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The Brain

The Brain image
Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
October
Year
1875
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Unsoundness of bram, says Harper'g E Bazar, is of ten known only to its t sessor. There is a stage of I ness in which a peraon may be v santly at war with himself, and with the fi promptings of a doublé, urging hiin to f do and say tliings abhorred by bis better j self. "I ara not conscious of the ] cay," wrote a patiënt to his adviser, " or t suspension of any of the powers of the t mind. I am as well able as ever I was to attend to rny business. My family f suppose me in health, yet the horrors of f a mad-house are staring me in the face, i I am a martyr to a species of persecution ' from within, which is becoming 1 able. I am urged to say the most ( ing blasphemies, and obscene words are ] ever on my tongue. Thank God, I have ( been ablo to resist ; but I often think t I must yield at last, and then I shall be i disgraced and ruined." The famous i Bishop Butler is said to have been gaged in such a conflict for the greater ] part of his lite. Akin to this phase of f unsoundness is the desire so eommonly j feit to throw one's self from a height, or f to give utterance at inappropriate times, ( as when Cliarles Lamb burst out j ing at a funeral. In such moments of ] temptation the mastery of the reason j over the inclination distinguishes the ] sane from the insane, and it is onlythe J sustained eccentricity of thought and j mode of life which points to a condition ■, of the brain betokening insanity. Very j noieworthy are some of the early , toms of disorder. Of ono of these, the i undue exaltation of the senses, an j stance is given, where the patiënt feit ■ such an extraordinary acuteness of I ing that he heard the least sound at the bottom of his house, and was able to teil the hour by his watch at a distance s.4at which he could not ordinarily see the hands. Sometimes incipient disease is indicated by a perversión of the sense of touch, as in the case of a patiënt who, from the fancy that everything he touched was greasy, was continually washing his hands. Other well-marked symptoms are the losa of memory, deterioration in handwriting, the iise of wrong words in convereation and doublé visión. Kleptomania, the habit of secret ly purloining articles, is uow a reconized form of brain disease. Of another more terrible form of madness, dipsomania, it is curious to read that its victima will drink shoe-blacking, turpentine and hair wash, when they can get nothing else to satisfy the demon that possesses them. Sometimes these two forms of mania are seen co-existent in the same person under very odd circumstances. Thus it is recorded of one man that when drank he always stole Bibles ; of another, spades ; wliile a third individual invariably purloined a tub. Delicate as tlie organization of the brain must be, it is surprising to read of the hard knocks it can bear, not only without injury, but even to its advantage. One man who lost half his brain through suppuration of the skull, served his intellectual faculties to the day of his death ; and the brains of soldiers have been known to carry bul Iets without apparent inconvenience, and to undergo operation for the extraction of the foreign bodies without loss of power. A physician who was afflicted with an abnormal cerebral growth which pressed upon the cavities of the brain, so as to paralyze one side of his body and render him speechless, retained possession of his reasoning and calculating powers until he died. One of three brothers, all idiots, after receiving a severe injury on the head, gained his seuses, and lived to be a clever barrister. A stable boy of dull capacity, and subject to fits, had his wits sharpened by the kick of a horso, which necessitated the abstraction of a portion of his brain ; and no less a personage than Pope Clement VI. owcd the improvement of his memory to a slight concu8sion of the brain.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus