664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



these shows well the purely nervous character of these singular affec- 

 tions. We read of Boerhaave staying an epidemic of hysterical con- 

 vulsions in a boarding-school by threatening to burn, with a red-hot 

 iron, any of the girls who should be attacked. Practitioners in our 

 own time adopt analogous processes and artifices to conquer those pas- 

 sions which degenerate into morbid states. They strive to inspire 

 the patient with a passion different from that which possesses him, 

 and to fix his attention on subjects disconnected with those which 

 occupy his mind. 



This style of physic — this moral therapy — requires infinitely more 

 tact and discernment than the application of the usual remedies of the 

 pharmacopoeia. Nor is it in our medical schools that young men, who 

 intend to practise the healing»art, can learn to diagnose and to treat 

 those maladies wherein the soul wrecks the body. This is a vocation 

 which requires profound personal study and observation, and w r herein 

 the student would do well to draw on a source too much overlooked 

 in our times, viz., those old authors who treat questions of this kind. 

 The young physician will find equal profit and delight in studying 

 those profound connoisseurs of the human mind, La Chambre, Stahl, 

 Pinel, Hoffmann, Bichat, Tissot, Richerand, Alibert, Georget. From 

 them the student will not only learn how to judge wisely of the pas- 

 sions of others and of the best means of treating them, but will also 

 get sage counsels for the government of his own. There he will see 

 that there is nowhere perfect health, save when the passions are well 

 regulated, harmonized, and equipoised, and that moral temperance is 

 as indispensable to a calm and tranquil life as physiological tem- 

 perance. He will see that, without going the lengths of stoicism — 

 in which there is more pride than wisdom, more ostentation than 

 virtue — the noblest and the most desirable state for the mind and 

 body alike is equidistant from all extreme passions, i. e., situated in 

 the golden mean. And this conviction that regular living and mod- 

 eration in material as in emotional life are the secret, not, indeed, 

 of happiness — which is nowhere in this world — but of serenity and 

 security, he will strive to spread abroad as being the most useful 

 precept of the medical art. If it is your desire that your circulatory, 

 respiratory, and digestive functions, should be discharged properly, 

 normally, if you want your appetite to be good, your sleep sound, 

 your humor equable, avoid all emotions that are over-strong, all pleas- 

 ures that are too intense, and meet the inevitable sorrows and the 

 cruel agonies of life with a resigned and firm soul. Ever have some 

 occupation to employ and divert your mind, and to make it proof 

 against the temptations of want or of desire. Thus will you attain 

 the term of life without overmuch disquiet and affliction. — Revue des 

 Deux Mondes. 



