/JV HYGIENIC PHYSIOLOGY. 169 



15. When a person is said to be " good-hearted," is it 

 a physical truth ? 



The expressions, large-hearted, good-hearted, etc., are re^ 

 mains of the old idea that the affections are located in the 

 heart rather than in the brain the seat of the mind and all its 

 attributes.* 



16. Why does a hot foot-bath often relieve the head- 

 ache ? 



(Sec Physiology, p. 126.) 



It withdraws blood from the head, and so relieves the con- 

 gested state of that organ. 



f 



17 ' IVTiy does the body of a drowned or strangled per- 

 son turn blue ? 



* In connection with this subject, the following from a recent article 

 by Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, will be found of interest: "In the very earliest 

 times of which we have any record, and even at the present day among 

 barbarous nations, the idea existed that the brain was not the only organ 

 concerned in the production of mind. . . . Doubtless, its origin was due to 

 the fact that, under the influence of certain emotions, there are disturb- 

 ances in the organs with which they are associated. Thus, love quickens 

 the action of the hearb ; mental depression or anger deranges the liver ; 

 and pity produces what is sometimes" called ' a sinking feeling ' at the pit 

 of the stomach. It has been customary with modern writers to regard 

 these disturbances as being the effects of emotions that originated in the 

 brain, and not as indicating that the organs in which they are felt have 

 any thing to do with the evolution of love, or anger, or fear, or compassion, 

 or any other passion or feeling. . . . The idea has become so widely spread 

 among educated persons that the brain is the only organ of the body that 

 has any direct relation as a generator with the mind, that it seems like a 

 tremendous blow at the system of existing facts to attempt to take from it 

 any of its power. But it is only recently that physiologists and patholo- 

 gists are beginning to make a thorough investigation into that great divis- 

 ion of the nervous system consisting of the sympathetic nerves and their 



ganglia Now,' it is not unreasonable to suppose that these 



masses of the tissue in question, that are placed around the heart, the 

 liver, the spine, and other organs, and in vast number in their substance, 

 have some influence in causing the production of those emotions that 

 make themselves felt in the parts of the body with which former univer- 

 sal beliefs, and our present forms of speech, have associated them. We 

 find, too, as an additional fact in support of this view, that in certain 

 mental affections, characterized by great emotional disturbances, these 

 ganglia are in various parts of the body the seats of disease." 



