602 American Nervousness. [September, 
from being conducted away, and thus we become excessively 
charged with that force, and excessively stimulated oy its 
confinement in the body. Moisture conducts electricity ; 
and the moistened air insensibly carries away the electricity 
of the body, so that it is impossible for the body to become 
so excessively charged and stimulated. The evidences of 
this dryness of our atmosphere are numerous and striking. 
Clothes on the line dry more rapidly than in Europe. The 
specimens of the naturalists do not so quickly mould ; the 
hair is stiffer and drier than that of our European contem- 
poraries, and requires more pomade and oil. This pecu- 
liarity of our climate is observed from the Atlantic to 
California ; and the Rocky Mountain region is far more 
under the influence of this dryness of atmosphere than even 
the East. The violent extremes of heat and cold — the bit- 
terness of our winters contrasted with the heat of our 
summers — excite nervousness by over-stimulation. The 
application of latent heat and cold, as ice in hot water, is 
one of the most powerful means of local stimulation that 
we have in medicine : to this treatment nearly all of the 
American people in the northern and eastern sections are 
constantly subjected. Secondly, extreme heat and cold 
produce ; nervousness by compelling us to live in-doors in 
unnaturally dry and overheated atmospheres, and making it 
impossible, either in summer or winter, to partake of those 
aCtive out-door exercises and amusements in which our 
English friends indulge at nearly all seasons of the year. 
The English climate, as contrasted with the American, is 
more equable. Its moisture, and even its unpleasantness 
and disadvantageousness, is favourable to the nervous 
system ; likewise, the climate of our Southern States is 
more moist and more uniform than of the North and West; 
and, according to investigations that are variously made, 
nervous diseases of all kinds, or nearly all kinds, pretty 
steadily diminish in frequency as we go South. 
The institutions of civilisation common to all enlightened 
countries — such as schools, newspapers, excitement of elec- 
tions, reforms, and revivals — are themselves the results of 
climate and race, and are also to be included among causes 
of nervousness. Civilisation is burdened with information 
that it must acquire ; every year history raises up new faCts 
that the schoolboy of the future must commit and recite. 
If we would know why the Americans are so nervous, we 
should contrast the Greek boy with the New York boy in 
their manner of training in the schools, in their play, and in 
the whole order of their lives. The Greek boy’s life was a 
