The Wilmingtonian., 1884-06-07
HEALTH HINTS.
THE WONDERS OF THE BRAIN


FOR THE WH.MINGToNIAN.
We live in an age when vivisectionists,
Darwinists, progressists and anatomists have
pushed their Investigations to point from
which the pious men of the sixteenth CEN
tury would have recoled with horror; and
which the non-scicntific people ofthe present
day regard as little short of a dissertation of
the sanctuary of the soul. But we know
also that such knowledge, if it does not pro-
long life beyond the natural term of three
score years and ten, does yet indirectly
enable men to live out that natural term in
an era of wondrous mental activity. The man
of forty to-day has accomplished more actual
work than any two of the patriarchs iu the
entire duration Of their joint lives. A single
intelligent man to-day controls forces which
render his unit of strength the equivalent Of
the bodily toll Of a thousand. This control
is accompanied with proportionate respon-
sibility. man placed in charge of Cat
ling Gun sweeping crowded street holds the
lives of hundred men in his hand every
minute. The telegraph operator who sends
a message Of life and death, conveying per-
haps the destinies of nation over two
Thousand miles of wire, has his responsible
ties measured by the instant, instead of the
hour; his faculties are kept ever on the
stretch; and he lives years of life between
the rising and the setting of the sun.
Yet while mems brains are thus taxed, we
have no reason to believe that the substance,
the chemical constituents, the molecular
arrangement of the atoms, are in any way
altered. 1t is the capacity of the individual
cells that is increased, just as the caloric
| energy of pound of coal may be usde to
| glow with steady moderate warmth for a
day, or transformed into the brief but resist
less energy of the electric arc, or the momen-
tary all-destructive Influence of super-heatetl
steam.
| We have sac that the anatomst recog.
| nizes no change of structure in the wonder
| ful organ which controls our destinies and
| regulates our actions, whether the organ in
| life had been the mind-temple of a philoso-
| pher or painter, civil-engneer or a poet,
classic or mathematician. We have not
learned how to put death out of our option,
or how to evade the will of the Almighty,
manifested through the agency of the forces
of nature. But we have learned multi
tude of strange things in regard to these
busy, scheming brains of ours; things that
strip Death of its terrors, and annul pain;
| that abolish superstitions and show us when
and how our senses are our cheats; things
| that make our lives none the less holy, while
incidentally charging their usefulness to
ourselves and to others.
And, first of all, the researches of the
anatomist and the Psychologist have shown
us something Of the true nature of the
visions, hallucinations, and false perceptions
which have batiled the wise and bcwildered
the physician in the days that ire past. We
know now that the eye is not the organ of
SIGHT in any but relative sense; we know
that it is the brain that sees, and that the
eye is no more than the telescope or the
microscope or any other optical instrument
by which certain sensations are conveyed to
the brain. We know now how it was that
the monks of old had their glorious but fam
tastic visions of saints, and how the ghost Of
Cesar was conjurcd up before the minds