1G2 A. T. SCHOPIELD_, ESQ., M.D., ETC., ON 



minutes by the clock. If the patient is tokl that the food 

 thns given will be retained, and if he can see the clock 

 clearly from the bed, it will probably be successful, for at the 

 exact time the sub-conscious mind enables the stomach — 

 probably by some mhibitory power over the vomiting centre 

 in the medulla — to retain the food. 



I pass over the extraordinary value of the clock in many 

 ordinary diseases to consider what a fountain of health it 

 may become to both mother and child ! The nursery without 

 it is a scene of confusion and bad management, which ceases 

 when mother and nurse have learned that the child 

 must be nursed in the day every two hours hy the clock, and 

 every four hours at night, and never at other times. The 

 real value of the clock in this, as in other cases, is truly 

 scientific, and relies for its potent effects on rapidly formed 

 accurate psycho-physical habits, or artificial reflexes, in the 

 brain. 



It has been well said, " We think as we feel, or think we 

 feel, and we feel as we think. If we feel a pain, we think 

 we are ill ; and if we think we are ill we feel ill." If my 

 ideal centre vibrates with the thought of crossing the 

 Channel in rough weather, and pictures the nausea that 

 would then be felt, these A^ibrations are transmitted to the 

 terminal centres of the sensory nerves running from the 

 stomach, and I actually feel sick from communication with a 

 sensory centre, and possibly, if of a highly nervous organi- 

 sation, may actually be so from transference to a motor 

 centre. 



JReal feelings and real acts can he started in entirely ideal 

 centres. If we thhik intensely of any part of the ho^j long 

 enough, we feel sensations in that part. If we thmk of a 

 good dinner our mouths may water. We shiver whether 

 we only think of cold or actually feel cold. The sensation 

 of pain can be produced as really and vividly by thoughts 

 or ideas alone, as light in the eye by striking it in the dark. In 

 short, every sensation of the body ordinarily produced from 

 without can also be produced from within. 



These ideal vibrations, acting on motor and other centres, 

 are quite different from the action of a motor centre by the 

 direct impulse of the will ; the action being in the latter case 

 voluntary and in the former involuntary. So far we have- 

 only spoken of ideas of which we are conscious, so that 

 although the modes of exciting these motor and sensory 

 centres are abnormal, loe know tliem to he so, and hence are 



