The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-03-21
ABOUT BROKEN HEARTS
DOM PlATT DISCUSSES THE SEAT
OF THE EMOTIONS.
The Worry that Writes Wrinkles, sickens
and KiIIs-The Logic and Econ
Omy of Nature-Are There
Broken Hearts?
lOriRinal.1

That part or our animal economy, sup
posed to be the seat of the affections, is con-
sidered so elastic that the above phrase
causes laughter. And yet, at rare intervals,
something vital gives way, In that part of US,
and the man, or woman, renders up the ghost
as completely as if some well defined dis
ease, recognized by the medicated world,
had struck its fatal blow.
A broken heart is not only laughed at,
but the scientific gentlemen, who know all
about 1t, insist that the heart is nothing
but a pump, placed within for the better
control of the circulation, and has no
more feeling in it that the bone of the big
toe. And so. in their wisdom, they transfer
the affections to the brain.
What positive rot all such speculations
are. knew an officer in the late war, who
was shot in the head, and lived some months
after. The bullet entered at compassion,
and was supposed to have traversed benev-
olence, frmness and lodged in self-esteem.
The man died, of course, but he went on
dying, in about as sensible manner as he
had lived. We who nursed him, could not
perceive any loss of intellectual power
The test was scarcely fair, for your average
army officer is not one of those brilliant
specimens, whose gain or loss of the thought
fu1 processes can be easily marked and re-
corded.
We locate the intellect in the skull, be-
cause we feel it is there. The late Jeremiah
8. Black was won't to say that legal argu-
ment by William Evarts made his head ache.
In the same way we put the emotions in the
heart. We feel them there.
The poor fellow watching at the bedside
of q stricken wife, or the mother hanging
over the cradle of dying child, guages the
progress of the dread disease by sinking
sensation at the heart, which clouds the
brain, dims the eye, and sends the breathing
up through sobs.
1t is not the thought that kills. or even
tires; it is the worry of the heart, and this
writes wrinkles on the brow Of care, and
aickens, if it does not shorten life.
"a great man to be successful" wrote a
French Bohemian, attributing his axiom to
Napoleon, 'snust have a good digestion and
bad heart"
Fretting over the affairs of life is like
friction in machinery-it heats, wears and
retards The wheel was made a success
by an invention that brought a soft, cold
material that might melt. but could not
heat, in contact with the axle.
That the heart is the seat of emotions is
better proven than chronology, although we
have all dropped into that bumptious theory.
In phrenology, that is so generally accepted,
the mind is broken into bumps or organs.
This absurdity prevails, although, when we
come to investigate philosophically, we find
every organ head in itself What, for ex-
ample, is comparison. ideality, without every
other intellectual organ entering into it.
will take any one organ and run quite great
man on it. Now nature is not only logical
but economic, as well, and above all strange
ly secretive. While the countenance, played
upon necessarily, remains something of q
mask, it is not likely that bumps would be
embossed on the skulls, telling to the fingers
OF a uuack the inner secrets of a mans
ics-characteristicS unknown to
the man himself.
Astrology was better, pathology as good
while pedalogy, started by an ingenious
friend Of mine, is quite as conclusive. WHO
sees a fat foot, for example, and is not salts
fed that the structure above is lazy? A
high, we'll arched instep indicates delcacy
of organization, even if seen dangling under
a gallows This is all arrant nonsense, bu
not more so than the so-called science at the
other extremity.
Well, the troubles of the heart have little
TO do with those of the head, nor are they
much better understood. 1t is through sucl
ignorance that consolation and coincidence
are so very exasperating.
The sympathy, for instance, that comes il
through funeral ceremonies is very trying
At the moment when one longs to be alone
with ones dead, all ones friends and neigh
bors come in and gaze The beast of an un
dertaker arranges the remains that are ly
ing upon ones breast, for public inspection
and all the crowd, speaking in bated breath
Of the weather, the markets. the health o
the neighborhood, pull on long faces an'
pass by the coffin to take a last look at tn
departed they care nothing for. Poor heart
that wants to drive them all out and clasp
In agony, the cold form of the dead ant
fairly shrek into the closed ears for return
Of one who never, never, moro may com
back to bless US.
''why weepest thou3 Thy tears arc un
availing.
Therefore do weep"
It was this shrinking from the undertake