the Wandering Jew is, perhaps, the 

 most characteristic trait of his figure. The primitive painters, as 

 our figures show, represented it with great sincerity : 



" Never was seen 

 A man so bearded." 



The beards seen in the most ancient engravings are as exactly 

 as possible like those of the sufferers observed by M. Meige '> 

 they are curled in all their length or are rolled in ringlets on the 

 sides, where they mingle with the hair, also curled. 



The faces of all the neuropaths express suffering, lassitude, and 

 despair ; a meager countenance, salient cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, 

 and wrinkled foreheads appear in all the sufferers and all the por- 

 traits. 



From the pathological point of view wandering neuropaths 

 suffer chiefly from nervous exhaustion neurasthenia of which 

 they present all the physical and psychical marks. Hysteria may 

 sometimes be added. The Wandering Jew seems likewise never 

 to have had a firm nervous equilibrium, for every time he had 

 occasion to speak to any one he complained of being persecuted. 



Thus, after all that we have just said, the Wandering Jew still 

 exists, and under the same form he assumed in past centuries. 

 His figure, his costume, his manners have preserved the same char- 

 acteristics through the ages. The Wandering Jew of the legend 

 and the Wandering Jew of the clinics are one and the same type : 

 a wandering neuropath, a perpetual pilgrim, appearing to-day, 

 vanishing to-morrow, and followed soon by another who resem- 

 bles him in all points ; a third will come like his predecessors, and 

 then a fourth, and so on. Cartophilus, Ahasuerus, Isaac Laque- 



dem, Moser B , etc., are children of nervous pathology. Their 



resemblances result from attacks of the same malady, and have 

 an identical origin. Translated for The Popular Science Monthly 

 from La Nature. 



A CUEIOUS phenomenon is sometimes observed near Wetter Lake in Sweden, 

 in the standing still of the Motala River. The flow of water ceases and the bed 

 of the river is dried up, while the water is held back in the lake. It was for- 

 merly regarded as a miracle and portent. It is attributed by Block to a sudden 

 sharp frost, which freezes the river to the bottom at a shallow place without 

 allowing time for the formation of mere surface ice. An eas?t wind and the 

 growth of reeds near the outflow of the lake may also contribute to the stoppage. 



