BEAIN TROUBLES. 



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cerebral science found himself presently possessed by 

 a strange terror lest the state which Winslow seemed 

 to indicate as a necessary sequel of these familiar 

 signs should be close at hand in his own case. The 

 evil progressed until his mind was really endangered 

 by these mistaken fears ; but fortunately for him 

 (if madness is rightly regarded as the greatest of all 

 evils), a series of misfortunes befell him which for a 

 time altogether withdrew his attention from the 

 mental phenomena which had so excited his fears. 

 For two or three years he had to contend against 

 great pecuniary difficulties, and to endure a series 

 of domestic calamities of no ordinary order. Com- 

 pelled to withdraw his attention from his own mind, 

 he forgot that, according to the teachings of mental 

 physiologists, he had been fairly on the way towards 

 either mania or idiocy. Four or five years later, 

 chancing to take down Forbes Winslow's book from 

 his library shelves, he read with amusement the 

 passages which had formerly excited his fears. He 

 knew that the mental symptoms graphically described 

 by Winslow still presented themselves from time to 

 time when, for instance, he was tired or unwell 

 bodily but he had learned in a very practical way 

 that they are not quite so ominous as the mind- 

 doctors assert. It is indeed possible (perhaps 

 probable, or even certain) that no cases of acute 

 mania may be noticed which have not been preceded 

 by such symptoms ; but assuredly these symptoms 

 are not in every case probably not in one case out 



