BRAIN TROUBLES. 307 



thing wrong with. us. The mischief may be bodily, 

 or it may arise from external causes; but usually 

 at any rate with those who exercise the mind more 

 actively than the body the cause of the change is 

 mental. It is not always easy to distinguish between 

 these various forms of irritability. Those who are 

 affected by the east wind can ascertain, when they 

 find themselves out of sorts, whether the wind is 

 easterly or not ; but it is probable that the mere 

 liability to be thus affected is a sign of nervous weak- 

 ness, which may result from mental overwork. 1 And 

 there are s'ome meteorological causes of irritability 

 not so easily inquired into as the influence of an 



1 Dr. Forbes Winslow discribes a curious instance of morbid 

 irritability of this kind. " A military man, suffering from severe 

 mental dejection, was in the habit," he tells us, " of promenading 

 backward and forward in a certain track, towards evening on the 

 rampart of the town in which he resided. When he walked for- 

 ward, his face fronted the east, where the sky was hung with black, 

 as was, alas ! his poor soul. Then his grief pressed doubly an 

 heavily upon him ; he was hopeless and in deep despair. But when 

 he turned with his countenance towards the west, where the setting 

 sun left behind a golden stream of light, his happiness returned, 

 Thus he walked backward and forward, with and without hope, 

 alternating between joy and melancholy, ecstasy and grief, in 

 obedience to the baleful and benign influence[s] of the eastern and 

 western sky ! " Alfieri says, in his " Memoirs," " I have observed, 

 by applying to my intellect an excellent barometer, that I had 

 greater or less genius or capacity for composition according to the 

 greater or less weight of the atmosphere : a total stupidity during 

 the solstitial and equinoctial winds ; an infinitely less perspicacity 

 in the evening than in the morning ; and much more fancy 

 enthusiasm, and invention in midsummer than in the intervening 

 months. 



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