KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



407 



reserve, th mi to the physician? Who has more 

 occasion than the physician, to see men in a state 

 of absolute unrcservedness ? Who is more 

 obliged to study their physical and moral cha- 

 racter, and the influence of one on the other? 

 Who is better prepared for it, by accessory know- 

 ledge, and by the study of natural sciences ? 

 Finally, who remarks and knows how to appre- 

 ciate, as well as the physician, the influence of 

 food and drink, of temperature, of a critical 

 period approaching, or already present, of tem- 

 perament, climate, affections, passions, diseases, 

 &c, on the determinations of men? The phy- 

 sician alone by night and day is witness of the 

 most secret events in families, and of their most 

 intimate relations. Virtuous or vicious, the man 

 who suffers and struggles against death can with 

 difficulty conceal from the physician his real cha- 

 racter. Who would not wish to have for a friend, 

 the man to whom he confides his wife, his 

 children, himself? The man who, at every hour, 

 must stand ready to devote himself absolutely to 

 his patients, and perhaps to meet death at their 

 bed-side? It is to such a friend, to whom all that 

 relates to human nature is so well known, that 

 men unfold the hidden windings of the heart; 

 they feel obliged to discover to him their weak 

 points and eccentricities, which ma y guide him 

 more surely in his judgment. Who, like the 

 physician, can trace that extremely delicate line 

 of demarcation which distinguishes immorality, 

 wickedness, and crime, from certain derange- 

 ments of the mind, so often masked, from imbe- 

 cility, from madness ? Ought not circum- 

 stances so numerous, and so favorable, to give the 

 physician profound and certain views of human 

 nature?* Let this same physician be endowed 

 with the genius of observation ; let him be fami- 

 liarised with the origin and nature of the pro- 

 pensities and the faculties of man, with the ex- 

 cesses and abuses with which these same pro- 

 pensities and faculties continually menace him, 

 and you will have the best qualities to furnish 

 valuable results, in all cases where the object is 

 to direct sagaciously, and to judge equitably the 

 actions of men. Moses, that great legislator, 

 fixed his principal attention on the physical cha- 

 racter of men. Is it not to physicians that men 

 are indebted for an infinity of excellent esta- 

 blishments of police, and for good laws? Since 

 some great men have given several complete 

 treatises on medical police and statistics, as well 

 as on legal medicine, how many instructors and 

 moralists are there, who borrow from medicine 

 those means which they employ with the hap- 

 piest results ! 



If all which I have mentioned, is not yet 

 accomplished, it is because, neglecting the useful 

 example of the ancient sages of Greece, men 

 have separated from each other too far, physio- 

 logy, medicine, education, morals, legislation, 

 instead of appreciating their mutual relations; 



* The truth of these remarks must be obvious to alb 

 The sphere of the physician is great and important, and 

 if he would make use of his frequent opportunities to 

 observe nature as modified by disease, the result of his 

 observations would be a valuable contribution to philo- 

 sophy. We do not mean simply those symptoms which 

 have reference to the physical system only — but those 

 mental manifestations, which change with the different 

 stages of disease.— Ed. K. J. 



and still more, because there are few philosophic 

 physicians who can embrace the whole extent 

 of their sphere of activity, and elevate them- 

 selves to the full dignity of their rank. 



END OF THE PREFACE. 



[Wo shall commence the regular publication 

 of " Dr. GxVll's Physiolog3 r of the Brain" in our 

 Second Volume. What we have already pre- 

 faced it with, has created an appetite which 

 positively seems to know no hounds. Truth 

 cannot now remain " stationary."] 



Scylla and GharyMis. 



Scylla and Charybdis, or Scylla and Glaucus 

 rather, is an appalling story of jealousy. Scylla 

 properly belongs to the opposite coast of Naples; 

 but as she and her fellow monster Charybdis are 

 usually named together, and the latter tenanted 

 the Sicilian coast, and the Strait between them 

 was very narrow, she is not to be omitted in 

 Sicilian fable. Charybdis (quasi Chalybdis, 

 Hiding? though some derive it from two words 

 signifying to "gape" and "absorb") was a 

 female robber, who, having stolen the oxen of 

 Hercules, was condemned to be a whirlpool, and 

 suck ships into its gulf. But she was a horror 

 not to be compared with Scylla, though the 

 latter was thought less dangerous to pass. It 

 has been thought by some, that by the word 

 Scylla is meant the female sea-dog or seal — a 

 creature often found on this coast. Be this as it 

 may (and the seal, having a more human look 

 than a clog, might suggest a more frightful image, 

 to say nothing of its being more appropriate to 

 the water), who was Scylla ? and how came she 

 to be this tremendous monster ? From the jea- 

 lousy of Circe. Seylla was originally a beautiful 

 maiden, fond of the company of the sea nymphs, 

 and Glaucus (sea-green), a god of the sea, was 

 in love with her. She did not like him; and 

 Glaucus applied to Circe for help, from her skill 

 in magic. Circe fell in love with the lover, and 

 being enraged with the attractions that made 

 him refuse her, poisoned the water in which 

 Scylla bathed. The result was the conversion of 

 her lower limbs into a set of barking dogs. They 

 were part of her ; and when in her horror she 

 thought to drive them back, she found herself 

 " hauling " them with her — one creature, says 

 Ovid, hauling many — 



" Quosfugit, attrahituna."-—Metam. xiv., v. 63. 

 This is dreadful ; yet Homer's creature is more so. 

 Her proceedings exactly resemble the accounts 

 which mariners have given of a huge sea-polypus 

 — a cousin of the kraken, or sea-serpent — who 

 thrusts her gigantic feelers over the deck of an 

 unsuspecting ship, and carries off a few seamen. 

 There is a picture of it in one of the editions of 

 Buffon. But the dog-like barking, and the 

 terrific head and teeth, to which the imagination 

 involuntarily gives something of a human aspect, 

 leave the advantage of the horrible still on the 

 side of the poet. — Leigh Hunt. 



Good Temper. — Such is the magical effect of 

 good temper, that it will lighten sickness, poverty, 

 and affliction ; convert ignorance into an amiable 

 simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable. 



