The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-01-13
The Mind in Disease,

The Popular Science Monthly cites some
curious incidents of the acute development
of certain mental faculties in disease. As
the impairment of one faculty intensifies
the power of another, SO physical prostra-
lions of similar nature produce the same
phenomena. Imagination and memory,
as the most impressionab1e faculties, are
subject to physical influences. Imagina.
ton has produced death when the physical
ailment did not warrant it and courage
has not unfrequently enabled men stricken
with disease to overcome its ravaees. 1t
is estimated that large proportion of the
deaths of cholera visitation results from
terror. This danger is distinctly recog-
nized by physicians, who often combat
the terror they encounter as much as the
real disease. The effect of Imagination is
illustrated in the textb books of mental
philosophy, by instances where criminals
condemned to death were placed in q
warm bath, with the information that they
were to be bled to death; then came
slight cut and finally death. Such is the
effect of imagination on mind and body.
HvpOchondria and inconsistencies are
names given by the doctors to mental dis.
eases that have often had fatal results.
The Popular Science Monthly states the
case of near relative suffering from ex-
treme nervous debility, who begged to be
taken TO an asylum for the insane on ac
count of vivid and unnatural impression
Of thinking of two things at the same
time" The same person was also
afflicted with startling consciousness Of
things happening to her children at dis
lance, which proved to be correct, the
anticipation of what people were going to
say, and the power of reading the motives
OF others. A similar phenomenon came
within the experience of a now famous
actor, who, in his younger days, was given
to tree use of stimulants. He antici-
pated the words and thoughts of those
who were speaking to him, and would
frequently approach stranger on the
streets and startle him with calling his
name, speaking his thoughts, telling him
some secret of his past life or some undis-
closed intention for the future. The i'm
pulse to do this at times was irresistible.
Of late years this morbid perception has
passed away entirely, and, as is stated, it
would seem to be because it has not been
subject to the excitation of stimulants.
DIR. Stelnbeck once found an illiterate
peasant praying aloud in Greek and He
brew when he was Frustrated with dis
cast, IL WAS subsequently dSCcIldlucu tHdt
he had heard the parish minister pray in
those languages when he was a child,
and, though he could not recall a word of
them when in health, they came back to
him in disease. Abercrombic relates how
the attendants of an asylum found
young girl inmate playing difficult and
exquisite music on the violin with no pre-.
vious instruction or practice-only she
had been accustomed to sleep in a room
that occupied by an itinerant
musician of great talent. She could only
play these airs when asleep. Memory in
aged persons often grows more vivid with
advancing age and declining powers. Sir
Walter Scott, who had overstrained his
physical powers, speaks of being haunted
by "sense Of pre.existcnce." The fac
ulty of intensifying in sleep the thoughts
or study in which one is engaged in wax
ing hours belongs to the same phenomena.
A student in Germany, anxious to acquire
the language and deeply immersed in the
study OF it, in order to attend lectures at
the university, found that he could carry
on conversation tluently in his sleep,
though he could only stumble along when
awake. The latest mania Of "mind-read-
ing" is perhaps another development in
the same dlrection-N. Y Express.