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college professors, who frequently meet about such a table to exchange 

 ideas, or get new ones, or both. Then my thoughts went to England, to 

 its old coffee houses and the influence ou the English writers who met 

 there. Thai in turn brought to the mind the relative merits of beer and 

 wine and coffee as aids to thought stimulation, and this again brought 

 tin the thought of the influence of tobacco smoke, whether this at bottom 

 had anything to do with the matter, and that again brought me back to 

 America, to our newspaper offices, where reporters often work in dingy 

 offices densely filled with tobacco smoke and where many of the so-called 

 'pipe dreams' are concocted." 



Health, III Health, Chronic III Health, Disease. During the last 

 ten years I have been occupied more especially with adults in chronic ill 

 health, as distinguished from real disease, and very naturally I have fol- 

 lowed the subject of thought stimulation among this class. There is one 

 very practical aspect, one, however, that is largely neglected by the av- 

 erage practitioner of medicine ; that is, long sleepless nights during which 

 the mind of a patient may be thinking all sorts of thoughts, usually dis- 

 agreeable ; if there is sleep there may be much disagreeable dreaming. 

 The physician who is able to give patients of this kind restful nights is 

 usually accomplishing something that his predecessors failed to do. 



Individuals in chronic ill health often have very active minds and 

 react acutely to certain drugs, such as opium, alcohol, caffeine ; similarly 

 to the salicylates, which are largely used in counteracting infection and 

 inflammation. Many react acutely to the influence of travel. Thus while 

 travel at home may disagree, travel in a foreign country may be bene- 

 ficial. One can, of course, readily understand how in the case of literary 

 persons one country may be preferred to another. But even common peo- 

 ple who do not lead much of a mental life may notice the influence of 

 travel, as when a farmer living in isolation complains of active dreaming 

 or of restlessness at night after a trip to town. Among my case reports 

 are at least four in which there was active stimulation of the mind while 

 traveling on railways — in one case the thoughts or ideas were used in 

 literary work. It may also be said that individuals with lively minds, 

 literary people generally, react acutely to their surroundings, or to influ- 

 ences that scarcely produce an effect on the average man. 



During the past few years I have been trying in my practice to dis- 

 tinguish between individuals who load an active "Seelenleben" and those 



