The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1876-06-13

cinnati. This costs money, as Hon. Tom
Murphy or any experienced leader will tes-
t'fy. The question is, Who pays the money?
for we disdain the thought that all this is on
speculation. In o reform canvass the bills
should certainly be paid. Who is paying
out the money for Bristow?
Mr.. Blaine's Cass-is IL Serious Apo
plexys
In the absence of history of the case medi-
cally precise we have these main points =
For many days the patients brain has been
overworked in sheer intellectual labor, and
the emotional nature has been unduly ex-
cited by charges that threatened to defeat a
great ambition. In good health this is evil
IDENTIFY brain and a nervous system that
would endure mistaken great labor and
great excitement; but there are no brains
whose endurance is iIlimitablc There is a
degree of labor and of excitement that over
comes any degree of strength, but the point
at which the brain gives out under the in
fuence of labor and excitement was less re-
mote with Mr.. Blaine just now because of
recent illness. His brain, therefore, pre-
sented less capacity for labor than usual,
and when suddenly called upon for greater
efforts than usual exhaustion was the
necessary consequence. In regard to the
brain in cases like this the word exhaustion
means precisely what it does in other strictly
physical phenomena. The capacity of fire
to supply heat is exhausted when all the
coal is burned out and there is no more coal
to put on. The paying capacity of q bank
is exhausted when the reserve is paid
out and the drafts are in excess of the
receipts. 1t is the function of the
brain to think and to supply the force
that controls our voluntary movements; but
if the brain is weakened by i'll health,
and the demands upon it are excessive.
its reserve of force or capital must be great,
indeed, if it does not fail to respond sooner
or later, and its failure to respond induces
that sort of vital collapse which is seen when
q man falls speechless and unconscious for
not step is taken, not word is spoken,
not a familiar face is recognized, not
familiar voice remembered without the active
participation of the brain. -.
Mr. Blaine's brain was, therefore, in this
condition on Sunday morning. He had not
slept the night before, nor for many nights
previously, as he should have slept, and it
Then is repaid into this storehouse for in
tellectual capital the equivalent Of what it
has paid out in thought and other forms of
activity in the working hours but with the
bank already shaken the paying teller
extended his operations to twenty-three
hours and the receiving teller was restricted
to one hour of the twenty-four. Then, in the
news that lockwood Hoar had withdrawn
from his support, came new chagrin, like
nm enormous draft on the reduced capital
Upon this toss followed another, for the pa
tient subjected his nervous system to the
enormous strain of considerable walk in
the excessive heat of q sunshiny day, and
this proved to be the ounce too much and
the brain failed. But what happened in the
patients brain at that moment? That is the
problem upon which turns not merely the
question of the mans life, not merely the
point whether he will die now or recover
now, but the more important ques-
aged the brain that though he live now
he may die next year, or the equally impor-
tant question whether this circumstance
indicates in this case, as it does in many
cases, a sort of habit of the brain to drop
exhausted in the highways of life under the
strain of enforced activity. Was the
cause of the failure of the faculties in the
nature of IN epileptic seizure? Was it sun
stroke? Was there rupture of blood YES
sell? Was there effusion through the walls
Of the vessels of the watery parts Of
the blood? Was it merely IN extreme
case of vertigo; or, as DR.. Pope
puts it, cerebral depression ?" though
how cerebral depression is to drop man on
the steps Of church, unless it produces
physical changes it must be difficult for or
binary mortals to tell. There was sudden
loss of the power of voluntary motion, fol-
lowed rapidly by loss of consciousness.
Less marked in its onset, there was commo-
which there was stertorious and irregular
respiration. and from which the patient had
not entirely come ont when thirty hours had
gone by. And all this was accompanied at
the moment Of seizure by pain, apparently
very severe and distinctly localized in
the occipital region-Pain which extorted
from strong, proud, self-possessed man,
the cry, 20 God my head" When have
the Washington doctors known cerebral de-
preston to produce pain like that? From
all the facts of the case it seems clear that
the medulla oblongata or the cerebellum
is in trouble; that there is a dangerous
congestion in that part of the brain, and,
perhaps, Serious apoplexy, which is quite
consistent with consciousness and speech,
since that part of the brain may be over
whelmed without great arrangement Of the
cerebral hemispheres, rs was shown in the
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