' SURGEON GENERAL'S OFFICE Jibb(oo% Zz-tt Vrtation, have made it possible to transact a hundred-fold more business in a limited time than even in the eighteenth century; but with an in- crease rather than a decrease in business transac- tions. Increased facilities for agriculture, manufac- tures, and trades have developed sources of anxiety and of loss as well as profit, and have enhanced the risks of business; machinery has been increased in quantity and complexity, some parts, it is true, being lubricated by late inventions, others having the friction still more increased. Dr. Mosso, of Turin, Italy, has invented an ap- paratus, of simple construction, by which it is pos- sible to prove that even a slight excitement of the brain causes increased circulation in it. The instru- ment consists in glass vessels large enough to hold a man's outstretched hand, in which there is an orifice in which the arm of the person to be experi- mented on is placed, so that the warm water with which the vessel is filled cannot escape, the water being connected with a thin glass tube like a ther- mometer, which shows the least rising or falling in the circulation of the arm. Experiments show that when a person has his attention attracted even slightly — as by the reading of a book or paper—the CA USES OF AMERICAN NER VO USNESS 11 7 bulk of the blood in his arm diminishes'; and the inference is that correspondingly the bulk of the blood in the brain increases. With this experiment before us, let us consider the heightened activity of the cerebral circulation which is made necessary for a business man since the introduction of steam-power, the telegraph, the telephone, and the morning newspaper. Buying on a Margin vs. Gambling. The custom of buying on a margin that has late- ly grown so much in popularity is more exciting to the nervous system than ordinary gambling, which it in a measure displaces, in these two re spects— First, the gambler risks usually all that he has; while the stock buyer risks very much more than he has. Secondly. The stock buyer usually has a certain commercial, social, and religious position, which is thrown into the risk, in all his ventures ; whereas, the ordinary gambler has nothing to lose but his money. For these reasons it is quite clear that gambling— formerly far more prevalent than now — is less per- nicious in its action on the nervous system, than buying stocks on a margin. 118 INCREASED CAPACITY FOR SORROW. Increased capacity for Sorrow—Love and Phi- lanthropy. Capacity for disappointment and sorrow has in- creased with the advance of civilization. Fineness of organization, which is essential to the develop- ment of the civilization of modern times, is accom- panied by intensified mental susceptibility. In savagery, life is mostly sensual, with much mental force held in reserve, as with North Ameri- can Indians, while the intellect has but slight strength; in a highly civilized people, some of the senses and all the emotions are quickly excited, and are attended with higher, sweeter, and more com- plex and rapturous pleasure than in savagery, and but for the controlling and inhibiting force of a better trained reason, would make progress, and even existence, in civilization, impossible. Relatively to the intellect, the savage has more emotion than the civilized man, but in absolute quantity and quality of emotion, the civilized man very far surpasses the savage; although, as the civilized man is constantly kept in check by the inhibitory power of the intellect, he appears to be far less emotional than the savage, who, as a rule, with some exceptions, acts out his feelings with com- paratively little restraint, The civilized man enjoys his food better than the barbarian; has vastly more complex modes of cookery, and appreciates, when CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 119 in health, nice distinctions in what he eats, far more than is possible to the savage. Of the poetry of love, as distinct from the physi- cal type, the lower savages know nothing — their friendships, their married life, their home life with their offspring, show but fugitive traces of that enormous and tyrannous emotion out of which all our novels, romances, and dramas are builded. This potency of loving, including not only sexual, but filial, brotherly and sisterly affection, in all its ranges and ramifications, is a later evolution of human nature; like all other emotions, it is matched by a capacity for sorrow corresponding to its capacity for joy. Love, even when gratified,' is a costly emo- tion ; when disappointed, as it is so often likely to be, it costs still more, drawing largely, in the grow- ing years of both sexes, on the margin of nerve- force, and thus becomes the channel through which not a few are carried on to neurasthenia, hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity. Jealousy is the shadow of love and like other shadows greater than the original; it deepens and widens and lengthens with increasing refinement. Organized philanthropy is wholly modern, and is the offspring of a higher evolved sympathy wedded to a form of poverty that could only arise out of the inequalities of civilization. Philanthropy that is sincere suffers more than those it hopes to save; 120 REPRESSION OF EMOTION. for while " charity creates much of the misery that it relieves, it does not relieve all the misery that it creates." Repression of Emotion. One cause of the increase of nervous diseases is that the conventionalities of society require the emotions to be repressed, while the activity of our civilization gives an unprecedented freedom and opportunity for the expression of the intellect; the more we feel the more we must restrain our feel- ings. This expression of emotion and expression of reason, when carried to a high degree, as in the most active nations, tend to exhaustion, the one by excessive toil and friction, the other by restraining and shutting up within the mind those feelings which are best relieved by expression. Laughter and tears are safety-valves; the savage and the child laugh or cry when they feel like it — and it takes but little to make them feel like it; in a high civilization like the present, it is not polite either to laugh or to cry in public ; the emotions which would lead us to do either the one or the other, thus turn in on the brain and expend them- selves on its substance; the relief which should come from the movements of muscles in laughter and from the escape of tears in crying is denied us; nature will not, however, be robbed ; her lose CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 121 must be paid and the force which might be ex- pended in muscular actions of the face in laugh- ter and on the whole body in various movements reverberates on the brain and dies away in the cerebral cells. Constant inhibition, restraining normal feelings, keeping back, covering, holding in check atomic forces of the mind and body, is an exhausting pro- cess, and to this process all civilization is constantly subjected. A modern philosopher of the most liberal school, states that he hates to hear one laugh aloud, re- garding the habit, as he declares, a survival of bar- barism. Domestic and Financial Trouble. Family and financial sorrows, and secret griefs of various kinds, are very commonly indeed the exciting cause of neurasthenia. In very many cases where overwork is the assigned cause—and where it is brought prominently into notice, the true cause, philosophically, is to be found in family broils or disappointments, business failures or mishaps, or some grief that comes very near to one, and, rightly or wrongly, is felt to be very serious. The savage has no property and cannot fail; he has so little to win of wealth or possessions, that he has no need to be anxious. If his wife does not 122 LIBERTY AND NERVOUSNESS. suit he divorces or murders her; and if all things seem to go wrong he kills himself. Politics and Religion. There are two institutions that are almost dis- tinctively American — political elections and relig- ious revivals ; for although in other countries both these institutions exist, yet they are far less numer- ous and far less exacting, and have far less influ- ence than in America. Politics and religion appeal mostly to the emotional nature of men, and have little to do with the intellect, save among the lead- ers ; and in consequence, the whole land is at times agitated by both these influences, to a degree which, however needful it may be, is most exciting to the nervous temperament. Liberty as a Cause of Nervousness. A factor in producing American nervousness is, beyond dispute, the liberty allowed, and the stimulus given, to Americans to rise out of the posi- tion in which they were born, whatever that may be, and to aspire to the highest possibilities of for- tune and glory. In the older countries, the exist- ence of classes and of nobility, and the general con- texture and mechanism of society, make necessary so much strenuous effort to rise from poverty and paltriness and obscurity, that the majority do not CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 123 attempt or even think of doing anything that their fathers did not do : thus trades, employments, and professions become the inheritance of families, save where great ambition is combined with great powers. There is a spirit of routine and spontaneous con- tentment and repose, which in America is only found among the extremely unambitious. In travel- ling in Europe one is often amazed to find indi- viduals serving in menial, or at least most undig- nified positions, whose appearance and conversation show that they are capable of nobler things than they will ever accomplish. In this land, men of that order, their ambition once aroused, are far more likely to ascend in the social scale. Thus it is that in all classes there is a constant friction and unrest—a painful striving to see who shall be high- est ; and, as those who are at the bottom may soon be at the very top, there is almost as much stress and agony and excitement among some of the lowest orders as among the very highest. Consider how much nerve-force the American people have expended in carrying through our late nominations and elections. Last June, just after the nominations were made, I was in Cleveland, assisting in organizing a na- tional association for the protection of the insane, and in my address I referred to the campaign for the nominations as one of the reasons why we 124 POLITICS—ELECTIONS. needed such an organization. To-day, just after the inauguration, those whose minds are philosophically bent, may well occupy themselves with making an estimate of the cost in brain and nerve of these months of excitement and disappointment; for it is the very essence of politics to disappoint those who have to do with it, and disappointment, like love, is one of the most expensive of human emotions. Before the late election one of my patients in- formed me, to my alarm, that he wras getting inter- ested in politics. He had been treated most suc- cessfully for nerve troubles, two years ago, and had been put into working order, and had been able to work hard ; but I knew that, like most of his class, he was living on a small reserve of nerve-force. He said that great issues were before us, and the neg- lect of politics on the part of intelligent men was the ruin of their nation. I said to him: " My friend, presidents and politicians are chips and foam on the surface of the sea; they are not the sea; tossed up by the tide and left on the shore, but they are not the tide; fold your arms and go to bed, and most of the evils of this world will correct themselves, and, of those that remain, few will be modified by anything that you or I can do." To this advice he, of course, paid no heed, and a day or two before the election came to my office, entirely prostrated, and confessed a most interesting fact—that five minutes' con versa- CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 125 tion on politics had taken all his nerve from him, doing more to exhaust him than months of steady work. He was a Hancock man, and the unpleasant- ness of defeat supplemented the discussions and elec- tioneerings of a long campaign, doing more of evil for him than he had done of good to his country. Take that case, which is not an exception, but a type of others in varying degrees; multiply it by thousands and thousands of thousands; add to it a million of our citizens whose existence depends, near or remotely, on the victory or failure of par- ties, and who must work all through their lives on the treacherous edge of precipices; pile on the infinite wranglings and controversies, public and family, of these months that the nation believed to be a crisis in its life: throw in the concentrated agony of half our population on the morning fol- lowing election and the long-drawn-out disappoint- ments of the coming years; then need we ask if there is any mystery in American nervousness, even to those who reject every other accredited cause? The experiment attempted on this continent of making every man, every child, and every woman an expert in politics and theology is one of the costliest of experiments with living human beings, and has been drawing on our surplus energies with cruel extravagance for one hundred years. Protestantism, with the subdivision into sects 126 PRO TESTANTISM. which has sprung from it, is an element in the causation of the nervous diseases of our time. No Catholic country is very nervous, and partly for this — that** in a Catholic nation the burden of religion is carried by the church. In Protestant countries this burden is borne by each individual for himself; hence the doubts, bickerings, and an- tagonisms between individuals of the same sect and between churches, most noticeable in this land, where millions of excellent people are in constant disagree- ment about the way to heaven. The difference between Canadians and Ameri- cans is observed as soon as we cross the border, the Catholic church and a limited monarchy acting as antidotes to neurasthenia and allied affections. Prot- estant England has imitated Catholicism, in a mea- sure, by concentrating the machinery of religion and taking away the burden from the people. It is stated —although it is supposed that this kind of statistics are unreliable—that in Italy insanity has been on the increase during these few years in which there has been civil and religious liberty in that country. If this statement could be mathematically proved — as probably it cannot, in the face of so many sources of error to complicate the calculations — it would be a vigorous illustration of the philosophy here inculcated. Certain enough it is that, if such statement were proved to be true, it would be in PAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 127 unison with all that we know of the increase of insanity in those countries which have the most civil and religious liberty. There would seem to be evidence that, among the negroes of the South insanity has increased, to a certain degree, since their liberation. The anxieties about the future, family, property, etc., are certainly so wearing on the negro, that some of them, without doubt, have expressed a wish to return to slavery. This very year (1881) a bill has been intro- duced into the House of Representatives in Wash- ington, for a government commission to investigate the causes of the increase of insanity, or, more specifically, to empower the National Board of Health to undertake that task. Although advances in science are not usually made by committees—in- deed, are almost never made by them, least of all by government committees — yet the offering of such a resolution is a suggestion of an advance in the popular interest in one of the great questions of this age or of any age. In this department of science, as in all depart- ments of organized knowledge, the discoveries and advances must be made by young men, working obscurely and alone, and all that committees of con- gress or health boards can do is, to diffuse what these young men have already discovered. 128 ANXIETY AND INSANITY. The people of this country have been pressed constantly with these three questions: How shall we keep from starving ? Who is to be the next president? And where shall we go when we die? In a limited, narrow way, other nations have met these questions; at least two of them, that of star- vation and that of the future life ; but nowhere in ancient or modern civilization have these three questions been agitated so severely or brought up with such energy as here. Tn European civilizations accumulated family wealth has put the first prob- lem, that of getting a living, fairly aside ; whereas, in our country, until the past quarter of a century, the poor-house has been a life-long apprehension. Consider the difference of expenditure of nerve- energy between a person who, always from the mother's arms to the tomb, has not had a thought for money, and one, otherwise similarly situated, who must always hasten and toil, lest he starve. Habit of Forethought. Much of the exhaustion connected with civiliza- tion is the direct product of the forethought and fore- worry that makes civilization possible. In comino- out of barbarism and advancing in the direction of enlightenment the first need is care for the future. There is a story of an American who, on going to an Italian bootmaker to have some slight job CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 129 performed, was met with a refusal to do the work required. On being asked why he refused, he re- plied that he had enough money to last him that day, and ' that he did not care to work. " Yes," said the American, "but how about to-morrow?" " Who ever saw to-morrow ?" was the Italian's response. Those who live on the philosophy suggested by that question, can never be very nervous. This forecasting, this forethinking, discounting the fu- ture, bearing constantly with us not only the real but imagined or possible sorrows and distresses, and not only of our own lives but those of our families and of our descendants, which is the very essence of civilization as distinguished from barbarism, involves a constant and exhausting expenditure of force. Without this forecasting, this sacrifice of the present to the future, this living for our pos- terity, there can be no high civilization and no great achievement; but it is, perhaps, the chief element of expense in all the ambitious classes, in all except the more degraded orders of modern society. We are exhorted, and on hygienic grounds very wisely, not • to borrow trouble — but were there no discounting of disappointment, there would be no progress. The barbarian borrows no trouble; stationary people, like the Chinese, do so but to a slight degree; they keep both their nerve-force 130 EVILS OF FORETHOUGHT. and their possibilities of progress in reserve. Those who have acquired or have inherited wealth, are saved an important percentage of this forecasting and fore-worry ; like Christian, they throw off the burden at the golden gate, but, unlike Christian part of it they must retain ; for they have still the fear that is ever with them of losing their wealth, and they have still all the ambitions and possible disappointments for themselves and for their chil- dren. On the highly civilized man there rests at all times a three-fold burden — the past, the present, and the future! the barbarian carries through life but one burden — that of the present; and, in a psy- chological view, a very light one indeed; the civil- ized man is ever thinking of the past — represent- ing, repeating, recasting, and projecting the expe- riences of bygone days to days that are to come. The savage has no future, and but little of the past, and that little is usually pleasant, and not burden- some. The difference between civilization and savagery, and an impressive and instructive illustration of the cause of nervousness, is given us whenever any rep- resentatives of our Indian tribes visit the east. The utter want of curiosity in matters that do not come immediately home to them is a feature in their char- acter most noticeable and most interesting, contrasting, CA USES OF A M ERIC AN NER VO USNESS. 131 as it does with the excess of Yankee curiosity. The barbarian cares nothing for the great problems of life; seeks no solution — thinks of no solution of the mysteries of nature, and, after the manner of many reasoners in modern delusions, dismisses what he can- not at once comprehend, as supernatural, and leaves it unsatisfactorily solved for himself, for others, and for all time; the curiosity of the Yankee, which, when harnessed, trained, and held in check, becomes the parent of invention, science, and ideas, inquiring into everything with eagerness, unrest, impatience, palpitating anxiety and breathlessness, draws heavily on the units of nerve-force. The North American barbarian is not peculiar in his indifference to nature's mysteries; this fea- ture is but a type of the barbarian and immature mind everywhere, the Indians of South America and Central America — the negroes of Africa and of our pwn country, young children everywhere, and adults who have never matured in the higher ranges of intellect are, in this respect — in varying degrees — like the Indians of the Western plains, living not for science or ideas, but for the senses and emotions. Formal attempts are now being made to educate and civilize the Indians, and, at the present mo- ment, with not success enough to warrant any fear less they should become specially nervous ; but were 132 INDIAN INDIFFERENCE. the scheme to be carried forward in triumph, and the Indian develop into a thinker, questioner, and holder of property, with all the care, economy, and forecasting that property requires, then we shall see correspondingly, a development of nervousness in the Indians, if not in this generation, in those that are to come. The very few cases of insanity among Indians that I have been able to trace or get account of, are among those who have been brought into close relations with the whites, and some of them were of purely religious origin. Single instances illustrate the predominance of civilization as a factor in the causation of nervous- ness over all other secondary and tertiary factors in a most convincing way. Thus, one who while liv- ing in-doors and carrying on some brain-harrying occupation, and who cannot smoke, or drink, or eat any but the plainest and most easily managed food, and who, despite all his cares, is always suffering through, perhaps, the whole range of his nervous system, if he but plunge into the forest, or even from the city into the country toward any point of the compass, shall find himself another person, within perhaps, less than twenty-four hours, and in a few days or weeks can eat the most indigestible food with a disregard of time or method, use tobacco and alcohol freely as the impulse pleases, bear strong CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 133 exertions of mountain climbing or sport; in short leading the life of a barbarian, he has the barba- rian's health, and he finds not the alcohol nor to- bacco, nor food, singly or unitedly, have made him nervous. The human system in its animal state, before modern civilization appeared, was capable of bear- ing greater strain in all its functions without ap- preciable harm. He who has a constitution that requires watching and tenderness and anxious cau- tion, that resents every over-indulgence of irregular- ity or disobedience to the law, has a very poor con- stitution. Comparative Size of the Ancient and Modern World. Little account has been made of the fact that the old world is small geographically. The ancient Greeks knew only of Greece and the few outside barbarians who tried to destroy them. The dis- covery of America, like the invention of printing, prepared the way for modern nervousness; and, in connection with the telegraph, the railway, and the periodical press increased a hundred-fold the dis- tresses of humanity. The sorrows of any part of the world, many times greater geographically than the old world as known to the ancients, through the medium of 134 ACTIVITY OF THE MODERN WORLD. the press and the telegraph are made the sorrows of individuals everywhere. The burning of Chicago — a city less than half a century old, on a continent whose existence was un- known.a few centuries ago —becomes in a few hours the property of both hemispheres, and makes heavy drafts on the vitality not only of Boston and New York, but of London, Paris, and Yienna. With the extension and complexity of populations of the globe, with the rise and growth of nations and peo- ples, these local sorrows and local horrors become daily occasions of nervous disorders. Our morning newspaper, that we read with our breakfast, has the history of the sorrows of the whole world for a day; and a nature but moderately sym- pathetic is robbed thereby, consciously or uncon- sciously, of more or less nervous strength. The railroads of the world measure, 200,000 miles, all but -^ portion being divided between Europe and America; and over these roads pass 66,000 locomotives, 120,000 passenger and 1,500,000 freight cars. On the seas there are 100,000 vessel? and 12,000 steamers with a tonnage of 20,000,000. In proportion to population, Americans write far the most letters; next comes the English; then Switzer- land, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, France, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Russia, Servia, Roumania, Turkey. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 135 Letter writing is an index of nervousness; those nations who writes the most letters being the most nervous, and those who write scarcely at all, as the Turks and Russians, knowing nothing or but very little of it. Life in Ancient Athens and New York con- trasted. When we consider the life of an American child, from its early school-days until the hour it leaves the university or seminary, the many and tiresome hours of study, the endless committing and repeat- ing and reciting, the confinement in constrained positions, the overheated and overdried atmosphere, the newspapers and novels that he is and must be prepared to criticise, the sermons and lectures which he is compelled to listen to "and analyse, the strife and struggle for bread and competence against in- flammatory competition, the worry and concentration of wTork made both possible and necessary by the railway, mail service, and the telegraph ; in view of these facts, we wonder not that the Americans are so nervous, but rather wonder at the power of adaptation of the human frame for unfavorable en- vironment. The education of the Athenian boy consisted in play and games and songs, and repeti- tions of poems, and physical feats in the open air. His life was a long vacation, in which, as a rule, 136 GREECE VS. AMERICA. he rarely toiled as hard as the American lad in the intervals of his toil. All that the world has done for two thousand years — all the history it has made, all its art, science, religion, politics, morals, and social life, the Greek boy could know nothing of, could not even antici- pate ; the world to him was young, and Greece was all the world. No scholar can graduate with even a moderate stand from one of our public schools, without mastering in a certain way, and after years of labor, many of the good or evil thoughts and deeds that have occupied the human race since the ' time of Socrates and Aristotle. From all these events of history, which every year are rolling up as an increasing burden" for the future, the Athenian scholar was joyously free; education was to him but a delicious union of poetry, philosophy, and art. What they called work, gymnastics, competition games, and conversa- tions on art and letters, is to us recreation. Equally striking is the contrast in the life of Athenian and American adults. We have our occasional holidays, and a picnic or other pleasure party is cautiously allowed,.or some anniversary is celebrated; but the Greek's life was a long holiday, a perpetual picnic, a ceaseless anniversary. The Greek wife was half a doll, half a slave. Save a few of the more brilliant among the etairae CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 137 — the demi monde of the time — they had no more voice in the interests of state, or art, or learning, or even of social life, than the children of to-day; the mental activity of woman is indeed almost all modern. The American mother is not only the acknowledged queen of society, but also aims to lead, and oftentimes does lead, with the highest suc- cess, in literature, on the platform, in the pulpit, in philanthropy and reform, and in the practice of the medical art. The offspring of those whose, brains are thus kept in constant motion must be affected for better or for worse, sometimes in both ways. If the brain of the average American is tenfold more active than the brain of the average Athenian, the con trast in the cerebral activity of the women must be even greater. But waiving all attempts to bring the subject under mathematical law, these contrasts make clear, and bring into strong relief, the fact that in every direction the modern brain is more heavily taxed than the ancient. In accordance with all analogies, therefore, nervous sensitiveness and nervous diseases ought to increase with the progress of modern civilization ; and neurasthenia would naturally be more abundant in the present than in the last century. It might theoretically be objected to this reason- ing that the capacity of the brain for work, and of 138 CLIMATE—EXTREMES OF HEAT AND COLD. the nerves for endurance, would grow with the growth of culture. This consideration is surely one of import. Up to a certain point work de- velops capacity for work; through endurance is evolved the power of greater endurance; force becomes the parent of force. But here, as in all animate nature, there are limitations of development which cannot be passed. The capacity of the ner- vous system for sustained work and worry has not increased in proportion to the demands for work and worry that are made upon it. Particularly during the past quarter of a century, under the press and stimulus of the telegraph and railway, the methods and incitements of brain-work have multiplied far in excess of average cerebral develop- ment. It is during this period that various func- tional nervous disorders have multiplied with a rapidity for which history gives us no analogy. Modern nervousness is the cry of the system strug- gling with its environment. Extremes of Heat and Cold. When we wish to obtain a powerful stimulating effect on any part of the body, we apply, in rapid alternation, ice and hot water: used for a short time, this application strengthens ; used for a long time, it weakens. What the temporary effect of an alternation of heat and cold to the whole body may CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 139 be, every one who has taken a Turkish or Russian bath well knows, and what the general effect of such baths kept up constantly, or for a large part of the time, may be, one can without difficulty imagine ; there are, indeed, constitutions that cannot take even a short bath without fainting or weari- ness. The inhabitants of the Northern and Eastern portion of the United States are subjected to severer and more sudden and frequent alternations of extreme heat and cold than the inhabitants of any other civilized country. Our climate is a union of the tropics and the poles: " half the year we freeze, half the year roast," and at all seasons a day of painful cold is liable to be followed by a day of painful warmth. Continuous and uniform cold as in Greenland, like continuous and uniform heat as on the Amazon, produces enervation and languor; but repeated alternations of the cold of Greenland and the heat of the Amazon produce energy, rest- lessness, and nervousness. The climate of England and the Continent differs from that of America, in respect to uniformity, far more than is usu- ally recognized even by those who have passed years abroad: of the cold of our winters, of the heat of our summers, England has but little expe- rience. Invalid travellers who, as is the case with many Americans, are sensitive to cold complain that from the time they leave America to the time 140 NO SUMMER IN ENGLAND. of their return they never know what it is to be really warm. A clerical friend of mine, who resided several years in England, tells me that lack of warmth was a constant and severe afflic- tion. All the houses that he visited were kept at a temperature at least ten degrees below what was comfortable for himself and wife ; and yet nei- ther of them were invalids, though both were ideal representatives of the American type of suscep- tibility. Our extremes give rise, among many other symptoms of nervous impressibility, to sensitiveness to heat and cold; midsummer and midwinter are borne with difficulty, and many whom I have known find it necessary to keep constantly on the run be- fore climatic changes. For such, no section of the country is habitable more than three or four months of the year: in the winter they must take refuge in Florida; in the spring, to escape the heat and malaria, they hasten home, whence, in a few weeks, they are driven to the sea-side or farm-house. To live twelve months in one place is what very few of the brain-working classes of our large cities can endure. In this susceptibility to cold and heat, and the consequent necessity of hot-air furnaces and summer retreats, there has been a vast change within a quarter of a century. Our fathers were comfortable in a temperature of sixty degrees, while CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 14-1 we require from seventy to seventy-five degrees, and even then suffer half the year from creeping chills and cold extremities. The metropolitan heats they bore right through midsummer, without the need or thought of vacation; and, without taking cold or experiencing severe discomfort, sat for hours in damp and tireless churches. Foreigners often complain of our over-warm rooms, which to them are as annoy- ing as their under-warm rooms are to us; a tempera- ture of sixty degrees contents them, as it did our ancestors half a century or less ago. During the summer of 1868 the thermometer in England ranged between eighty-two and eighty-eight degrees, and at one time rose to ninety-two degrees, and all complained of the excessive heat. In the winter ice is not abundant; snow falls only to the depth of two or three inches, and remains on the ground for but a few days; skating and coasting and sleighing are almost forbidden joys. Through the en- tire year, in midwinter even, the meadows are fresh and green, and there is not a month when the public parks cease to be visited. In the coldest seasons a temperature of zero, or even ten degrees above, is very rare; at Greenwich the' average of the ther- mometer during the month of January for half a century was thirty-seven degrees, a temperature that will not only allow but invite various and active out-door recreations. The English winter, indeed, 142 MILDNESS OF THE ENGLISH WINTER. is not unlike our March shorn of some of its bitter- ness and on its good behavior. We Americans, on the contrary, for a part of the year are prisoners to our climate, in the summer not daring: to walk abroad for fear of sunstroke, in midwinter hemmed in by biting cold and impass- able drifts of snow; at no season able to predict or calculate the temperature for a day, or even half an hour, in advance. These sudden leaps of the Ameri- can climate from distressing heat to severe cold, or the reverse, are quite unfamiliar to England, where spring slowly unfolds into summer, and summer in turn descends into a moderate wTinter. Dryness of the Air. The element of dryness of the air, peculiar to our climate as distinguished from that of Europe, both in Great Britain and on the Continent, is of the highest scientific and practical interest. Among the usually observed evidences of the dryness of our atmosphere, these facts are note- worthy : the hair easily becomes harsh and dry, re- quiring oil and pomade; barbers are more popular and more patronized here; clothing hung out on lines gets dry more quickly, to the astonishment of foreign washerwomen; bread dries more rapidly and sooner becomes stale—hence the habit of using it fresh — eating it while warm; cellars can be CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 143 used for the storage of provisions without fear of being injured by dampness; and articles of all sorts are less likely to be ruined by mould —less liable to corrode or decay; paint on houses dries more speedily, and the second coat can be sooner put on; inlaid floors are more easily cracked; makers of musical instruments must be more careful in select- ing the material; the plaster in newly built houses dries so quickly that occupants move in far sooner than they would dare to do abroad; skins in tan- yards do not need to hang out so long for drying; matches are more easily lighted;—if there be excep- tions to all these facts they are found at the sea- coast, on the shores of the great lakes, in damp, woody sections, or on the borders of the Gulf. Extremes of dryness of the air teach us much on this subject. As the United States has a drier atmosphere than Europe, so the West is drier than the East. The climate of Colorado has been well studied by Dr. Dennison and others. This terri- tory is, on the average, 6,500 feet above the level of the sea, while the peaks of the Rocky Mountains beyond reach as high as 13,000 or 14,000 ; and the temperature is not unlike that of New York, Indi- ana, or Illinois. P. J. Huncke, United States signal officer at Denver, reports, that "between October, 1873, and September, 1874, the average humidity was 49.3 per 144 ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. cent. There were no regular dews, fogs, or damp ness at night; on the average there were in two months, 19| days that were clear and sunshiny." On the nervous system this unusual dryness and thinness of the air have a many-sided influence; such as increase of headaches, neuralgias, and diminished capacity for sustaining cerebral toil. At Pike's Peak station, 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, the signal officer of the United States reports that the pulse- beats from 90 to 100 per minute the first month, and from 82 to 90 the second month; and when, as is often the case, there is much electrical disturbance, the pulse goes to 110 and 120. All this is complicated with the ele- ment of error that comes from simple elevation; but in Peru, as I am told, in latitude fifteen de- grees South, at an altitude of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, the climate is favorable to the nervous; and certain districts of Switzerland are famed as refuge- places for neurotic patients. At Leadville, Colorado, the cigars exposed for sale are covered with a wet sponge to keep them from drying up ;. men lose flesh on coming to this region ; catarrhs are very common ; there is a lessened capacity for cerebral toil. This whole American continent, in its northern regions, is Colorado on a smaller scale. The organs, pianos, and violins of America are superior to those made in Europe at the present CAUSES OF A 31 ERIC AN NERVOUSNESS. 145 time. This superiority is the result, not so much of greater skill, ingenuity, or experience, but—so far as I can learn, from conversing with experts in this line — from the greater dryness of the air, which causes the wood to season better than in the moist atmos- phere of Euixme. I am told, furthermore, that American pianos taken to Europe bear well the greater moisture of Europe ; while, on the other hand, musical instru- ments brought from the other side of the Atlantic to this country, do not bear well the greater dryness of our atmosphere. The causes of his great lack of moisture are found in the relative infrequency of lakes, the vast extent of unbroken territory, and the scarcity of rain. Eastern Europe is surrounded by immense bodies of water: hence the air is always freighted with moist- ure ; hence, in part, the ruddiness, the solidity, and the bulk of the representative Englishman. The in- fluence of the Gulf Stream is likewise of great im- portance on the climate of Great Britain, making it both damp and equable. Not only are there many more days of rain in Great Britain than in America, but there are more clouds in the sky, even when it does not rain. Clouds, by well-known physical laws, interfere with evaporation; and thus the dampness remains lono-er in the earth than in a land where sunshine 146 DRYNESS AND ELECTRICITY. is more free. Thus, the number of days of rain and the amount of rain being the same in Great Britain and America, Great Britain would be more moist. This persistent moisture, as is well known, is the cause of the greenness and long-continued beauty of the foliage of Great Britain, of Ireland. and of the Scotch lakes. My friend Professor Ball, of Paris, told me there is in this respect a great difference between Great Britain and France. In Paris, at least, where the sky is far clearer, more like that of America, the streets dry up much more quickly after a rain. The French, as also is well known, are more nervous in some respects than the English, with a finer type of organization, more nearly resembling Americans. In regard to the electrical state of a dry atmos- phere, this general fact is quite clear: that the electricity which is found in all states of the atmos- phere is less evenly and uniformly diffused, and more liable to various disturbances through inequali- ties of tension, when the air is dry than when it is moist. Moisture conducts electricity, and an at- mosphere well charged with moisture, other condi- tions being the same, will tend to keep the elec- tricity in a state of equilibrium, since it allows free find ready conduction at all times and in all direc- tions, The human body, therefore, when surrounded by a nioist atniosphere never has its own electrical CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 147 condition seriously disturbed, nor is it liable to sudden and -frequent disturbances from the want of equilibrium in the air in which it moves. In regions where the atmosphere is excessively dry, as in the Rocky Mountains, human beings— indeed all animals, become constantly acting light- ning-rods, liable at any moment to be made a con- venient pathway through which electricity going to or from the earth seeks an equilibrium. Hence it is that in that section, especially in the more elevated portions, the hair of the head and the tails of horses not unfrequently stand erect, and travellers over the mountains are astonished and alarmed by flames of lightning on the rocks, and even on their walking-sticks. In the valley of Sacramento, and, to a less extent, in other sections of the Pacific coast, there occur at certain times what are called " north winds," which, coming from the desert of the North, are excessively dry, and consequently, for the causes above given, are attended by important electrical disturbances, similar in kind, but severer in degree, to those that at all times are liable to take place in that section. During the prevalence of these winds, which may last several hours or days, fruits and foliage, especially on the side to- ward the wind, tend to shrivel and wither; the grass, likewise, shows the effect of the same influ- ence and human beings and all animals are un- 148 HIGH TEMPERATURE OF HOUSES. wontedly irritable and nervous. Even in the East our neuralgic and rheumatic patients, during and just before thunder-storms, are often suddenly at- tacked by exquisite pains that at once disappear with the appearance of fair weather. There are those so sensitive that for a hundred miles and more, and for a full day in advance, as Dr. Mitchell has showm, they can predict the approach of a storm. The atmospheric conditions and disturbances in rela- tion to moisture, dryness, and electricity which these sensitives thus visibly and painfully appreciate, affect us all, though invisibly and painlessly; but through a lifetime and through the generations these perpet- ually acting influences result in nervousness and ner- vous exhaustion, with all the maladies to which they lead. The exceeding cold of our winters compels us to pass a large part of our time not only in-doors, but in rooms overheated with dry air; thus one of the bad features of our climate plays into the hands of the other, re-enforcing, extending, multiplying, its capacity for evil. The high temperature and unnatural dryness of our closed rooms are both harmful, and are both made necessary by excessive external cold, and by the alternations of heat and cold that produce a sensitiveness of organization which can only find comfort in a somewhat high temperature. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 149 How Dry Air causes Nervousness. Dryness of the air, whether external or internal, likewise excites nervousness by heightening the rapidity of the processes of waste and repair in the organism, so that we live faster than in a moist atmosphere. The rationale of this action of dry- ness on living: being-s—for it is observed in animals as in men — is as follows: Evaporation from the surface of the body is accompanied by dissipation of heat, and by the numerous and complex vital changes of which the evolution and dissipation of heat through evaporation are the results. In a moist atmosphere such evaporation takes place slowly, because the air, being already saturated with water, cannot rapidly take up the vapor that comes from the surface of the body; hence this vapor ac- cumulates in the form of sensible perspiration. A dry atmosphere, on the contrary, is eager and hungry for the bodily moisture and rapidly absorbs it, so that it does not accumulate on the surface, but passes off as insensible perspiration. We per- spire the least when we are apparently perspiring the most; on sultry August days our clothing ia soaked, because the moisture of the body has no chance for ready escape, and consequently the vital changes that produce the moisture are obstructed and move with corresponding slowness. A day that is both moist and warm is hotter to the nerves 150 HOW DRYNESS CAUSES NERVOUSNESS. of sensation and far more oppressive than a far warmer day that is also dry, for the conversion of the fluids of the body into insensible vapor, which process takes place so rapidly in dry air, is attended with escape of bodily heat, which gives relief. Hence it is that in California and on the Pacific coast and in the Rocky Mountain region, where the thermometer sometimes runs as high as one hundred and ten or even one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, sunstrokes were formerly unknown, and even now are exceedingly rare. Hence it is that the hot room in the moist Russian bath is so much harder to bear than the hotter rooms of the dry Turkish bath. Hence it is also that our Au- gust dog-days are so much more wearying and painful than the hotter days of mid-June and of early July. One great climatic advantage of Europe is the non-existence of dog-day weather, as we, in this country, understand that term; the moisture of the Northern European atmosphere is never, for any considerable time, combined with high temperature. The English, who, except by travel in Africa or India or America, know nothing of hot weather warn Americans against visiting Italy in summer; but those who do not heed this advice will find in Venice and Milan and Rome, and even Naples, no warmer days than in America at the same season. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 151 Dryness of the air is one cause of the long- observed leanness of the Americans as compared with the Europeans. We are taller, thinner, lankier, than the original stock in England and Germany, partly because in our dry atmosphere we so rapidly evaporate; the animal fluids disappear into the aerial fluid; we have little chance to accumulate fat. Remelnbering that the body is composed mostly of water, it is clear that rapid evaporation must be attended by a rapid loss of bodily weight. A thousand Americans, taken at random, weigh less on the average than a thousand Englishmen or Germans of the same ages and social status; even the dark aborigines, in spite of their indolence, were almost always lean. The moisture of the atmosphere of England is one cause of the success of her manufactures, and one reason why America finds it hard to compete with England in this respect is the dryness of American atmosphere. Certain threads, I am told, cannot be made in this country, under any condition yet sug- gested, and, for the manufacture of cotton, moisture is of high service. Even in England, there are certain districts more moist than others, and, there- fore, better fitted for manufacturing purposes. The greater prevalence of moisture in the North of England has been assigned as the cause of the greater success of manufacturing in that section; 152 MOISTURE OF ENGLAND. and one of the Manchester mill owners asserted that, during a season of dry weather, there was, in weaving alone, a loss of five per cent, in quantity, and another loss of five per cent, in quality; in spinning, also, an equal loss is claimed. To main- tain moisture in mills, sundry devices have been tried, which have met, I believe, with partial success in practice. Climate alone cannot produce a high order of nervousness, else the North American Indian should have been nervous, but climate plus an intense civilization. Dr. Benjamin Howard, whose oppor- tunities for studying the comparative climatology of Europe and America have been abundant, has brought to my notice, in conversations on this theme, the fact that, in England the difference be- tween the out-door temperature and the in-door temperature is much less than in the United States. An American does not need to be very long in England before noticing this fact, after his attention has been attracted to it. Even in the quite chilly weather of summer and autumn the English keep their doors and windows open and do without fire; and in seasons when fire is imperative, they keep the temperature so low (a little above or below 60 degrees) that one going out doors is sensible of only a slight change — it may be ten, twenty, or thirty degrees; whereas, in America, in our long CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 153 winters, the houses especially in our cities (though not exclusively in cities), the temperature is sel- dom less than seventy or seventy-five degrees, and not infrequently going to eighty degrees; while outside, the temperature is down among the thirties, the twenties, and, in some sections, is at times below zero — thus making a contrast of from forty to eighty degrees or more between the out-door and the in-door temperature. In connection with this fact, and as a part of it, an American in visiting Europe observes the out- doorness of the life of the people as compared with American life. In the Northern, Eastern, and Western portions of the United States, there are so many days in winter and spring when, from extremity of cold, depth of snow, slush or mud, going out of doors is positive punishment to any but the most hardy, or those whose lives compel them to be out; and in midsummer, also, so many days when, extremity of heat and danger of exposing one's self to the direct rays of the sun are great, that the habit of stay- ing in the house becomes fixed, not with women alone, but with men also, and with children of both sexes, and this habit of keeping us in-doors is formed and is kept up at those delightful sea- sons of our summer and early fall when the temp- tation to go out and stay out is stronger, perhaps, 154 OUT-DOOR LIFE OF ENGLISH. than in any other civilized country. Even in our perfect Octobers, on days that are pictures of beauty and ideals of climate — just warm enough to be agreeable and stimulating enough not to be depres- sing, we yet remain in the house far more than Europeans are wont to do even in rainy or ugly seasons. Not only the British themselves, but all people who visit Great Britain during their sad seasons, unite in cursing the English climate; but against all these impatient criticisms should be kept in remembrance this partially redeeming fact that, there is not, probably, on earth, another great coun- try in which, taking all the year round, there are so few days when one cannot go out of doors and, if need be, spend a good portion of the time there. The English know nothing of summer, as we know of it — they have no days when it is dangerous, and scarcely any days when it is painful to walk or ride in the direct rays of the sun; ttnd in win- ter, spring, and fall there are few hours when one cannot by proper clothing keep warm while moder- ately exercising. So little accustomed are the English to warm weather, and so little do they know of summer or of summer heat, that they have no standard of heat as we have; and when, as very often happens, in July, August, or September, there appears a succes- CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 155 sion of days very much like our October weather, they say they are having a hot spell. This past summer (1880), I spent a week in Cambridge, attending a meeting of the British Medi- cal Association. After a long period of wet and cold there came a few days of our October or early November weather — when it was safe even for an American to lay by the overcoat, save in the early morning or in the evening, and perchance to even run the risk of changing from thick to somewhat thin underclothing. It was a perfect week, as judged by the American standard — the only flaw being the chilliness of. the nights and the danger of taking cold in the early morning hours; but all the British, Scotch, and Irish whom we met when referring to the weather spoke of it as being " excessively warm." In Paris and in Southern France, in Spain, Italy, and even in the southern portions of Germany, now and then, are days which the inhabitants call hot, but which we call comfortable, and only com- fortable when we are clothed more warmly than is our custom when in our own country, at the same season. During that week at Cambridge there were held a number of garden parties, mostly out-doors, in the grounds attached to the colleges, and mostly in the afternoon, at an hour when, in America at the same 156 THE LATE SEASON. season, there would have been danger of sunstroke, or, at least, the heat would have been so intense that there would have been no chance of pleasure —whereas, there it was delightful. The contrast between the English and American climates can also be well studied this very year; within the present season (1880-81) at the time that we have been suffering so much in America, there has been a snow-storm in Great Britain, with cold which for that climate is regarded as extraordinary if not unprecedented; and yet, neither the depth of snow nor temperature were at all unusual for America in any winter and would not excite attention or com- ment. Trustworthy accounts from London inform us, however, that the business and pleasure of that metropolis and vicinity were paralyzed by a slight fall of snow and the severity, of the cold. Even the cabmen, who in this city never retreat in the lowest temperature or in the hardest storm, in Lon- don ran to their homes, and it was difficult to get conveyance except by the underground road. Last year Paris was visited somewhat in the same way, and was in a similar state of want of preparation as in London ; the horses were not shod for ice and snow, laborers and the travellers were not qualified for extremes of temperature, and were frightened by a move in the thermometer which we in America expect any time during the winter. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 157 The way, indeed, the Englishman met, or rather re- fused to meet, this cold wave and storm that burst upon him, is the best of all proof that he knows nothing of cold, as he knows nothing of heat, as cold and heat are experienced every year in America. The chorographic map of the United States which is appended, represents by the different de- grees of shading, the relative nervousness of the North and South, and with as much accuracy as we are justified in attempting with our present knowledge, and sufficient also, to give a clear and just idea of what is here stated. It will be noticed that the lines are thick and dark all through New England and the Middle States, and to the west as far as the Mississippi, and that even north as far as Minnesota and Wis- consin the lines are not as far apart as in the Gulf States. In the distant west the population is not yet thick enough to make data for us to form a conclusion as to the comparative nervousness of that region and the South; and in regard to Cali- fornia, also, it is impossible for us to get information accurate enough to represent it fairly on this map; it is probable, however, that nervousness is not so prevalent in California as in the East and North, the climate there being more uniform all the year round, with less frequent and less violent changes, and is more moist than in the East. 158 CHOROGRAPHIC MAP. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 159 Our habits and institutions, so far as they are distinctively American — rapid eating, eager quest for gold, exciting revivals and elections — are the products of a dry atmosphere and extremes of tem- perature combined with the needs of a new country and a pioneer life. We are nervous, because the rapid evaporation in our dry, out-door air and in our overheated rooms, for reasons above given, heightens the rapidity of the processes of waste and repair in the brain and nervous system, and because of the exhausting stimulation of alternations of torrid heat and polar cold; and, this nervousness is enhanced by the stress of poverty, the urgency of finding and holding means of living, the scarcity of in- herited wealth, and the just desire of making and maintaining fortunes. We cannot afford to be calm ; for those to whom the last question is whether they shall exist or die there is no time or force for ac- quiring plumpness of the body. Not How shall we live? but Can we live at all? is the problem that almost every American is all his life compelled to face. The neuroses, or functional nervous diseases— of which sick-headache, neurasthenia (nervous ex- haustion), neuralgia, spinal irritation, and hay-fever are types—are vastly more frequent and more com- plex in the Northern and Eastern part of the United States than in all the world besides. These 160 LESS NERVOUSNESS SOUTH. maladies are an evolution, a differentiation of the nervous exhaustion produced by our climate and institutions. They have increased piari passu with the increase of activity and the complexity and friction of our civilization. They did not appear in the first century of the republic, for time must elapse before climatic peculiarities could show, on a wide scale, their special effects on the organiza- tion ; furthermore, in the last half century the stress and friction of civilization, under the influ- ence of the railway, the newspaper, and the tele- graph, have increased to a degree unparalleled in modern or ancient times. From this same cause— civilization—the European as well as the American nerves have been affected, though on account of differences of climate and institutions far less than in our own country. All of the above reasonings apply to the North- ern and Eastern portions of the United States far more than to the Southern States or to Canada. In the South, particularly in the Gulf States, there are not the extremes of heat and cold, nor the peculiar dryness of the air, that have been described. The Southern winters are mild, with little or no snow and abundance of rain and dampness, while the summers are never as intensely hot as in the lati- tude of Boston and New York. Throughout the year the Southern climate is both more equable and CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 161 more moist than that of the North. Herein is explained the most interesting and suggestive fact that functional nervous diseases of all kinds regu- larly diminish in frequency and variety as we go South. Canada has extremes of temperature, but more of steady cold than the States, while the air is kept moist by numerous rivers, lakes, and the wide extent of forest; partly for this reason and partly on account of differences of institutions it does not share, to any very marked degree, in the nervousness of the Northern United States. Climate of America compared with that of Japan. The climates of the coasts of the Old and New World have certain resemblances, though they are not precisely alike. The isothermal line of 51° Fahrenheit passes through New York, Paris, and Kanagawa. The climates of coasts are to a consid- erable degree determined by the ocean currents. The Pacific Ocean, like the Atlantic, has its Gulf Stream. The Kuro Si wo stream of the Pacific, with its circuit of 18,000 miles, carries the warm water of the tropics towards the poles, and regulates in a manner the climate of Japan. Mr. Croll estimates that if the Gulf Stream were to stop, the annual temperature of London would fall thirty degrees, and England would become as cold as Nova Zembla. It is the influence of the Gulf Stream that causes 162 CLIMATE OF JAPAN. London, that is eleven degrees farther north than New York, to have an annual mean temperature but two degrees lower. The best analogue to the American climate is that of Japan, which lies on the eastern coast of Asia, as America lies on the eastern coast of America. A portion of Japan which lies on the Pacific Ocean and receives the warmth which comes from the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, is considerably modified thereby in its temperature; but on the west side of the Islands the climate has something of the rigor of that of America. According to Miss Isabella Bird, who has recently published a work entitled, " Unbeaten Tracks in Japan," which is not only the very best work ever written on Japan, but one of the most remarkable works of travel ever written by man or woman, it seems that the Japanese suffer both from extremes of heat and cold, from deep snows and ice, and from the many weeks of sultriness such as oppress us in the United States. The atmosphere, however, of Japan, is all through far more moist than that of America, in that respect resembling some of the British Isles; there is more rain and more moisture without refer- ence to rain, than in America. In the Japanese, however, we see suggestions of a fineness of type which is peculiarly American; and had the Japan- ese obtained civilization which, in institutions and CAUSES OF AMERICAN* NERVOUSNESS. 163 in intensity had even approximated that of America and Europe, it is not improbable that they might have developed a nervous susceptibility which, in their present condition, does not exist. This is certain; — that the Japanese, even of the lower orders, are of a far finer type than the Chinese, or any of the nations of the Orient, and that the Japanese woman of the higher classes, ac- cording to Miss Bird and all authorities, is of a sensitiveness of organization and a grace and deli- cacy of manner that suggest the highest types, as we meet them in the very highest civilization^ Differences in American Climate. The mountain climate of the United States, or the territorial climate, somewhat resembles that of Central Asia; it is both very dry and very severe in heat or cold in Colorado, in Arizona, in Ne- vada, in Utah, and in Idaho. The atmosphere is thin and dry, and is subject to frequent, sudden, and furious .changes; it is the brewery or pathway of storms for a whole continent. Our Meteoro- logical Bureau has justified its existence and labors by demonstrating and popularizing the fact that our waves of extreme heat and of extreme cold and severe climatic perturbations of various kinds are born in or pass from the Pacific through these mountains and travel eastward, and hence their paths 164 NERVOUSNESS IN THE WEST. can be followed and their coming can be predicted with a measure of certainty. These"storms and waves of heat and cold are the results of extremes of tem- perature in these mountain districts. In Northern Montana the mean temperature at 4.35 p. m., the hot- test week in 1872, was 90° and the coldest week in the same year at 7.35 a. m., 12° below zero, which is a difference of 102°. At Denver, Colorado, the annual mean temperature is 48°; at this place, in January, 1873, the extreme temperatures were 62° above and 17° below zero, a difference of 79°. In October there was av difference of 81°—between 5 and 86. Not only is this mountain climate noted for ex- tremes of temperature, but, from the elevation, the air is very much rarified and is exceedingly dry— all the elements requisite for producing nervousness. It is not strange, then, that new-comers lose weight, in some cases quite rapidly, an average loss of one- eighth being not unusual; a two hundred pound man losing twenty-five pounds and becoming a hundred and seventy-five pounder. This takes place at Denver, the queen city of the mountains, situ- ated a mile above the sea, where the sun almost always shines, where the atmosphere is translucent and dry and the temperature is extreme, though the nights are usually cool. In higher regions, as at Leadville, two miles above the sea, the loss in weight goes as far as one-sixth or one-seventh of CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 165 the weight of the body, and goes on much more rapidly. Travellers in those very elevated regions confirm the statement of Bayard Taylor, that new residents may be recognized by the spots of blood upon their handkerchiefs. In this section and generally also in the very dry and elevated plateaus of the distant West, sex- ual desire and power in man are diminished to a very remarkable degree. Coming eastward across the Mississippi, we find that the climate of Minnesota has a yearly mean of 42°; 15° for the winter, 41° for the spring, 68° for the summer, and 45° for the autumn — a range of 53,, between the means of summer and winter; the winters being very severe and not uniform, and with sudden and frequent variations; the extremes of the year ranging from 39° below zero to 99° above zero—a clear break of 138 degrees. The air of this region is also very dry, though much less rarified than that of Denver and of the mountains; and as the mountains are the birth- places of storms, so Minnesota and the northwest is the centre of nervous diseases; probably no young and newly-settled district in the world has, in so short a time, developed in proportion to the brain- working population, so much nervousness as this region. I form this judgment from the testimony of many physicians and others who have visited 166 CLIMATES CONTRASTED. or resided there, and from many patients from that section who consulted me professionally.* Tropical and Sub-Tropical Climate contrasted with the Climate of A merica. There appears to be no climate on the globe, in all respects, and at all times, equable and agree- able for civilized beings. The Sandwich Islands is, on the whole, perhaps, at all seasons, and for nearly all years, the most agreeable climate in the world; the temperature ranging nearly all months between 65° and 85°, with occasional fallings and risings. The extraordinary uniformity of the seasons in those islands is ac- counted for in part by the under-currents of the ocean ; cold streams from the north flowing at the bottom of the ocean and coming up to the sur- face in that vicinity, thus tempering the climate— which otherwise would be excessively hot — and producing also, a uniformity and equability at all seasons of the year. There is evidence, also, that the climate of Southern California and Mexico are very agreeable, at least for a considerable portion of the year. The climate of California proper has * For many facts in the above analysis of climate 1 am in- debted to very valuable and well written articles on " Climates for Invalids," by Dr. T. M. Coan, in Harpefs Magazine, and to Dr. Dennison's" Rocky Mountain Health Resorts." CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 167 many and serious drawbacks, such as fogs, winds, cold and heat. None of the famous health resorts of Europe or America have good climates; the famed places on the Mediterranean are liable at any time to be attacked by chilling, biting winds that are hard even for the sturdy to bear. Our own Florida is in the spring months, though superior to the Mediterranean coast, very far from being uni- form or trustworthy like the Sandwich Islands, the changes there being not only excessive, but violent, sudden, almost instantaneous. I started one morning from Palatka, on the St. Johns River, on a fishing excursion. So great was the heat during the middle of the day, that I found it convenient—even absolutely necessary, to take off my coat and hold an umbrella over my head, while my guide rowed to our destination ; but on return- ing, late in the afternoon, the cold became so se- vere that the heaviest ulster would have been agree- able, and I was forced to row myself with all my strength, to avoid taking cold. The day following, going up the river on a steamer, a closely-buttoned overcoat was as much needed as in midwinter at the North. In a short trip, less than two weeks, I caught cold twice, although taking all possible care; and that season was not regarded as an unusually unpleasant one. While visiting Florida that year (1880), I was 168 CAPRICE OF SOUTHERN CLIMATE. informed by a resident that the cold had been so intense in that region, years ago, as to destroy the orange trees. This year (18S1) the same intense cold has prevailed; even on the St. Johns River oranges have frozen, trees have been injured, if not destroyed, and invalids fleeing from the savage North, have shivered and suffered in the hotels and on the lines of travel. On the sea islands between Charleston and Savannah, ice an inch thick has been formed, and oranges have been frozen on the trees; fires and closed windows have been as much needed as at the North, and days and weeks of rain and mud have made the lives even of the healthy miserable. It is said that this is an exceptional season, but almost all our seasons are exceptional; all over our country, unusual heat and unusual cold, or what seems to be unusual because it represents our latest suffering, and is therefore nearest to us and best remembered, is experienced many times every year and in nearly all portions of the United States. The present season of 1881 illustrates in the ex- treme one great cause for American nervousness. As I write, the whole North and West is cov- ered with snow, the accumulation of nearly twenty storms during the past two months; so little rain has there been that streams and wells that rarely give out are dry, and in various country places, as CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 169 I am told, one must go far away, and often use melted snow to obtain water. Wave after wave of Arctic cold, starting from the great reservoir or aqueduct of climates, Mani- toba Territory, has rolled over the country carrying immense suffering to all classes, wealthy and poor, and causing the death of thousands by pneumonias, pleurisies, and kindred disorders. The streets of New York at this very moment are blockaded, and are destined for a long time to remain blockaded with banks of snow, which this rich metropolis cannot afford to remove ; rivers packed with blocks of ice that makes navigation both hard and dangerous; on all lines of travel in the city and of the roads leading to it, there is obstruction of trade, and in some places absolute suspension; not only delicate women aud children, but even moderately strong and vigorous men, have been for weeks imprisoned with the cold, as closely and as cruelly as by a besieging army; all the ap- pliances for easing the temperature, by furnaces fireplaces, and ranges, have but partially succeeded, and the homes even of the wealthiest citizens are, a part of the time, cheerless and disagreeable. A large percentage of our population has been, or is now prostrated by severe cold; many of those who are able are fleeing southward, where they hope, and perhaps a part of the time may find milder 170 SEVERITY OF THIS SEASON. skies, and escape the exhaustion of our protracted springs. But seven months ago, in this very city, the heat was so powerful that those who dressed after the manner of the tropics could find, night or day} no comfort, even when idle, except by resorting to the sea-side, where, when the wind came from the land, but little more relief was to be had than at home; the waves of the fiercest tropical heat com- ing from the regions of the mountains are now suc- ceeded by waves of polar cold; a difference in the temperature of between 100 and 140 degrees. No other civilized country, ancient or modern, has ever had such a climate as this. It is noticed in the seasons of extreme cold, that we do not be- come hardened, but weakened and made sensitive by exposure and attempts to endure it; the longer the cold persists the more we feel it, and the more liable we are to be prostrated and carried away by it; hence it is, that in the latter part of the winter and early spring—or what passes for spring, which is really a part of winter, and sometimes its worse part —there is more suffering from cold, more liability to disease, by taking cold, and more debility from long confinement in dry and overheated air than in early and midwinter; hence, the suffering of spring; hence, the desire to go southward ; hence, the old- fashioned custom of bleeding at that time ; hence, CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 171 the prevalence of what are called bilious attacks in the months of March, April, and May. Similarly we are not hardened but weakened by extreme heat; the early days of midsummer we bear well, but become more and more impressible as the sum- mer advances. Recapitulation of Causes of Nervous Exhaustion. The series of causes which result in a case of nervous exhaustion or general nervousness may be thus tabulated : First, the predisposing causes. Under this head comes— 1. Modern Civilization. This is placed at the head, because none of the predisposing or exciting causes that follow it are competent to produce functional nervous disease of the class described in this work unless civilization prepares the wTay. The nervous diseases from which savages suffer, and the lower orders of peasantry, are largely of a subjective, psychical character, being caused by the emotions, and assume very different phases, whatever their names be, from those herein described. Civilization is, then, the one constant factor, the foundation of all these neuroses, when- ever they exist. Other factors are inconstant; cli- mate varies, special occupations vary ; hygienic habits vary, but civilisation of some form, with its attend- 172 CLIMATE AND RACE. ant brain-work and worry, with its in-door life, is an inevitable factor in the causation of all these neuroses. 2. Climate. That climate must take a secondary, not a prim- ary place among predisposing causes of nervous ex- haustion, the history of our country alone proves. The American aborigines were the least nervous of all people; but the climate in which they lived was not much different from that in which are now living the most nervous people in the world. 3. Race. In limited, historic time, race is, in some socio- logical aspects, more potent than climate, since the strong races, like the Hebrews and Anglo-Saxons, succeed in nearly all climates, and are dominant wherever they go; but in unlimited or very ex- tended time, race is a result of climate and envi- ronment. We have seen already that these neuroses may be developed in almost any race, in two or three generations, as is proved almost constantly in our climate, under which are gathered so many dif- ferent races. The two great factors in climate which are of most import in their relation to the nervous system are, dryness and moisture, heat and cold. But there had been extremes of temperature and dryness of the atmosphere for ages before modern nervousness appeared. CA USES OF A MERICA N NEB VO USNESS. 173 4. The Nervous Diathesis. The nervous diathesis can only be developed to its full expression under the combined influences of race and climate. That this is a predisposing, more perhaps than an exciting cause, is proved by the fact that very many persons have this nervous dia- thesis without developing to any very great extent nervous diseases. Among the exciting causes are the following : First, functional excess of any kind, as of the brain, the spine, the digestive, the muscular, and the reproductive systems. Under this head must be classed all excesses in eating or drinking, the use of stimulants and nar- cotics, financial and domestic trouble. None of these factors are competent to produce these neuroses, unless the way is prepared by the predisposing causes. Savages may go to the most furious excesses without developing any nervous disease; they may gorge themselves, or they may go without eating for a week, they may rest in camp or they may go upon laborious campaigns, and yet never have nervous dyspepsia, sick-headache, hay- fever, or neuralgia. These exciting causes have usually been regarded as the sole causes of nervous diseases ; although a philosophical study of this sub- ject shows that of themselves they have but little power. They can only sow a crop of nervous dis- 174 EXCITING CAUSES. eases in a soil that has been prepared by civiliza- tion. No people in the world are so careful of their diet, the quality and quantity of their food, and in regard to their habits of drinking, as the very class of Americans who suffer most from these neuroses. At this point a query may be raised : Did not the eating, drinking, and smoking of our ancestors pre- pare the way for our nervousness ? Is not modern nervousness the remote effect of ancient dissipation ? The answer is, that where there is no civiliza- tion there is no nervousness, no matter what the personal habits may be, even though the experiment be made, as in Africa, for centuries. It would be impossible for an American Indian by any degree of recklessness or excess to make himself nervous. Alcohol only produces inebriety when it acts on a nervous system previously made sensitive. Alcoholism and inebriety are the pro- ducts not of alcohol, but of alcohol plus a certain grade of nerve degeneration. When a nervous American is shut up in bad and overheated airj he becomes more nervous • his face perhaps flushes, his head aches, there is a sensa- tion of suffocation and vague misery that finds quick relief on getting into the open air, and in all direc- tions there is cl unshaken belief in the injurious- ness of breathing bad air; and injunctions to live CAUSES OF AMEBIC AN NERVOUSNESS. 175 as much as possible out of doors, and to get away from cities and city-life are among the truisms of sanitary science. But bad air, that is, air simply made impure by the presence of human beings, without any special contagion, seems powerless to produce disease of any kind, unless the system be prepared for it. Not only bad air, but bad air and filth combined, the Chinese of the lower orders endure both in this country and their own, and are not demonstrably harmed thereby—certainly not in their nervous systems; but impure air, plus a constitution drawn upon and weakened by civiliza- tion, is an exciting cause of nervous disease of im- mense force. The Chinese huddled and herded together like sheep, of course breathe, by day as well as by night, an atmosphere as vile as it can be made by human breathing and human em- anations, but seem to develop therefrom no form of nervous disease, and not always, any form of acute and inflammatory disease; and the savage tribes of the extreme North, and in cold regions everywhere, imprison themselves in their filthy houses without receiving any injury that can be easily traced, and if injury does result it is mani- fested otherwise than through the nervous system. It cannot be too strongly enforced in all our thoughts, and controversies, and arguments on this complex theme of the causation of nervous disease, 176 NERVOUSNESS AND CIVILIZATION. that not tobacco, nor alcohol, nor digestive, nor sexual excess, nor foul air, nor deprivation, nor in dulgence in any form, can produce nervous disease unless they act upon a constitution predisposed by civilization. American nervousness is the product of American civilization. All the other influences —climate, nervous diathesis, evil habits, worry and overtoil — are either secondary or tertiary. The philosophy of the causation of American nervous- ness may be expressed in algebraic formula as follows: civilization in general + American civil- ization in particular (young and rapidly growing nation, with civil, religious, and social liberty) + ex- hausting climate (extremes of heat and cold, and dryness) + the nervous diathesis (itself a result of previously named factors) + overwork or over- worry, or excessive indulgence of appetites or pas- sions = an attack of neurasthenia or nervous ex- naustion. A philosophic study of this question requires us to consider the whole equation, and not portions of it. To look exclusively to the bad habits or excesses, whether in use of food or alco- hol or tobacco, or to special worry or excitement, or to any severe drafts on the nervous system that come from parturition or lactation in women, or to puberty or change of life, is as illogical, in the study of this subject, as it would be in the study of algebra. Climate is powerless without civiliza- CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 177 tion; the nervous diathesis can only exist in civiliza- tion, and excesses of the most extreme kind, excite- ments of the most violent nature, of themselves, without the addition of civilization, cannot equal a case of nervousness. The study of the eye on account of the great precision of modern ophthalmoscopes, helps us in the solution of many severe problems. Dr. Brudenell Carter, of London, in his work on " Diseases of the Eye," quotes a letter of Dr. Dixon, from Constantinople, in which it is stated that tne consumption of tobacco in that city averaged about three pounds a month for each in dividual, but that amaurosis was there a rare affec- tion. Dr. Habsch, the chief oculist in Constanti- nople, says that the effect of tobacco upon the eyes is very problematical; that everybody smokes from morning to night, the men a great deal, the women a little less than the men, and the children smoke from the age of seven and eight years. He states that the number of cases of amaurosis is very limited. If expert oculists would examine the eyes of the Chinese, who smoke quite as much as the Turks, if not more, and smoke opium as well as tobacco, they would unquestionably confirm the conclusion of Dr. Habsch among the Turks. Dr. Habsch believes that in persons with a very deli- cate skin and conjunctiva among the Turks, smok- 178 TOBACCO AND EYE DISEASE. ing frequently causes chronic irritation, local con gestion, profuse lachrymation, blepharitis ciliarisi and more or less intense redness of the eyelids.* Dr. K. Hekimian Sewny, of the Central Turk- ish College, at Aintab, in a private letter to Dr. Roosa, recently published in the Medical Record, confirms what is here claimed. He says that in an extensive practice of four years and a half in various large cities of Asia Minor, he does not recollect ever seeing a single case of amblyopia or amaurosis due solely to the use of tobacco. He says that he thinks that in some rare cases these conditions may result from the use of alcohol and tobacco at the same time. He also states, what is known everywhere, that the Turks are great smokers, and that they use strong tobacco. Dr. Sewny is endorsed by Dr. Roosa as an expert on diseases of the eye, and when he makes the above statements we may accept them as authoritative. The Hollanders, according to a most expert traveller, Edmondo De Amicis, are the greatest smokers of Europe; on entering a house, with the * For this reference I am indebted to a letter to the Medical Record, of December 1, 1880, from Dr. Roosa. The letter was called forth by the paper of Dr. Webster on " Amblyopia from the Use of Tobacco," read before the New York County Medical Association. Smoking acting on the savage or barbarian or semi- civilized constitution, can no more cause nervous disease than an acid can make soap without an alkali. CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 179 first greeting you are offered a cigar, and when you leave another is handed to you; many retire with a pipe in their mouth, re-light it if they awake dur- ing the night; they measure distances by smoke; to such a place by not so many miles but by so many pipes. Says one Hollander, smoke is our second breath; says another, the cigar is the sixth finger of the hand. And yet by the accepted reasoning of the world amblyopia, and amaurosis, and neurasthenia, and hay-fever, and sick-headache, and sleeplessness, and insanity, and hysteria, would be proved to be just as common among these people as in America, if there were but experts on hand to make the obser- vations. The method in which subjects of this kind have been discussed are most discreditable to our science and our logic. This method of reason- ing I have been obliged to meet from the time when I first inaugurated the public discussion of this sub- ject in accordance with the philosophy of this work, and it must be met even now, although with a higher evolution of ideas, and improved training among scientific men, it is slowly passing away. The need of our age, the need of all ages, of our country and of all countries, is a reconstruc- tion of logic and the principles of evidence, so that we shall know how to reason justly—shall know what to reject, and what to believe. 180 ' OPIUM EATING IN CHINA. Opium Eating not always Injurious to the Chi- nese. Opium eating in China does not work in the way that the same habit does in the white races. Mr. Gardner, one of Her Majesty's consuls at Che Fooe, estimates that half the adult population of China are smokers of opium, some being occasional smok- ers, others habitual, and others still who smoke to great excess. He further observes that when it is said of a Chinaman that he smokes opium, it is meant that he smokes to excess and has a morbid craving for it, just as with us the expression a man drinks, means that he drinks too much — not that he drinks occasionally or moderately; and that it is really nothing against anyone to be an occasional user of opium, any more than it is against one here to be an occasional user of tobacco or alcohol. The same observer estimates that 17,000,000 pounds of opium are annually consumed in China, and as the most excessive smoker does not consume more than four pounds, it is safe to calculate that half a pound is the general average consumption of all classes. It is clear that the habit of taking opium does not necessarily impair fertility, since large families are known among those who use opium, even to excess. It is clear, also, that thousands of hard-toiling people in China find, in opium smok- ing, the same consolation that thousands of hard- CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 181 toiling people in Europe and America find in tobacco smoking, and writh no more demonstrably injurious effects. Among my nervous patients I find very many who cannot digest vegetables, but mr.st use them with much caution ; but all China livos on vegetables, and indigestion is not a na- tional disease. Many of the Chinese live in un- drained grounds, in conditions favorable to ague and various fevers, but they do not suffer from these diseases, nor from diseases of the lungs and bron- chial tubes, to the same extent as foreign residents there who do not use opium. There is reason for the belief that the smoking of opium has an anti- septic power, and even if that fact be disproved or doubted, the general fact that the majority of those who use opium in China are not injured by it, can- not be questioned. Health and Habits of North American Indians. There was recently published in the Maryland Medical Journal, a very interesting paper on <• The Peculiarities of American Indians, from a Physi- ological and Pathological Standpoint," by W. C. Boteler, M.D., I.U.S.S.S., Otoe Agency, Gage Co., Nebraska. Since the publication of this paper I have had some correspondence with Dr. Boteler, and I find from his paper and from the letters which he has written me, that his observations 182 HEALTH OF AMERICAN INDIANS. there, on the ground, are in entire harmony with all the conclusions that I have derived from a thorough study of the subject, extending over many years, and through all sources of information — lit- erature, individual observations, and conversations, and correspondence with men who have passed their lives among the Indians. Succinctly stated, his observations are these: First. The Indian does not need pure air in order to be healthy; the Indian's home, in his language, is his wigwam; instead of 3,000 feet of cubic air per individual, which, according to best estimates, the white man requires, his house will scarcely contain 1,000 cubic feet, and this is rendered impure also by emanations from the cookery, and contains in the average about six human beings ; there are no windows or .doors, and no ventilation; every crevice is closed, except for the door-drop occasionally opened, and a place for the exit of smoke at the top. Secondly. Food of any kind seems to be di- gested with equal ease, without regard to the method of its preparation. The Indian in his original state subsisted largely on beef, when he could get it—on the whole, the best single food for man; but now that buffalo are scarce, the Indian depends largely on Indian corn, and on one meal a day of corn will work at the plough from morning until night. The water is sometimes as bad as the CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 18? food, and is taken, Dr. Boteler says, usually from streams and sloughs filled with germs and miserable impurities. Third. The Indian has less sickness than the white, and is, as a rule, in perfect health and well developed. This bad air, bad water, and bad food do not have any provably injurious effect on his constitution. Granted that the future gen- erations may suffer from these unfortunate surround- ings of their ancestors, this one fact is an entirety —that the present generation can endure this bad hygiene; whereas the whites, their contemporaries in the same climate, are affected in their own gen- eration, not only in a year or month or day, but instantly, since there are those who cannot go into a crowded theatre, or into a hovel where the air is close and impure, without being at once unpleasantly affected, and, if they long remain, seri- ously so. Moreover, we know that the Kamschat- kans may spend a good portion of their time in badly ventilated huts without any apparent injury to the nervous system. All these facts impress upon us the important generalization that food and diet and exercise and air and drinks and modes of life are relative and not absolute; that their injuriousness or innocuous- ness depends on the subjective character of the individual; and that man in his original state, before the coming of civilization, could stand ex 184 WOMAN IN THE SAVAGE STATE. tremes of diet and extremes of exposure, and ex- tremes of deprivation, and excess of almost every form, just as he can stand extremes of temperature, without demonstrable injury; the amount of reserve force in the normal constitution being so great, that scarcely any conceivable extravagance can produce bankruptcy. Fourth. That the illnesses of the Indian are more readily managed than the same illnesses of the white people. Their fevers are more readily treated, their rheumatisms and bronchial affections and lung fevers and pleurisies respond more quickly and pleasantly to the usual treatment that we give these troubles, than the same diseases in the whites. Malaria, which is found among them, gives away better to the bark treatment or quinine, than ma- laria in the wdiites ; and Dr. Boteler observed that the whites who marry among the Indians and share their wigwams, sometimes appear for treatment with the Indians at the same time with the same symptoms, and it is observed that after several days of medica- tion the Indian will be well and the white man still an invalid, and so remain for weeks. Physique of Woman in the Savage State. Woman in the savage state is not delicate, sen- sitive, or weak. Like man, she is strong, well de- veloped, and muscular, with capacity for enduring CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 185 toil, as well as child-bearing. The weakness of woman is all modern, and it is pre-eminently American. Among the Indians the girls, like the boys, are brought up to toil and out-door life; they are expected to tear limbs and boughs from trees and break sticks for fires. So different are the squaws from the tender and beautiful women of the white races, that they seem to belong to another order of creatures. The young wife of an Indian, having quarrelled one day with her husband, seized him by both ears and the hair, as he was raising his hand to strike her, threw him on the ground, as one would throw a child, and raising his head with her hands, beat it upon the hard ground until he begged for his life. In the same tribe (the Apaches) there was a young wife who prepared a meal for her husband and his friend, cooking the food and bringing it on the table. While they were eating, she went away, and in less than an hour re- turned, dressed in the finest apparel and ornaments and apparently very pleased and happy about some- thing. Pressed for an explanation, she took her hus- band away down to the spring in a thicket near by, and there in a bed of moss, wrapped in finest skins, was a beautiful new-born child. Within the short period of less than an hour all this had been accom- plished, and the mother was as lively and strong as though nothing had happened. 1S6 NORTH VS. SOUTH. The problem can be solved by studying this Con- tinent alone. It is not necessary to go off the continent of North America, it is not necessary to leave the United States, in order to study the relation of civilization to the nervous system, and in order to demonstrate out of all dispute the proposition, that nervousness is a result and accompaniment and barometer of civilization. As the Indian comes in contact with civiliza- tion there is a slight increase of insanity among them ; as the negro obtains his freedom and uses it, there is likewise a slight increase of insanity, but not as yet perceptible as other forms of disease; but the insanity of the negro, if not of the Indian, so far as I can understand and learn, is of a more hopeful sort and has a better prognosis than the insanity of the whites. Contrasting the North and the South, we not only find that nervous diseases of all kinds stead- ily diminish as we go towards the Gulf; but with this diminution of nervous diseases, we find, as a cause and explanation, a moister and less excit- ing climate, and institutions that favor conservatism more than radicalism. A Northerner worships the new, the Southerner the old. A Southern manufac- turer successfully managing a cotton manufactory in Georgia, told me that he had always great diffi- CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 187 culty in introducing any new machinery or devices or methods in his establishments; far more oppo- sition was made than in the West, among the same class of people; they opposed the innovations not because they were bad, but because they were new. In the West the new is always preferred to the old, and if the old be accepted it must have a battle to gain that acceptance; and in the West also there is great and increasing nervousness. I suspect, but am not able to prove, that since the war there has been among the whites of the South an increase of functional diseases. This is sure, that some of the most severe cases of this char- acter have come under my care from the Gulf States; and I have found that in a number of these cases, over anxietv and toil have been the exciting; causes. The Southerners have had their fortunes to re-make; old modes of business have been revived » under different conditions, and new businesses and new interests have developed with a swiftness and complexity which before the war was impossible, or at least impracticable. Riding the other day through the streets and along the wharves of Savan- nah, I observed a commercial activity greater than were found in almost any Northern city except the very largest. Since the war, also, the Northerners have visited the South, for health and amusement, in large numbers, during the winter especially, and 188 HEALTH OF SOUTHERN NEGROES. by the law of mental contagion, they are, no doubt, acting upon and influencing the Southern character. A Study of Southern Negroes. It is not necessary to read books of travel in order to know that nervous diseases do not exist, or exist but very rarely among savages or semi-savages, or even among barbarians, and that indulgence in passions and excess in narcotics and stimulants, as alcohol and tobacco and bad diet, are powerless of themselves to produce nervous diseases in any great frequency; on our own soil, barbarism can be well investigated. I have been twice favored with the chance to study Africa in America. On the sea islands of the South, between Charleston and Savan- nah, there are thousands of negroes, once slaves, most of whom were born on those islands, and there will die, and who at no time have been brought into relation with our civilization, except so far as it is exhibited in a very few white inhabitants in the vicinity. Intellectually, they can be not very much in advance of their African ancestors; in looks and manners they remind me of the Zulus now exhibiting in America; for although since eman- cipation they have been taught by philanthropists, part of the time under governmental supervision, some of the elements of common school teaching, yet none of them have made, or are soon likely tc CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. ISO make, any very important progress beyond those elements, and few, if any of them, even care to ex- ercise the art of reading after it is taught them. Here then, is a bit of barbarism at our door-steps; here, with our own eyes, and with the aid of those who live near them and employ them, I have sought for the facts of comparative neurology. There is almost no insanity among these negroes ; there is no functional nervous disease or symptoms among them of a,nj name or phase ; to suggest spinal irritation, or hysteria of the physical form, or hay-fever, or nervous dyspepsia among these people, is but to joke. Inflammatory diseases they have as frequently, perhaps more frequently, than the whites; colds and rheumatisms, and pneumonias are common, and of these diseases they die; but of nervousness and of nervous diseases, from insanity down through all the grades, they know little more, or no more than their distant relatives on the banks of the Congo. All the exciting causes which philosophers have assigned as explanations of nervous diseases and of their increase in civilized countries, are operating there with constant and tremendous power. These primitive people can go, when required, for weeks and months sleeping but one or two hours out of the twenty-four; they can labor for all day, or for two days, eating nothing or but little; hog and hominy and fish, all the year round, they can eat 190 SOUTHERN NEGROES. without getting dyspepsia; indulgence of passions several-fold greater, at least, than is the habit of the whites, either there or here, never injures them either permanently or temporarily; if you would find a virgin among them, it is said you must go to the cradle ; alcohol, when they can get it, they drink with freedom, and become intoxicated like the whites, but rarely, indeed, manifest the symptoms of delirium-tremens, and never of chronic alcohol- ism ; some of them are drunkards, but none are inebriates. Although in the great cities, especially since emancipation, insanity has, perhaps, somewhat increased, these thousands of negroes are types of negroes all over the South; they are types of all Central Africa; they are types of South America; they are types of Australia; they are types of our not so very distant ancestors in Europe. These blacks cannot summon as much energy for a moment in an emergency as the whites, since they have less control over their energies, but in holding-on power, in sustained, continuous, unbroken muscular endurance, for hours and days, they sur- pass the whites. One of my friends seeing a negro attempting unsuccessfully to lift a trunk, seized hold of it himself and with ease carried it up stairs. The negro said, " You can lift a heavier trunk than I can, but I can work longer than you, I can tire you out." CAUSES OF AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS. 191 My friend Dr. Tonner, formerly of the United States Army, tells me that the Indians of Arizona exhibit a similar endurance. For a reward of fifty cents and a little sugar, he could at any time hire a young Indian to take a journey of over one hum dred miles in twenty-four hours, going all the time at a dog-trot, and with no rest and no refreshment except sugar and water. All this freedom from nervousness and nervous diseases we have sacrificed for civilization: we can- not, indeed, have civilization and have anything else; as we advance we lose sight and possession of the region through which we have passed. Comparative Physique of the East and West. West of the Alleghanies, particularly west of the Mississippi, the state of civilization is much like that of the country east of the Alleghanies twenty-five or thirty years ago—showing the same haste, anxiety, resolution, and eagerness for quick and positive results that English travellers of the last generation observed in New England. While survivals of this Puritan character in the East are even now passing away, the Westerners exhibit, in cases not a few, a feverishness, an eagerness, a fremescence, an expectancy, a constant and ever present conviction of the tremendous importance of things, such as characterized our immediate an- 192 EAST VS. WEST-AUSTRALIA. cestors. The whole physical character is in the face, if we can only read it; and in the Easterners and Westerners these differential characteristics are easily read. In New York and vicinity there is probably less of impatience, solemnity and a sense of the all importance of getting somewhere in- stantly, than in the last generation. The West is where the East was a quarter of a century ago— passing more rapidly, as it would appear, through the same successive stages of development. On the other side of the world, in Australia and New Zealand, the new settlements are passing —though more slowly, and in a minor degree— through somewhat the same experience as the United States. There is less mental activity in those regions; there is less of fury and drive, and there is smaller population and a smaller rate of increase; but yet, as travellers aver, there is a ner- vousness of manner and in the style of living and doing, that in many ways suggests America. Australian institutions—both religious and politi- cal—are more like those of Canada than the United States ; and the climate is considerably different from ours. CHAPTER IY. LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS AND THE RELATION OF AGE TO WORK. Without civilization there can be no nervous- ness ; there is no race, no climate, no environment that can make nervousness and nervous disease possible and common save when re-enforced by brain-work and worry and in-door life. This is the dark and, so far as it goes, truthful side of our theme; the brighter side is to be drawn in the present chapter. Thomas Hughes, in his life of '" Alfred the Great," makes a statement that " the world's hardest workers and noblest benefactors have rarely been long-lived." That any intelligent writer of the present day should make a statement so absolutely untrue, shows how hard it is to destroy an old superstition. The remark is based on the belief which—• against the clearest evidence of general observation — has been held for centuries, that the mind can be used only at the injurious expense of the body. 194 THE POPULAR BELIEF A DELUSION. This belief has been something wore than a mere popular prejudice ; it has been a professional dogma, and has inspired nearly all the writers on hygiene since medicine has been a science ; and intellectual and promising youth have thereby been dissuaded from entering brain-working professions ; and thus, much of the choicest genius has been lost to civil- ization ; students in college have abandoned plans of life to which their tastes inclined, and gone to the farm or workshop; authors, scientists, and in- vestigators in the several professions have thrown away the accumulated experience of the better half of life, and retired to pursuits as uncongenial as they were profitless. The delusion has, therefore, in two ways wrought evil, specifically by depriving the world of the services of some of its best en- dowed natures, and generally by fostering a habit of accepting statement for demonstration. Between 1864 and 1866 I obtained statistics on the general subject of the relation of occupation to health and longevity that convinced me of the error of the accepted teachings in regard to the effect of mental labor. These statistics, which were derived from the registration reports of this country and of England, and from a study of the lives of many prominent brain-workers, were incorporated in an essay on the subject, that was delivered before an association of army and navy surgeons, in New LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. 195 Orleans, in 1863, and afterwards published in the Hours at Home magazine. The views I then advo- cated, and which I enforced by statistical evidence, were :— 1st. That the brain-working classes—clergymen, lawyers, physicians, merchants, scientists, and men of letters, lived much longer than the muscle- working classes. 2d. That those who followed occupations that called both muscle and brain into exercise, were longer lived than those who lived in occupations that were purely manual. 3d. That the greatest and hardest brain-workers of history have lived longer on the average than brain-workers of ordinary ability and industry. 4th. That clergymen were longer lived than any other great class of brain-workers. 5th. That longevity increased very greatly with the advance of civilization ; and that this increase was too marked to be explained merely by im- proved sanitary knowledge. 6th. That although nervous diseases increased with the increase of culture, and although the unequal and excessive excitements and anxieties at- tendant on mental occupations of a high civilization, were so far both prejudicial to health and longevity, yet these incidental evils were more than counter- balanced by the fact that fatal inflammatory dis- L96 DIFFICULTIES IN THE INVESTIGATION. eases have diminished in frequency and violence in proportion as nervous diseases have increased; and also that brain-work is, per se, healthful and con- ducive to longevity. Many of these views have since received various and powerful confirmation, and by a number of independent observers. The statistics on this sub- ject I have endeavored to use without abusing them; to draw from them only those lessons that they are really capable of teaching. Among those classes who live mainly by routine and muscular toil (mechanics, artisans, laborers, etc.), change of occupation is the rule rather than the exception, especially in this country; and any statistics of mortality derived from the registration reports, are, so far as these classes are concerned, of but little value in the study of the relative effects of the different occupations on health and longevity. Another important complication arises from the fact that certain occupations, as clerkships, positions in factories, teaching, etc., are followed almost ex- clusively by the young and middle-aged; while other callings, as judgeships, are filled only by those in middle and advanced life. Another difficulty arises from the fact that some important occupa- tions, as journalism, for example, are adopted only by a limited number; and the number in them who annually die is too small to afford any basis for LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBEEBS. 197 comparison. But this generalization is, I am per- suaded, admissible, that the greater majority of those who die in any one of the three great pro- fessions — law, theology, and medicine — have, all their lives, from twenty-one upwards, followed that profession in which they died. The converse gen- eralization, that the great majority of those who die in the muscle-working avocations, have all their lives followed some kind of muscle-working employ- ment, however frequently they may have changed from one to another at different periods, is also true. Yery few who once fairly enter theology, medicine, or law, ever permanently change to a purely physical calling; and, on the other hand, the number of those who begin life as farmers, laborers, and mechanics, and end it as lawyers, physicians, or clergymen, is quite limited, even in the United States, where every man has a better chance to follow the bent of his genius than in any other country. A comparison, therefore, of the longevity of the professional and of the muscle-working classes, as derived from registration reports, such as I have made, is quite justifiable. The value of this com- parison would be vitiated if it could be proved that those who enter the professions are originally healthier and stronger, and come from better stock than those who enter physical avocations; but in 198 GBEAT LONGEVITY OF GBEAT MEN. this country, the practice has been to allow the more delicate members of a family to enter a pro- fession, whilst the tough and hardy work on the farm or learn a trade. Here, as in Europe, there is growing up a distinctively intellectual class who live solely by brain-work; it is, however, not from this class alone, but from the farming, mercantile, and artisan class that the ranks of the professions are filled. Great Longevity of Great Men. I have ascertained the longevity of five hun- dred of the greatest men in history. The list I prepared includes a large proportion of the most eminent names in all the departments of thought and activity. It would be difficult to find many illustrious poets, philosophers, authors, scientists, lawyers, states- men, generals, physicians, inventors, musicians, act- ors, orators, or philanthropists, of world-wide and im- mortal fame, and whose lives are known in sufficient detail for such an investigation, that are not repre- sented in the list. My list was prepared, not for the average longevity, but in order to determine at what time of life men do their best work. It was therefore, prepared with absolute impartiality; and includes of course, those who, like Byron, Raphael Pascal, Mozart, Keats, etc., died comparatively young. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 199 Now the average age of those I have mentioned, I found to be 64.20. The average age at death at the present time, of all classes of those who live over twenty years, is about fifty-one. (See Drawing). Therefore, the greatest men of the world have lived longer on the average than men.of ordinary ability in the differ- ent occupations by fourteen years ; six years longer than physicians and lawyers; nineteen or twenty years longer than mechanics and day laborers ; from two to three years longer than farmers and clergy- men, who are the longest-lived class in our modern society. The value of this comparison is enforced hj the consideration that longevity has increased with the progress of civilization, while the list I prepared represents every age of recorded history. A few years since I arranged a select list of one hundred names, comprising the most eminent per- sonages, and found that the average longevity was over seventy years. Such an investigation any one can pursue; and I am sure that any chronology comprising from one to five hundred of the most eminent personages in history, at any cycle, will furnish an average longevity of from sixty-four to seventy years. Madden, in his very interesting work, " The Infirmities of Genius," gives a list of two hundred and forty illustrious names, with their ages at death. CD 51 ' Years. O 1 5 2,° 2 1 5 3 ° 3'5 4|° 4 5 5 ° 5 5 6 o 6 5 7 0 75 One. Sun 'd red (J reat.es t Men of th e Wo rid. re 75 One 11 \ andre\d and Fifty 1 1'reeo eious \Oreat \Men. 3 66-50 I'il'C 1 11 unldrcd Great Men. i re 64-20 Clci'f/l ymen. i *? 64 .Farm 1 ers. 1 • r,4 Lairi/ ers. p 58 ll'/njsi cians. 57 1 | j j COMPARATIVE LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-W0BKEB8. 201 In view of these facts, it may be regarded as established that "the world's hardest workers and noblest benefactors" have usually been very long- lived. Causes of the Great longevity of Brain - Workers. The full explanation of the superior longevity of the brain-working classes would require a treatise on the science of sociology, and particularly of the relation of civilization to health. The leading fac- tors, accounting for the long life of those who live by brain-labor, are :— 1. The inherent and essential healthfidness of brain-vjorh, when unaccompanied by worry. To work is to grow ; and growth, except it be forced, is always healthful. It is as much the function of the brain to cerebrate, as of the stomach to digest; and cerebration, like digestion, is normal, physiologi- cal, and healthful. In all bodily functions the ex- ercise of force develops more force; work evolves strength for work. A plant that is suffered to bud and bloom, is more sturdy and longer lived than the plant that is kept from the light, or trimmed of all its blossoms. By thinking, we gain the power to think; functional activity, within limits, tends to vigor and the self-preservation of an or- gan and of the body to which the organ belongs. The world has been taught that the brain can be developed only at the expense of the other organs 202 BBAIN-WOBEEBS HAVE LESS WOBBY. of the body; granting that brain-work strengthens the brain itself, the rest of the body is impover- ished thereby — hence disease, and early death; but it is certain that the very best of the brain-working classes are, on the average, well developed muscu- larly; and in size and weight of body are superior to the purely muscle-working classes, although their muscles may not be as large or hard or powerful as they would be if more used. 2. JBrain-workers have less worry and more posi- tive comfort and happiness than muscle-workers. Worry is the converse of work; the one develops force, the other checks its development, and wastes what already exists. "Work is growth; worry is interference with growth. Worry is to work what the chafing of a plant against the walls of a green- house is to limitless expansion in the free air. In the successful brain-worker worry is transferred into work ; in the muscle-worker work too often degrades into worry. Brain-work is the highest of all anti- dotes to worry; and the brain-working classes are therefore less distressed about many things, less ap- prehensive of indefinite evil, and less disposed to magnify minute trials than those who live by the labor of the hands. To the happy brain-worker life is a long vacation; while the muscle-worker often finds no joy in his daily toil, and very little in the intervals. Scientists, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 203 orators, statesmen, literati, and merchants, when suc- cessful, are happy in their work, without reference to the reward; and continue to labor in their special callings long after the necessity has ceased. Where is the hod-carrier that finds joy in going up and down a ladder ? and from the foundation of the globe until now, how many have been known to persist in ditch-digging, or sewer-laying, or in any mechanical or manual calling whatsoever, after the attainment of independence? Good fortune gives good health. Nearly all the money of the world is in the hands of brain-workers; to many, in mod- erate amounts, it is essential to life, and in large or comfortable amount it favors long life. Longevity is the daughter of comfort. Of the many elements that make up happiness, mental organization, physi- cal health, fancy, friends,* and money — the last is, for the average man, greater than any other, except the first. Loss of money costs more lives than the loss of friends, for it is easier to find a friend than a fortune. Almost all muscle-workers are born, live, and die poor. To live on the slippery path that lies between extreme poverty on one side, and the * I do not here refer to accumulated wealth exclusively, but to income or sufficient amount to purchase comforts and luxuries. Many persons (and notably successful professional men), live out their days in comfort and luxury, although they never succeed in accumulating fortunes ; to them, their reputa- tion is capital and wealth. 204 BBAIN- WOBEEBS HA VE MOBE COMFORTS. gulf of starvation on the other; to take continual thought of to-morrow, without any good result of such thought; to feel each anxious hour that the dreary treadmill by which we secure the means of sustenance for a hungry household may, without warning, be closed by any number of forces, over which one has no control, to double and triple all the horrors of want and pain, by anticipation and rumination,—such is the life of the muscle-working classes of modern civilized society; and when we add to this the cankering annoyance that arises from the envying of the fortunate brain-worker who lives in ease before his eyes, we marvel not that he dies young, but rather that he lives at all.* 3. Brain-workers live under better sanitary con- ditions than muscle-workers. They have better food and drink, warmer clothing, breathe purer air, and are less exposed to fatal accident and the poison of disease. None of the occupations are ideal; none fulfil all the laws of health; but the muscle-working callings are all more or less un- healthy; tradesmen, artisans, common laborers, and even farmers (who combine muscle with brain * Those who question the truth of the above picture are re- ferred to any of the recently published essays and treatises on the condition of the peasantry of England. Observations show that in our own country, not only iu large cities, but in all manu- facturing towns, and even in farming districts, the laboring classes are as badly circumstanced as I have stated. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBEEBS. 205 work), all are forced to violate sanitary law, every hour and moment ; not one out of ten have enough good food; many are driven by passion and hunger to excess in the worst forms of alcoholic liquors; for a large number, sleep is a luxury of which they never have sufficient for real recuperation; health- ful air is but rarely breathed by the laboring classes of any large city; exposure to weather, that brings on fatal inflammatory diseases ; accidents that cripple or kill;—in all these respects, the muscle-worker, as compared with the brain-worker, is at stupendous disadvantage. 4. The nervous temperament, which usually pre- dominates in brain-workers, is antagonistic to fatal, acute, inflammatory disease, and favorable to long life. Comparative statistics have shown that those in whom the nervous temperament prevails, live longer than those in whom any one of the other temperaments prevail, and common observation con- firms the statement. Nervous people, if not too feeble, may die every day. They do not die; they talk of death, and each day expect it, and yet they live. Many of the most annoying nervous diseases, especially of the functional, and some even of the structural varieties, do not rapidly destroy life, and are, indeed, consistent with great longevity. I have known a number of men and women who were nervous invalids for half a century or more, and 206 NEBVOUSNESS FAVORS LONGEVITY. died at an advanced age. It is one of the compen- sations of nervousness that it protects the system against those febrile and inflammatory diseases that are so rapidly fatal to the sanguine and the phleg- matic ; the nervous man can expose himself to malaria, to cold and dampness, with less danger of disease, and with less danger of death if he should contract disease, than his tough and hardy brother. This was shown in our late war, when delicate, en- sanguined youth, followed by the fears of friends, went forth to camp and battle, and not only sur- vived, but grew stout amid exposures that pros- trated by thousands the lumbermen of Maine and the sons of the plough and the anvil. In the con- flict with fevers and inflammations, strength is often weakness, and weakness becomes strength— we are saved through debility. Still further, my studies have shown that, of distinctively nervous diseases, those which have the worst pathology and are the most hopeless, such as locomotor ataxia, progressive muscular atrophy, apoplexy with hemi- plegia, and so on, are more common and more se- vere, and more fatal among the comparatively vig- orous and strong, than among the most delicate and finely organized. Cancer, even, goes hardest with the hardy, and is most relievable in the nervous. The incidental and important proof of the cor- relation of nervousness and longevity is afforded in LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBEERS. 207 those statistics of the comparative longevity of the sexes. Women, with all their nervousness—and in civil- ized lands, women are more nervous, immeasurably, than men, and suffer more from general and special nervous diseases—yet live quite as long as men, if not somewhat longer; their greater nervousness and far greater liability to functional diseases of the ner- vous system being compensated for by their smaller liability to certain acute and inflammatory disorders, and various organic nervous diseases, likewise, such as the general paralysis of insanity. There is evidence that Americans, on the aver- age, live longer than Europeans, and American in- surance companies that have used the English life- tables as a basis for policies have gained thereby at the expense of the policy-holder. 5. Brain-workers can adapt their labor to their moods and hours and periods of greatest capacity for labor better than muscle-workers. In nearly all intellectual employments there is large liberty • literary and professional men especially, are so far masters of their time that they can select the hours and days for their most exacting and important work; and when from any cause indisposed to hard thinking, can rest and recreate, or limit themselves to mechanical details. Thus, there is less of the dreadful in their lives; they work when work is 20$ BRAIN-WORE EASIER IN OLD AGE. easy, when the desire and the power are in har- mony; and, unlike their less fortunate brother iu the mill or shop, or diggings, need not waste their force in urging themselves to work. Forced labor, against the grain of one's nature, is always as ex- pensive as it is unsatisfactory; it tells on the health and happiness and on life. Even coarser natures have their moods, and the choicest spirits are gov- erned by them; and they who worship their moods do most wisely; and those who are able to do so are the fortunate ones of the earth. Again, brain-workers do their best work between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five ; before that period they are preparing to work; after that period, work, however extensive it may be, becomes largely accumulation and routine. Lawyers and physicians do much of their practice after forty; but to practice is easy, to learn is hard — and the learning is done before forty or forty-five. In all directions the French motto holds true: " It is the first step that costs." Successful merchants lay the foundations of fortune in youth and middle life, to accumulate, and recreate, and take one's ease in old age; thus they make the most when they are doing the least, and only become rich after they have ceased trying to be so. With muscle-workers, there is but little accumulation, and only a limited increase of reward; and in old age, after their LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WOREERS. 209 strength has begun to decline, they must, with in- creasing expense, work even harder than before. To this should be added the fact that manual employments cost nearly as much force after they are learned as before; they can never, like many intellectual callings, become so far forth spontaneous as to require little effort. It is as hard to lay a stone wall after one has been laying it fifty years, as during the first year. The range of muscular growth and development is narrow, compared with the range of mental growth; the day laborer soon reaches the maximum of his strength. The literary or scientific worker goes on from strength to strength, until what at twenty-five was impossible, and at thirty difficult, at thirty-five becomes easy, and at forty a pastime; and besides he has the satisfaction that the work done so easily at thirty- five and forty is incomparably better than the work done with so much difficulty at twenty-five. Pelation of Age to Work, 'Reputation, and Ability, The true and only way by which the subject of the relation of age to work can be approached is by studying the history of the original work of the world, and noting the time of life at which it was done. Reputation is, on the whole, as approximately 210 RELATION OF AGE TO WORK. correct, as it is the only test of ability of men who have long been before the world. Fame rightly analyzed is, on the positive side, as truly a measure of cerebral force, as is the thermometer of heat or the barometer of atmospheric pressure. In differentiating the various classes of merit we should aim to represent, it is hardly necessary to say, not the opinion of any one, but the settled opinion of mankind. The number of illustrious names of history is by no means so great as is currently believed; for, as the visible stars of the firmament, which at a glance appear infinite in number, on careful estimate are reduced to a few thousands, so the galaxy of genius, which appears interminable on a comprehensive estimate, pre- sents but few lights of immortal fame. Mr. Gal- ton, in his " Hereditary Genius," states that there have not been more than four hundred great men in history. I should be inclined to make an esti- mate more liberal and bring four hundred and fifty, or perhaps" five hundred into the catalogue. I do not forget that Goethe has said that " fame is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such;" but the converse of this statement, that obscurity is no sure evidence of demerit, but only a probability of such, would more nearly approach truth. Brain-force, like all other great forces— light, heat, and electricity —is evolved in enormous LONGEVITY OF BBA1N-W0BKEBS. 211 excess of the apparent and immediate need of the world, and but a fraction is ever directly and es- pecially utilized. Only in rare instances is special or general talent so allied with influence, or favor, or fortune, or energy that commands circumstances, that it can develop its full functions; " things are in the saddle and ride mankind; " environment com- mands the environed. If, however, through circum- stances, or in spite of circumstances, the power of any man becomes permanently felt in the world, we may be sure that it is a reality and not a sham; we are not sure but that near him live in permanent obscurity a thousand men who, through ill favor or ill health, shall keep their colossal forces forever in reserve. The stars we see in the sky are but mites compared with the infinite orbs that shall never be seen ; but no star is a delusion — each one means a world, the light of which very well corresponds to its size and distance from the earth and sun. In the galaxy of history, sham reputations go out in darkness like the meteors that flame across the heavens; but every abiding reputa- tion — every name that shines along the ages — must have great deeds, or great thoughts to feed it. Routine and imitation work can no more confer the fame that comes from work that is original and creative, than the moon can take the place of the sun. 212 FOBCE VS. BESULTS OF FOBCE. Distinction between Force and the Results of Force. In all our studies of this problem we must rigidly keep apart our ideas of force and the results of force. Just as heat in a room is the result of the combustion of the coal in the grate; just as the movement of a cannon-ball is the result of ex- plosion in the cannon; just so fame is the result of mental work. It follows it, oftentimes, at a long distance — years or centuries — as the room remains warm after the fire is extinguished, and the cannon- ball speeds on its course after the gases — by the explosion of which it was discharged — have been dissipated. It is this confounding of force with the results of force, of fame with the work by which fame is attained that causes philosophers to dispute, deny, or doubt, or to puzzle over the. law of the relation of age to work, as here announced. When the lightning flashes along the sky, we expect a discharge will soon follow, since light travels faster than sound; so some kinds of fame are more rapidly diffused than others, and are more nearly contemporaneous with their origin; but as a law, there is an interval — varying from years to hun- dreds of years — between the doing of any original work and the appreciation of that work by any con- siderable number of mankind that we call fame. LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. 213 The great men that we know are old men; but they did the work that has made them great, when they were young; in loneliness, in poverty, often, as well as under discouragement, and in neglected or despised youth has been achieved all that has advanced, all that is likely to advance mankind. The psychological distinction between original. and routine work is in the complete analysis of de- gree, rather than of kind ; since the operations of the brain — as of all organic nature — are processes rather than creations; but practically, the distinc- tion between original work of the highest kind and original work of a lower or ordinary kind — that is, between what we call genius and what we call imitation — we may consider as amounting almost to a difference in kind. The difference between an original man and a routine man is like that between a very fruitful tree and one that is comparatively barren; both produce, and of the same kind of fruit, but the one of more and incomparably better than the other; more in quantity, larger, more luscious, exquisite and inviting in quality. In the brain of a genius ideas evolve as in the brain of a dullard, and by the same laws, but more easily and more rapidly, with higher, more extended, more complex, and more interesting branches and a more fragrant and extensive blossoming. In the man of genius, the idea starts where, in the man of routine, it leaves 214 ORIGINAL VS. ROUTINE WORK. off, and it keeps on growing and growing; each unit of force or combination of units corresponding to the thoughts or combination of thoughts that the routinist or imitator could never have conceived; this is the work that men call genius, which — in the language of evolution—-is but a higher and richer growth of ideas in some one direction, or in many directions. Original work—that done by geniuses who have thereby attained immortal fame, is the only kind of work that can be used as the measure of cerebral force in all our search for this law of the relation of work to the time of life at which work is done; for the twofold reason —first, that it is the highest and best measure of cerebral force ; and, secondly, because it is the only kind of work that gives earthly immortality. As we estimate the strength of an engine or an electrical machine by so many horse- power, so we judge the strength of the brain by the original work that it can do; but between the engine and the brain there is this difference — that, whereas, in the case of the former we are able to estimate what it can do, whether it does it or not; in the case of the brain, we are only able to judge inductively by what it has done; and therefore, must refer to the biography of genius for the data out of which we are to construct the law of the relation of age to work. LONGEVITY OF BBAINWOBKEBS. 215 Men do not long remember, nor do they ear- nestly reverence those who have done only what everybody can do. We never look up, unless the object at which we look is higher than ourselves ; the forces that control the rise and fall of reputa- tion are as inevitable and as remorseless as heat, light, and gravity; if a great man looms up from afar, it is because he is taller than the average man; else, he would pass below the horizon as we receded from him; factitious fame is as im- possible as factitious heat, light, or gravity; if there be force, there must have been, somewhere, and at some time, a source whence that force was evolved. The strength of a bridge is the strength of its weakest point — what it will bear at that point, under pressure; the strength of a man is his strength at his strongest point — what he can do in any one direction, at his very best. However weak and even puerile, immature, and non-expert one may be in all other directions except one, he gains an immortality of fame if, in that one direction he develops a phenomenal power; weaknesses and wickednesses, serious immoralities and wayward- nesses are soon forgotten by the world, which is, indeed, blinded to all these defects in the face of the strong illumination of genius. Judged by their defects, the non-expert side of their character, moral or intellectual, men like Burns, Shakespeare, 216 BEPLIES TO CRITICISMS. Socrates, Cicero, Casar, Napoleon, Beethoven, Mo- zart, Byron, Dickens, etc., are but as babes or luna- tics, and far, very far below the standard of their fellows. The above remarks are in part replies to the criticisms of the London Spectator and other jour- nals on these researches. The suggestion of Mr. Proctor, the astronomer, as presented by him in his very beautiful and thoughtful essay on the growth and decay of mind — and which was called forth apparently by these researches, when they were first published — is that the original work we do in youth keeps us from doing more original work in old age ; since the latter years of life are required to develop and perfect that which youth has conceived. That there is a truth in this sug- gestion all biography demonstrates; but it also, at the same time demonstrates with equal clearness, that when the old are brought to positions of emer- gency or crises where there is a demand for creative power they are usually wanting, even though they have originated nothing before; even though they be men of intellectual force, they do not originate then, but must give way m battles, and campaigns, and inventions to the brazen and golden decade. Men to whom these truths are repelling, put their eyes on those in high positions and in the decline of life, like Disraeli or Gladstone, forgetting LONGEVITY OF BBA1NW0BKEBS 217 that we have no proof that either of these men have ever originated a new thought during the past twenty-five years, and that in all their contributions to letters during that time there is nothing to sur- vive, or worthy to survive, their authors. They point to Darwin, the occupation of whose old age has been to gather into form the thoughts and labors of his manhood and youth, and whose only immortal book was the product of his silver and golden decade. They point to I cannot well num- ber how many philosophers and scholars who in their old age acquired, or are said to have acquired, ages ago, when there was little else to do, a certain knowledge of certain languages — the poorest, and thinnest, and least to be respected test of cerebral force. Method of Investigation. The method by which I sought to learn the law of the relation of age to work was to study in detail the biographies of distinguished men and women of-every age. I have prepared a list embracing nearly all of the greatest names of history, whose lives are re- corded in sufficient detail to be of value in such an investigation, and have noted the age at which they did the original work by which they have gained their fame. I have noted the ages at which phi- 218 METHOD OF INVESTIGATION. losophers have founded and announced their sys- tems ; at which divines and religious teachers have originated their creeds, and have been most effec- tive as preachers; at which statesmen have un- folded their highest acts of legislation, of diplomacy and reform; at which men of science have made their greatest discoveries and written their best works; at which generals and admirals have gained their greatest victories, and carried on their most successful campaigns; at which lawyers have led the bar, and physicians made their explorations in medicine, and artists have painted their master- pieces ; at which musicians have composed and performed their most illustrious creations; at which architects and engineers have planned and executed the greatest monuments to their memories; at which actors and orators have been at the zenith of their power, and at which teachers and professors have led eras in the service of education. From these data, which, though not absolutely exhaustive, are sufficiently so for a final and convincing settle- ment of the questions involved, I have derived the period, the decade, and year of maximum produc- tiveness, and the various grades between this and the period, the decade, and the years of the least productiveness. I have not overlooked the difficulties, the com- plications, and the vo.-mis Jerrys of error involved LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 219 in such an investigation,, and have endeavored, so far as possible, to calculate and provide for them. The lives of some great men are not sufficiently defined to differentiate the period, much less the decade or the year of their greatest productive force. Such lives are either rejected, or only the time of death and the time of first becoming famous are noted; very many authors have never told the world when they thought out or even wrote their masterpieces, and the season of publica- tion is the only date that we can employ. These classes of facts, it will be seen, tell in favor of old rather than of young men, and will make the year of maximum production later rather than earlier, and cannot, therefore, be objected to by those who may doubt my conclusions. In an inves- tigation so wide, and in the arrangement of facts gathered from so many sources, there is room for many numerical errors in regard to the dates of births, of deaths, and of special performances; but it is believed that these errors, though they may be numerous, are yet slight, and will, in the main, counterbalance each other. In a number of instances the honors that have been accorded to distinguished men — as knight- hoods, baronetcies, memberships of learned societies, or of legislative bodies — have been noted, and inasmuch as public honors, especially those which 220 BIOGRAPHIES CONSULTED. depend on kings and queens, princes and politi- cians, come late, and are in time very far behind the true deserts, the dates represented by them will be against young men rather than for them. For those who have died young, and have worked in original lines up to the year of their death, the date of death has sometimes been regarded as sufficient. Great difficulty has been found in proving the dates of the labors of the great names of antiquity, and, therefore, many of them are necessarily ex- cluded from consideration, but in an extended com- parison between ancient and modern brain-workers, so far as history makes possible, there was but little or no difference. Number and Quality of Biographies consulted. After analyzing the lives of seven hundred and fifty of the most eminent .among the names of his- tory, including eighteen hundred dates from which I derived the law of the relation of age to work, as here described, and as represented in the accom- panying engraving, it seemed that it might be well to take an equal number of lives of less eminent persons; the second, third, and fourth grades of distinction — those who are known only in limited lines, or in their lifetimes, whose lives are only recorded in special biographies, or to whom very slight space is given. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 221 The names in this second or supplementary list would be mostly unknown, except to specialists, whereas the names of the first list are known to all persons of general intelligence. This second or sup- plementary list was analyzed in the same way as the primary list, and it was found that the law was true of these, as of those of greater distinction. The conclusion is just, scientific, and inevitable, that if we should go down through all the grades of cerebral force, we should find this law prevail- ing among medium and inferior natures, that the obscure, the dull, and the unaspiring accomplished the little they did in the direction of relatively original work—laid the foundation of small fortunes — in the brazen and golden decades. To give the names in these lists is needless; since in them is included every famous person in any department of human activity where fame is achieved. These researches were originally made as far back as IS70, and were first made public in lectures delivered by me before the Long Island Historical Society. The titles of the lectures were, " Young Men in History, and the Decline of Moral Princi- ple in Old Age." Subsequently, and more elaborately, the subject was discussed in its medico-legal relations, in a paper read before the New York Medico-Legal 222 BESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION. Society. At a still later date I employed a mathe- matician, Mr. David R. Alden, to go over the sub- ject anew, and independently; he confirmed in all respect my conclusions. Finally, it should be remarked that the list has been prepared with absolute impartiality, and no name and no date has been included or omitted to prove any theory. The men who have done original or important work in advanced age, such as Dry- den, Radetzky, Moltke, Thiers, De Foe, have all been noted, and are embraced in the average. GENERAL RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION. The golden decade is between 30 and 40. The silver << 40 ' 50. The brazen a 20 ' 30. The iron it 50 ' • 60. The tin tt 60 < ( 70. The wooden tt 70 ' 80. Seventy per cent, of the work of the world is done before 45, and eighty per cent, before 50. The' golden decade represents about twenty-five per cent, more dates than the silver. The difference between the first and second half of the golden de- cade is but slight. The golden decade alone repre- sents nearly one-third of the original work of the world. (See Drawing.) The best period of fifteen years is been 30 and 45. The advantage of the brazen over the iron z 5 40 THE RELATION OF AGE TO ORIGINAL WORK Y w 224 THE GOLDEN DECADE. decade — of 20 and 30 over 50 and 60 — is very striking, and will cause surprise. There is consid- erably more work done between 35 and 40 than between 40 and 45. The year of maximum pro- ductiveness is thirty-nine. The average age of the great personages from whose lives the law is derived is not far from sixty- six years. A very large number of them lived to be over seventy. On the average the last twenty years in the lives of original geniuses are unpro- ductive. The broad fact, then, to which these statistics lead us is, that the brain follows the same line of growth, maturityt and decay as the rest of the body / that the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems rise, remain, and fall together, and that the received opinion that the mind, of which the brain is the organ, develops and matures later than the power of motion or of physical labor and endurance, is not sustained by the facts of history. The capacity for production is greatest in the latter part of the first half of the full life of man. If in the same way, and in obedience to the same principles, we analyze the labors of those who are eminent for muscular force, the famous athletes, prize-fighters, the stroke-oarsman, and the pedestrians who win the belts — those who are leaders in trials of force on shipboard, in camp, in armies and in LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 225 all sports, we shall find that here, also, youth con quers. In comparing muscle-workers with brain- workers in this respect, we must take those who, all their lives, live by muscle, or mainly by it, just as brain-workers live by brain. A comparison of this kind cannot fail to make clear this fact — that muscle-workers very early reach their maximum, and that the capacity for work and for endurance of work is either stationary or on the decline after 35 or 40. All the athletes with whom I have con- versed on this subject, the guides and lumbermen in the woods, — those who have always lived solely by muscle — agree substantially to this ; that their staying power is better between the ages of 35 and 45, than either before or after. To get the best soldiers, we must rob neither the cradle nor the grave; but select from those decades when the best brain-work of the world is done. The result of my researches has been to demon- strate that mind, instead of being outside of law, is itself obedient to law, and that we are at our best mentally, just as we are at our best physically, in youth rather than in old age. Distinction between Original and Routine Work. The quantity of work done by the aged is greater than that done by the young; in quality the advantage is on the side of youth. Original 226 EXCEPTIONS TO THE LAW. work requires enthusiasm; routine work experience. In society both forces are needed — one makes the world move, the other keeps it steady. Men are their best at the time when enthusiasm and expe- rience are most evenly balanced. This period, on the average, is from 38 to 40. After this period the law is that experience increases but enthusiasm declines; like buckets in old-fashioned wells, as one goes up the other goes down. Unconsciously the people recognize this distinction between the work that demands enthusiasm and that which demands experience, for they prefer old doctors and law- yers, while in the clerical profession, where success depends on the ability to constantly originate and express thought, young men are the more popular, and old men, even of great ability, passed by. In the editorial profession original work is demanded, and most of the editorials of our daily press are written by young men. In the life of every old man there comes a point, sooner or later, when ex- perience ceases to have any educating power; and when, in the language of Wall St, he becomes a bear, in the language of politics a Bourbon. Apparent and Real Exceptions to the Average. The most marked apparent exceptions to the law are found in the realm of imagination ; some of the greatest poets, painters, and sculptors, such as Dry- LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 227 den, Richardson, Cowper, Young, De Foe, Titian, Christopher Wren, and Michael Angelo, have done a part of their very best work in advanced life. The imagery both of Bacon and of Burke seemed to in- crease in richness as they grew older. In the realm of reason, philosophic thought, in- vention and discovery, the exceptions are very rare. Nearly all the great systems of theology, metaphys- ics, and philosophy are the result of work done be- tween 20 and 50. The exceptions are both ways, and there are some who, like Napoleon, though they may die after 50, reach their prime long be- fore 38. The apparent exceptions to the law that original work is done chiefly in youth and early maturity are in the arts — painting, architecture, and acting; but physchologically analyzed, the artist in these realms, like the conversationalist, simply tests his work in his productions; the work itself having been done, it may be, years before; the painter speaks through his paintings, the sculptor through his statues, the orator and actor in their orations and readings as truly as the artist in conversation; and in their several arts they but pour out the gathered treasures of a life. Michael Angelo and Sir Christopher Wren could wait for a quarter or even half a century be- fore expressing their thoughts in St. Peter's or 228 OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. St. Paul's; but the time of the conception of those thoughts — long delayed in their artistic ex- pression—was the time when their cerebral force touched its highest mark. In the old age of literary artists, as Curly le, Dickens, George Elliot, or Tennyson, the form may be most excellent; but from the purely scientific side the work though it may be good, is old; a repeti- tion oftentimes, in a new form, of what they have said many times before. Whence it is that none of the great thinkers or philosophers in any age, or in any domain of thought, have done good work in old age; for thought once uttered becomes old ; whereas art, appealing only to the senses and emo- tions, may with its infinite permutations and com- binations continue to give pleasure after copyings without number. The philosophy of Bacon can never be written but once; to re-write it, to pre- sent it a second time, in a different dress, would indicate weakness, would seem almost grotesque; but to statuary and painting we return again and again; we allow the artist to re-portray his thought, no matter how many times; we visit in succession a hundred cathedrals, all very much alike; and a delicious melody grows more pleasing with repetition; whence it is that in poetry — the queen of the arts — old age has wrought little, or not at all, since the essence of poetry is creative LONGE VITY OF BBAIN- WOBKERS. 229 thought, and old age is unable to think; whence, also, in acting — the oldest of all the arts, the ser- vant of all — the best experts are often at their best, or not far below their best, save for the acquisition of new characters, in the iron and wooden decades. No art when once acquired is readily lost, even in advanced life ; but on the contrary, most of the arts may be refined and developed in age. Most strikingly is this illustrated in painting and sculp- ture, in which realms, as we have seen, quite old men have succeeded. Similarly with the art of writing—the style, the dress, the use of words, the art of expressing thoughts, and not of thinking. Men who have done their best thinking before 40 have done their best writing after that period. This would appear to have been the experience of Dr. Johnson, Rousseau, and Yoltaire. But the art of writing—the mere style of expressing thought— noble as it is—must and does in the estimation of men, rank far below the art of thinking: it is thought, and not the language of thought, that best tests the creative faculties. In every form of art— painting, sculpture, architecture—it is the conception that tells, although conception needs execution to make it available. It is wise, therefore, for young phlosophers to do their thinking while young and in middle life, and to delay the permanent and final publication of their thoughts until they have 230 OLD AGE IMITATES ITSELF. also perfected the inferior but not unimportant art of clothing ideas in language. The conversation of old men of ability, before they have passed into the stage of imbecility, is usually richer and more instructive than the con- versation of the young; for in conversation we simply distribute the treasures of memory, as a store hoarded during long years of thought and experi- ence. He who thinks as he converses is a poor companion, as he who must earn his money before he spends any is a poor man. When an aged mil- lionnaire makes a liberal donation it costs him noth- ing ; he but gives out of abundance that has re- sulted by natural accumulation from the labors of his youth and middle life. When an old man utters great thoughts, it is not age, but youth that speaks through the lips of age; his ideas which, in their inception and birth, drew heavily on the pro- ductive powers of the brain, are refined, revolved, and disseminated almost without effort. Childhood and Old Age but Imitators. The creative period of life, it will be observed, is limited to fifteen years, between 25 and 40. An amount of work not inconsiderable is done before 25 and a vast amount is done after 40; but at neither period is it usually of the original or creative sort that best measures the mental forces. The work LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 231 done before 20 and after 40 is usually work of imi- tation or routine. In early youth we follow others; in old age we follow ourselves. Boys in school and college copy, commit, repeat, and but rarely think. Collegians who, in this country, graduate at the age of twenty-two or three, rarely give themselves tc fresh research, and almost never make any inven tion or discovery; hence the barrenness of even the best prize essays and orations. Commencement orations are dull because the authors tell us noth- ing new; even their language is copied with slight variations from the authors whom they have most read and studied. Only the most precocious minds create thoughts before 20 ; from 25 to 30 the major- ity of thinkers begin to develop new ideas; from 40 and upwards they develop perfect and repeat the conceptions of the period between 25 and 40 ; they copy themselves as in early youth they copied others. Application of the Law to Animals and Plants. The same law applies to animals. Horses live to be about 25, and are at their best from 8 to 14; this corresponds to the golden decade of man. Dogs live nine or ten years, and are fittest for the hunt between 2 and 6. Plants also appear to. be subject to the same law. Fruit-bearing trees, so far as I can learn, are most prolific at a time of their average life corresponding pretty nearly to the golden 232 THE LAW APPLIES TO ANIMALS. and silver decade of man. Children born of par- ents one or both of whom are between 25 and 40, are, on the average, stronger and smarter than those born of parents one or both of whom are very much younger or older than this. The same fact applies to the breeding of horses, dogs, and probably of other animals. It should be noted also, that in women, the procreative function ceases between 40 and 50 just the time when the physical and mental powers begin to decline, as though nature had foreseen this law and provided that the world should not be peopled by those whose powers had fallen from their maximum ; we are most productive when we are most reproductive. The law of the relation of age to work is very well illustrated by the egg-laying power of the hen. It has been estimated that in an average lifetime of nine years a hen will lay from 500 to 700 eggs, thus distributed: first year, 16 to 20; second year, 100 to 120; third year, 120 to 135 (the golden per- iod); fourth year, 100 to 113; fifth year, 60 to 80; sixth year, 50 to 60; seventh year, 35 to 40 ; eighth year, 15 to 20 ; ninth year, 1 to 10. Man is but a higher animal, subject to the same laws, cabined by the same limitations, and illustrative of the same processes of growth and decay as the lowliest organisms in nature. The hen is a type of humanity. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 233 When Women are most Attractive. In an interesting paper entitled "When Women Grow Old," Mrs. Blake has brought facts to show that the fascinating power of the sex is oftentimes retained much longer than is generally assumed. She tells us of Aspasia, who, between the ages of 30 and 50 was the strongest intellectual force in Athens; of Cleopatra, whose golden decade for power and beauty was between 30 and 40 ; of Livia, who was not far from 30 when she gained the heart of Octavius; of Anne of Austria, who at 38 was thought to be the most beautiful queen in Europe ; of Catherine II. of Russia, who, even at the silver decade was both beautiful and im- posing; of Mademoiselle Mars, the actress, whose beauty increased with years, and culminated be- tween 30 and 45; of Madame Recamier, who, be- tween 25 and 40, and even later, was the reigning beauty in Europe; of Ninon de l'Enclos, whose own soi:i — brought up without knowledge of his par- entage— fell passionately in love with her when she was at the age of 37, and who even on her sixtieth birthday received an adorer young enough to be her grandson. These facts, the representatives of many others, establish that the golden decade of fascination is the same as the golden decade of thought; that woman is most attractive to, and most influential over man at 234 AGE AND FASCINATION. that period when both man and woman are nearest the maximum of their cerebral force. The voice of our great prima donnas is at its very best between 27 and 35; but still some retains, in a degree, its strength and sweetness even in the silver decade. The voice is an index of the body in all its functions, but the decay of other functions is not so readily noted. A gentleman, being asked his age, replied as follows: "I am 27; not that it matters much, for it has always seemed to me that a man's age was not of the least consequence between 25 and 40. I should not like to be less than 20, nor more than 40 : between these periods, I am indifferent to the progress of time." The name of the philosopher who made the above remark I do not know; but whoever he may be, he forestalled the law of the relation of age to work, as derived from these elaborately detailed researches. Mr. J. Appleton Morgan, in a private letter, calls my attention to the following: "In a 'Code of Centes Laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits,' from a Persian translation made from the original in the Sanscrit language (London, 1777), Pootee Chapter III., Section 8, of Proper and Im- proper Evidence (p. Ill), it is enacted that 'a devotee who becomes very infirm shall not be a witness.'" LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 235 Illustrative Cases. Under this head I append a few representative biographical facts, which are taken impartially at random without reference to specialties, or classi- fication or to their bearing on the theory here ad- vanced, from the collection of nearly two thousand names that I have analyzed. They are given merely to show the method of investigation. As a lad of 16, Lord Bacon began to think in- dependently on great matters; at 44, published his great work on " The Advancement of Learning; at 36, published twelve of his Essays; and at 60 col- lected the thoughts of his life in his " Organum." His old age was devoted to scientific investigation. At the early age of 29, Descartes began to map out his system of philosophy, and at 41 began its publication, and at 54 he died. Schelling, as a boy, studied philosophy, and at 24 was a brilliant and independent lecturer, and at 27 had published many important works; at 28 was professor of philosophy and arts, and wrote his best works before 50. Dry den, one of the exceptions to the average, did his best work when comparatively old; his " Absalom " was written at 50, and his " Alexander's Feast" when he was nearly 70. Dean Swift wrote his "Tale of a Tub" at 35, and his " Gulliver's Travels " at 59. 236 ILLUSTRATIVE CASES—NOVELISTS. Ruskin wrote the first part of the principal work of his life, " Modern Painters," at 28, the ugh it was not completed until seventeen years after- ward, when he was 45. k> Seven Lamps of Architec- ture " appeared at 30, and k* Stones of Venice " at 33. None of his latter works have taken as deep a hold of the popular heart, and are so sure of being remembered by posterity as those which were com- posed before he was 35. Thackeray, after an unsuccessful youth, wrote " Yanity Fair " at 36 and 37, and " Esmond," which he regarded as his best work, at 41. But though he matured so late, he was but 51 when he sadly remarked to a friend: " Dickens and myself have worked out our vein, and what is more, the people have found it out." The judgment of the literary world would now accord with that of Thackeray. Charles Dickens wrote " Pickwick " at 25, "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby" before 27, "Christmas Chimes" at 31, "David Copper- field" at 38, and"Dombey and Son" at 35. Thus we see that nearly all his greatest works were written before he was 40 ; and it is amazing how little all the writings of the last twenty years of his life took hold of the popular heart, in com- parison with " Pickwick " and " David Copperfield," and how little effect the most enormous advertising and the cumulative power of a great reputation LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. 237 really have to give a permanent popularity to writ- ings that do not deserve it. If Dickens had died at 40 his claim to immortality would have been as great as now, and the world of letters would have been little, if any, the loser. The excessive me thodical activity of his mature and advanced life could turn off works with fair rapidity ; but all his vast experience and all his earnest striving failed utterly to reach the standard of his reckless boy- hood. His later works were more perfect, perhaps, judged by some canons, but the genius of " Pick wick " was not in them. Emerson published the first series of his essays at 38, and the second at 41 ; and that these essays had been in his thoughts for years is evident from his statement that from his boyhood he had desired to write an essay on " Compensation." " Represen- tative Men " appeared at 46 ; " English Notes" at 53; " Conduct of Life" at 56, and " Society and Solitude " at 67. It is, I believe, the view of many of his critics that the essence of his thought is em- braced in his earlier essays, which were written between 25 and 40, and that none of his subsequent writings are so' sure of immortality as these. I find no record of any very important inven- tion conceived and developed after the age of 60. Edison with his three hundred patents, is not the only young inventor. All inventors are }Toung. 238 ILLUSTRATIVE CASES—INVENTORS. Colt was a boy of 21 when he invented the fa- mous weapon that bears his name; and Goodyear began his experiments in rubber while a young man of 24, and made his first success at 38, and at 43 had brought his discovery to approximate perfec- tion. Eli Whitney invented the "cotton gin" at 27, and between 33 and 41 discovered and perfected his method of making fire-arms. Fulton at 28 had begun to study steam naviga- tion, and was 42 when he made his first success on the Hudson. Dreyse, the inventor of the needle-gun at 42, had, after various experimenting, at 49 constructed his first breach-loader. The name of Bichat is one of the greatest in science, and he died at 32. Graefe, the greatest of ophthalmologists, and one of the greatest men of history, was famous at 25 ; at 31 had a world-wide fame, and died at 42. Pinel at 35 had made an important investigation in science: at 40 took charge of an insane asylum and introduced his humane method; at 46 he gained a prize for an essay on the subject, and at 47 was appointed to the Bicetre, where he intro- duced a great reform in the treatment of the insane. . Turner at 15 exhibited to the Royal Academy, at 27 was an academician — painted his best works LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 239 "the Middle Period," in the years between 39 and 45. The works of the last twenty years of his life are inferior. Handel at 19 was director of the opera at Ham- burg; at 20 composed his first opera; at 35 was appointed manager of the Royal Theatre at London; at 25 composed " Messiah," and at 66 "Jephtha," and in old age and blindness his intellect was clear and his power of performance remarkable. Luther early displayed eloquence, and at 20 began to study Aristotle; at 29 was doctor of di- vinity, and when he would refuse it, it was said to him that "he must suffer himself to be dignified, for that God intended to bring about great things in the church by his name ;" at 34 he opposed the " Indigencies," and set up his ninety-five proposi- tions ; at 37 he publicly burned the Pope's bull; at 47 he had completed his great task. Yon Moltke between 66 and 70 directed the operation of the great war of Prussia against Austria and France. But that war was but a con- clusion and consummation of military study and organization that had been going on for a quarter of a century. Nelson at 39 was distinguished at the battle of St. Yincent, and was knighted and made rear ad- miral. At the age of 40 he had been actually and personally engaged with the enemy ore hundred 240 ILL USTRA TII Vt' CA SES—CA RL YLE. and twenty times and had gained the battle of the Nile, and was 47 at Trafalgar, where he was killed in action. It is a fact of very great interest that the ex- periments and speculations that have led to the pretty generally adopted theory of the correlation of forces were made by young men. Thus: Rumford at 31 was a very successful adminis- trator in Bavaria; at 45 published the experiments on what he had been engaged, on heat, etc. Grove at 31 set forth his views on the correlation of forces, and at 41 was queen's counsel. Harvey at 40 made the discovery of the circula- tion of blood, and made it public at 49. Jenner at 21 began his investigation into the difference between cow-pox and small-pox. His attention was called to the subject by the remark of a country girl, who said in his hearing that she could not have the small-pox, because she had had the cow-pox. At 47 he had perfected his great discovery. If Carlyle had died at 45, the loss to literature would have been but slight; all that is best in his writings, all that has given him his renown, all for which he is to be remembered, was originated and mostly published before that date. Durino- the last forty years of his life he went, mostly, on the momentum acquired in the first forty years; LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 241 and it is one of the proofs of his insight that he himself suspected, if he did not quite know this fact, and when urged to write, replied, "I have nothing more to say to the w'orld, beyond what I have already said." The discoursings of this Titanian rhapsodist were perhaps never so rich, impressive, and amazing as in his old age ; but, like the con- versations of all old people, they were historical and biographical; new, it may be, to the listener, but to the speaker very old; accumulated treasures of a lifetime brought out for exhibition and re- freshment, like old and rare wines from well-stocked cellars ; even fifteen years before his death a keen reporter describes his conversation — to which he listened for hours, as mostly a recital of " Sartor Resartus," and Characteristics of Past, Present, and latter day pamphlets. Not Mr. Peabody at the age of 70, going up and down the land distributing his millions; but Mr. Peabody young, unknown, laying the founda- tion for those millions, represents the highest and strongest capacity of the man; the time when they gained materials for conversation, when they pros- pected, mined for, and analyzed their jewels which now, when well set and polished, they display to every visitor, was the time when they were at their maximum, for old men, like nations, can show their treasures of art long after they have begun 212 LIVING A PROCESS OF DYING. to die; this, indeed, is one of the sweetest and most refreshing compensations for age; but we err, from a scientific point of view, if we confound exhibit- ing with originating. A contemporary leader in science (Huxley) has asserted that it would be well if all men of science could be strangled at the age of 60, since after that age their disposition — with possible exceptions here and there — is to become re-actionary and obstructionists; but such a course would be as un- wise as it M-ould be cruel, since it would deprive us of the accumulations of thought which are only possible in old age. Killing off our millionnaires at that age would not be more unscientific and disas- trous; the thought, like the wealth of the world, is organized in youth, but multiplied, concentrated, diffused, and made practical in old age. The lives of some individuals are typical illus- trations of the law. I may mention as especially worthy of study in this regard the lives of Goethe, Humboldt, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Newton, and Liebig. A minute study of the intellectual history of these six men alone will illustrate the law of the relation of age to work, though it will not demonstrate it. Death is a process more than an event; even while we live we die ; living itself is but a mode of dying. We die, not in wholes, but in fractions, branch after branch falling away, until the tree is LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 243 utterly bare. Those who long survive, are called upon to attend the funerals of their own forces, as they slowly perish, one by one, We are to bury Carlyle to-morrow, but he had been dying for a quar- ter of a century. Suggestions of Previous Thinkers. Although I have been the first to make the discovery of the Law of the Relation of Age to Work and organize this subject in science as well as to point out its various practical applications, yet the general fact has been more or less anticipated by a number of illustrious thinkers. Thus Goethe, whose rich and powerful brain saw farther into almost every subject than any of his contemporaries — soaring high on the wings of science and of song — in his conversations over and over again sings the praises of youth. Says he to Eckermann: " Yes, yes, my good friend, we must be young to do great things." And in another place, speaking of government, he said with emphasis: " If I were a premier I would never place in the high- est offices people who have risen gradually by mere birth and seniority, and who, in their old age, move on leisurely in their accustomed tracks; for in this way but little talent is brought to light. I would have young men." Luther is reported to have said that: " If a man 244 THOUGHTS OF GOETHE AND SCHILLER. is not handsome at 20, strong at 30, learned at 40 and rich at 50, he will never be handsome, strong, learned or rich in this world." In the light of these statistics this statement becomes a prophecy with a most remarkable fulfilment. Says Sterne "at sixty years of age the tenement gets fast out of repair, and the lodger, with anxiety, thinks of a discharge." Mr. Emerson, even in his excel- lent plea for old age, makes this admission: " We do not count our years until there is nothing else to count;" and of literary inactivity in old age he says, with high wisdom: "We postpone our literary work until we have more experience and skill to write, and we one day .discover that our literary talent was a youthful effervescence which we have now lost." Schiller has expressed the same idea as his friend Goethe in the maxim: " Denn der Lebende hat Recht"—" For he who lives is in the right." The French have a motto that must have been originated by some one who thought of these things, " Qui n'a point de sens a trente ans, n'en aura jamais," " He who has no sense at thirty years of age will never have any," and the words of Louis XIV., written with his own hand in the palace at Ver- sailles: " En^il faut de la jeunesse"—"In everything youth is indispensible," are probably the best he ever uttered. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, used this LONGEVITY OF BRA1N-W0BKEBS. 245 language: " New ideas build their nests in young brains; revolutions are not made by men in spec- tacles, as I have heard it remarked; and the whis- perings of new truths are not caught by those who begin to feel the need of an ear trumpet.*' The late General Halleck, in his book on " Mili- tary Science and Art," has a very interesting chap- ter on the age of the generals of the world; in that he -shows, by a powerful and convincing array of statistics, that, with a few exceptions, nearly all the successful campaigns of history have been fought by young men. The history of the campaigns of Na- poleon illustrates this point most astonishingly; his early successes were gained over old and worn-out generals, on whom great hopes had been centered j but he was finally overthrown by the young and middle-aged; at Waterloo he and Wellington were about the same age. In our recent civil war, the North began with old generals, and failed ignominiously at nearly every point, the average age of the generals and admirals (including Farragut) who put the war through was between 35 and 39. One of the most striking passages on this sub- ject is the following from Montaigne's Essay on Age: " For my part, I believe our souls are adult at 20 as much as they are ever likely to be, and as ca- pable then as ever. A soul that has not by that 246 VIEWS OF MONTAIGNE. time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to proof. Natural parts and excellences produce what they have fine and vigor- ous within that term or never: ' Si l'espine non picque quand nai, A peur que picque jamais/ as they say in Dauphiny. Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were performed before 30 than after, and often- times in the lives of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of Hannibal and his great competitor, Scipo ? The better half of their lives they lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after, 'tis true, in com- parison of others, but by no means in comparison of themselves. As to myself, I am certain that since that age both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed than improved, retired rather than advanced.* 'Tis possible that with those who make the best use of their knowledge and experi- ence may grow up and increase with their years; but the vivacity, quickness, steadiness, and other qualities, more our own, of much greater impor- tance and much more essential, languish and decay. * This confession is all the more remarkable from the fact that the immortal essays of Montaigne were not written down until he had passed the golden decade. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBEEBS. 247 ' Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium, deli rat linguaque mensque. When once the body's shaken by time's rage, The blood and vigor ebbing into age, No more the mind its former strength displays, But every strength and faculty decays.' " The same author in his own old age, thus writes: "Two of my acquaintances, great men in this fac- ulty, have in my opinion lost half in refusing to publish at forty years old that they might stay till threescore "... "Maturity has its defects as well as greenness, and worse;" . . . "our wits grow costive and thick in growing old." Unpopularity of these Truths. These truths, unlike new truths in general, are acceptable to the old, but most unacceptable to the young and middle-aged. A former instructor of mine—a broad-minded and liberally cultured man, a well known professor—once remarked to me: " You can hardly expect any one about 3S or 40 to accept your theory." The reason for this is that not one of ten thousand ambitious men who have reached their fortieth j-ear have at all fulfilled their ideal; those who have failed hope to succeed, and those who have somewhat succeeded aspire to nobler suc- cess in the future. The harvest is passing, the sum- mer over, and they are neither as rich or famous 248 UNPOPULARITY OF THESE TRUTHS. as they hoped to become. It is not in ambitious human nature to be content with what we have been enabled to achieve up to the age of forty. Twice I have been told by men of ability, and culture, and achievement: "If your theory is true I ought to commit suicide." My reply in both cases was in substance this : The best of your original, pioneer- ing, radical work is in all probability already accom- plished. The chances are tens of thousands to one that you will originate less in the future than you have in the past; for, just as we know by statistics that a man at 40 has a certain average expectation of life, so do we know that he has a certain average expectation of original work. There is a chance in many, many thousands that he will live to be a hundred years old; there is about the same chance that he will make some phenomenal discovery or invention, or conceive and execute some orio-inal production in art. Fame and wealth may come to him far exceeding your wildest dreams; but they will be the result and the reward of the work already done. Happiness may augment with years, because of better external conditions; and yet the highest happiness is obtained through work itself more than through the reward of work; earth has no joy like that which comes from the birth of a new thought in a young brain. It is now ten years since this reply was made LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 249 to the criticisms of these young men, and neither of them have accomplished as much since that time as they had accomplished before. Moral Decline and Happiness in Old Age. The time of life at which men are happiest is a question that is germain to the one here dis- cussed. Says Chateaubriand, " The wind that blows on a hoary head never comes from a happy shore." The pleasure of doing original work to him who is organized for ideas is surely of a higher order than the pleasure of recognition and reward. Of the three motives to activity—wealth, fame, and satisfaction—the most potent to the strongest natures, in the highest realms, is surely satisfaction; he who declared that he would like to be forever 35, and he who on being asked his age replied that it was of little account provided that it was anywhere be- tween 25 and 40, but expressed the fact which these researches have formulated. Wealth is an element in happiness, the potency of which is both under and over rated, and almost all the wealth of the world is in the hands of age, since very few either by acquisition or by inheritance obtain large means, before the passing away of the golden and silver de- cade; the world's work is done by youth and pov- erty. Capacity for original work age does not have, but in compensation it has almost everything else. 250 MORAL DECLINE IN OLD AGE. The querulousness of age, the irritability, the avarice are the resultants partly of habit and partly of organic and functional changes in the brain. Increasing avarice is at once the tragedy and the comedy of age; as we near the end of our voyage we become more chary of our provisions, as though the ocean and not the harbor were before us. Ava- rice is indeed the offspring not of poverty or uncer- tainty, but of opulence and security; those are chiefly avaricious who are most above the need of being so; our intellectual ruin very often dates from the hour when we begin to save money. Moral courage is rare in old age; sensitiveness to criticism, fear of opposition, take the place, in the iron and wooden decades,-of delight in criticism and love of opposition of the brazen and golden decades; hostility is best borne by those whose reputation is yet to be made ; fame like wealth makes us cautious, conservative, cowardly, since it implies the possibility of loss. Intellectual decline sometimes favors the devel- opment of a kind of negative morality, for positive vice requires intellectual force as much as positive virtue, and when the intellect declines the man is obliged to be virtuous. Physical health is also need- ed for indulgence in many of the vices; in Bul- wer's language, "it requires a strong constitution to be dissipated." Probably on the whole men are LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 251 happiest neither in youth nor extreme age, but in the silver and golden decades, about equally distant from the morning and evening shadows. As the moral and reasoning faculties are the highest, most complex, and most delicate develop- ments of human nature, they are the first to show signs of cerebral disease ; when they begin to decay in advanced life we are generally safe in predicting that, if neglected, other faculties will, sooner or later, be impaired. When conscience is gone the constitution may soon follow. The decline of the moral faculties in old age may be illustrated by studying the lives of the fol- lowing historic characters: Demosthenes, Cicero, Sylla, Charles V., Louis XIV., Frederic of Prussia, Napoleon (prematurely old), Voltaire, Jeffries, Dr. Johnson, Cromwell, Burke, Sheridan, Pope, Newton, Ruskin, Carlyle, Dean Swift, Chateaubriand, Rous- seau, Milton, Lord Bacon, Earl Russell, Marlborough, and Daniel Webster. In some of these cases the de- cline was purely physiological, in others pathologi- cal ; in the majority it was a combination of both. Very few decline in all the moral faculties. One becomes peevish, another avaricious, another misanthropic, another mean and tyrannical, another exacting and ugly, another sensual, another cold and cruelly conservative, another excessively vain and ambitious, others simply lose their moral enthusiasm 252 EXCEPTIONS TO MOBAL DECLINE. and their capacity for resisting disappointment and temptation. Prof. Tyndall, in his address on the scientific use of the imagination, admits these claims of the unproductiveness of age, but explains it by loss of enthusiasm more than of insight. There are not a few who are exceptions to the law of the decline of the intellectual and moral na- ture, just as there are exceptions to the universally accepted law of the decline of the physical nature. There are men who in extreme age preserve their teeth sound, their hair unchanged, their complexion fresh, their appetite sharp and digestion strong and sure, and their repose sweet and refreshing, and who can walk and work to a degree that makes their children and grandchildren feel very humble; but these observed exceptions in no way invalidate the general, law, which no one will dispute, that the phys- ical powers reach their maximum between 30 and 40, and that the average man at 70 is less muscular and less capable of endurance than the average man at 40. Just so there are men who, for several de- cades, preserve their reason clear, their imagination rich and strong, their memory faithful, their con- science sensitive, their moral courage heroic, and their temper sweet and pure. There are those whc sail into the harbor of old age freighted with well preserved treasures of virtue gathered during a voy- age crowded with adventure, and difficulty, and peril. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 253 Compensations of Age. Longfellow, writing a class poem in his own old age, closes with these lines : "For age hath opportunity no lesa Than youth itself, though in another dress ; And as the evening twilight fades away, The sky is filled with stars invisible by day." Subjecting these lines to psychological analysis it can be counted among the compensations of age that it obtains the reward denied it in maturity and youth; that the appreciation of the work done in the silver, golden, and brazen decades is substituted for the pleasure of the work itself. The same author, after enumerating the familiar and doubtful catalogue of those who in life's decline have yet acquired new knowledge, presents this con- solation : " These are indeed exceptions, but they show How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow Into the Arctic region of our lives, 'Till little else than life itself survives." To age is granted in increasing richness the treasures of memory and the delights of recognition which most usually come from those who, at the time of the deeds whose value they recognize, were infants or unborn; only those who bury their con- temporaries, can obtain, during their own lifetime, 254 COMPENSATIONS OF AGE. the. supremacy of fame. Mrs. Carlyle, when con- gratulated on the honors given to her husband on the delivery of his Edinburgh address, replied with a certain disdain, as though he should have been honored before; but only by a reversal of the laws of the evolution of fame shall the manifestation of genius and the recognition of genius be simultaneous. The high praise of contemporaries is almost in- sulting, since it implies that he whom they honor is but little better than themselves. Permanent fame, even in this rapid age, is a plant of slow growth— first the blade; then, after a time, the ear; then, after many, many years, the full corn in the ear ; we have most reputation when we least deserve it. Single acts, however brilliant and important, rarely insure immortality; the heights of glory are not scaled at a bound, but only by long climbing and many wearisome and painful steps. But the highest compensation of age in brain- workers, before the coming of the last childhood, is, as indicated above, that work grows easier and more automatic; while the higher power of creating is disappearing, the lower, but for many the more needful, and with contemporaries more quickly ap- preciated, power of imitation, repetition, and rou- tine, is increasing; we can work without working, and enjoy without striving for the means of enjoy- ment. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBEEBS. 255 Comparative Longevity of the Professions. Inasmuch as professional men do not usually change their callings, but die in the special pro- fession in which they have lived, the vital statis- tics, at least of lawyers, physicians, and clergymen, become of value in determining their comparative longevity. I found in my researches, made several years ago, that lawyers and physicians lived to be about 57 or 58. The difference in the longevity of lawyers and physicians is but trifling. My observa- tions in this respect have since been variously con- firmed by other statisticians.* (See Drawing p. 200). Longevity of the Precocious. That precocity predicts short life, and is there- fore a symptom greatly to be feared by parents, has, I believe, never been questioned. In poetry and in science the idea has been variously incor- porated that early brilliancy is a sure indication of * An investigation made more recently by a Berlin physi- cian into the facts and data relating to human longevity shows the average age of clergymen to be 65 ; of merchants, 62 ; clerks and farmers, 61; military men, 59 ; lawyers, 58 ; artists, 57 ; and medical men, 56. Statistics are given showing that medical men in England stand high in the scale of longevity. Thus, the united ages of twenty-eight physicians who died there last year, amount to 2,354 years, giving an average of more the 84 years to each. The youngest of the number was 80; the oldest. 93 ; two others were 92 and 89, respectively ; three were 87, and four were 8C each ; and there were also more than fifty who averaged from 74 to 75 years. 256 LONGEVITY OF THE PBECOCIOUS. a feeble constitution and an early death. This view is apparently sustained by analogy, and by facts of observation; plants that are soon to bloom are soon to fade; those which grow slowly live long and de- cline slowly. Observing these facts we naturally ad- here to the opinion that the same principle should hold as regards men, but in making the analogy we forget that it loses its pertinency unless the objects implicated start in life with the same potential force and are surrounded by the same external conditions. It is probable that, of two individuals with pre- cisely similar organizations and under similar cir- cumstances, the one that develops earlier will be the first to die; but we are not born equally endowed and similarly environed. Not only are men unlike in organization, but they are very widely unlike; between the brain of Shakespeare and the brain of an idiot is a measureless gulf, and we may believe that difference of degrees may be found between the greatest and simply great men; we may believe that some are born with far more potential nervous force than others; millionnaires in intellect as well as in money, who can afford to expend enormous means without becoming impoverished. An outlay of one hundred dollars may ruin the mechanic, working for his daily wages, while the royal mer- chant may spend a thousand, and barely know it. There are those who can begin their life-work ear- LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 257 liei, toil harder and longer, than the multitude, and yet attain a very great age. The average age of 500 illustrious men, includ- ing those who did not exhibit any special precoc- ity, was about 04.20. Of these 500 individuals, among whom there were 25 women, 150 were decidedly precocious, and their average age was 66.50, or more than two years higher than that of the list of 500, that included the precocious and non-precocious. So far as I could ascertain, the in- stances of extraordinary longevity were as great among the precocious as among those who were not.* My investigations in this department fully confirm the remark of Wieland, that " an almost irresistible impulse to the art in which they are des- tined to excel manifests itself in future virtuosi — in poets, painters, etc., from their earliest youth." Not only in poetry and painting, but also in philosophy, in science, and in invention — indeed, in every great department in which human nature has displayed itself, it is true, as Milton beautifully remarks, <' Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the * A contributor to the Galaxy for August (Gl. W. Winterburn) thus discourses concerning musical prodigies. Investigating the records of the past two centuries, he finds 213 recorded cases of acknowledged prodigies. None of them died before their fifteenth year, some attained the age of 103 — and the average duration of life was 58 — showing that, with all their abnormal precocity, they exceed the ordinary longevity by about six per cent. 258 LONGEVITY OF THE PBECOCIOUS. day." Madden, in his " Infirmities of Genius," says, that "Johnson is indeed of the opinion that the early years of distinguished men, when minutely traced, furnish evidence of the same vigor or origi- nality of mind by which they are celebrated in after- life. The more closely I study biography, the more strongly I become convinced that the number of really illustrious geniuses who did not give early manifestations of their genius, is very limited. I do not forget that some of the currently reported exceptions are very striking; thus we are told that Chalmers at school was stupid and mischievous; that Adam Clark, as a boy, could do nothing but roll huge stones about; that of Sir Walter Scott, his teacher, Professor Dalzell, frankly said : " Dunce he was and dunce he would remain;" that Burns, though a good athlete, showed in his boyhood no unusual gifts; that Goldsmith was "a plant that flowered late;" that John Howard, and Napoleon, and Wellington, were, to say the least, but little remarkable at school; and that the father of Isaac Barrow is reported to have said that "if it pleased God to take away any of his sons, he prayed that it might be his son Isaac, as being the least prom- ising of them all." These exceptions, apparent and real, may be ex- plained in two ways :— LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 259 lirst. The stupidity attributed to men of genius may be really the stupidity of their parents, guar- dians, and biographers. Men are precocious, if they are precocious at all, in the line of their genius. It is observed, as Wieland has stated, that almost all artists and mu- sicians are recorded as precocious, the exceptions being very rare. Music and drawing appeal to the senses, attract attention, and are therefore appre- ciated, or at least observed by the most stupid parents, and noted even in the most superficial biographies. Philosophic and scientific thought, on the contrary, does not at once, perhaps may never, reveal itself to the senses—it is locked up in the cerebral cells; in the brain of that dull, pale youth, who is kicked for his stupidity and laughed at for his absent-mindedness, grand thoughts may be si- lently growing ; the plant which to-day looks stunted and dwarfed may hereafter quicken into life, rise into strength and beauty—to give fruit and shade to many generations. Scott, for example, though he 6tood low in his class at school, yet very early ex- hibited genius as an inventor and narrator of " tales of knight-errantry, and battle, and enchantments;" and Newton, according to his own account, was very inattentive to his studies and low in his class, but a great adept at kite-flying, with paper lanterns at- tached to them, to terrify the country people, of a GENIUS USUALLY PBECOCIOUS. dark night, with the appearance of comets; and when sent to market with the produce of his moth- er s farm, was apt to neglect his business, and to ruminate at an inn, over the laws of Kepler. It is fair to infer that the slowness attributed to many other distinguished geniuses may be simi- larly explained. This belief is strengthened by the consideration that many, perhaps the majority, of the greatest thinkers of the world seemed dull, in- ane, and stupid to their neighbors, not only in child- hood but through their whole lives. The brains as well as the muscles of men differ in the times of their growth; of a dozen individuals of the same endowments and external conditions, some will ripen early, others late. This is observed in colleges, where some who take the lead in everything, make no farther progress in after life; they " strike twelve the first time;" others who, between 15 and 25 are dullards, between 25 and 40 develop genius. It is probable, however, that nearly all cases of apparent stupidity in young geniuses are to be ex- plained by the want of circumstances favorable to the display of their peculiar powers, or to a lack of appreciation or discernment on the part of their friends. It is very difficult to find any college grad- uate of remarkable ability who did not, during his collegiate course, in some way manifest the germs of that ability, but there are many who fail in the LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. 261 proscribed routine of studies in the race for literary honors, who yet, in some department or other, do attain distinction. As compared with the world, the most liberal curriculum is narrow; to one avenue of distinction that college opens, the world opens ten. In order to learn the material of which a college class is made, it is necessary not only to look at the marks on the tutor's book and scan the prize lists of the societies, but also to go out on the ball-ground and down the river —we must min- gle in the evening carousal and study the social life of the students in their rooms, or their walks, in vacation, and at home. Whether we regard those general considerations or not, the statistical fact remains, that in spite of the incompleteness of biographies and the igno- rance of parents and teachers, a very considerable proportion of the greatest geniuses of the wrnid are known to have been as remarkable in their precocity as in their genius; awl in spite of this precocity were exceedingly long-lived. Normal vs. Morbid Precocity. Great precocity, like great genius, is rare. Al- though I have known but few children whom fond parents did not at some time believe to be more or less superior to the average, yet I do not remember that I ever saw a very precocious child. There is 262 REAL PRECOCITY RARE. in some children a petty and morbid smartness that is sometimes mistaken for precocity, but which in truth does not deserve that distinction. The mani- festation of genius in childhood is as normal and as healthful as its manifestation in maturity; but in childhood, as in extreme old age, the effects of overtaxing the powers are more severely felt than in middle life. Petty smartness is oftentimes a morbid symptom ; it comes from a diseased brain, or from a brain in which a grave predisposition to disease exists; such children may die young, whether they do or do not early exhibit unusual quickness. The morbidly precocious soon wear themselves out, early find their level, and in after life are stupid or ordinary; the normally, physiologically precocious go on from strength to strength, and do not reach their maximum until between 30 and 40; and live longer and are capable of working harder than those of average gifts. There have been noted and oft-quoted instances where the precocious ge- niuses have died in early manhood, or just at reach- ing the maximum of their strength, between 30 and 40. The names of Pascal, Mozart, Keats, will be at- once recalled; but we forget the infinite num- ber who have died at the same age or earlier, and of the same diseases; but who neither in childhood nor in manhood exhibited any superior genius. The only method of arriving at the truth on the LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 263 question is the one here adopted; that is, to obtain the average longevity of a large number who were known to have been greatly precocious, and com- pare it with the average longevity of other able men in the same departments. M. D. Delaunay has addressed to the French Societe de Biologie a communication in which he takes the ground that precocity indicates biological inferiority. To prove this he states that the lower species develop more rapidly than those of a higher order; man is the slowest of all in developing and reaching maturity, and the lower orders are more precocious than the higher. As proof of this he speaks of the children of the Esquimaux, negroes, Cochin Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, etc. Advance in civilization reduces precociousness, as is proved by the lowering of the standard for re- cruits in France, which has been made necessary twice during the present century. He also states that women are more precocious than men; and that from eight to twelve years of age, girls gain one pound a year over boys. Inferior tissues de- velop faster than higher ones — the brain being the last and slowest of all in reaching maturity. He also says that precocity of organs is in inverse ratio to the extent of their evolution. There is truth in all this reasoning, and it ia in harmony with the instincts of mankind; but 264 INSTANCES OF GBEAT PBECOCITY. it it not inconsistent with the absolutely demon- strated fact that the very precocious may be very long lived. The highest genius, as here and else- where seen, never repeats itself; very great men never have very great children; and in biological analysis, geniuses who are very precocious may be looked upon as the last of their race or of their branch—from them degeneracy is developed; and this precocity, despite their genius, may be regarded as the forerunner of that degeneracy. Those who have not given special thought to this theme will be surprised to learn how early and how strikingly the genius of some of the greatest and longest lived heroes was displayed. Leibnitz, at 12 understood Latin authors well, and wrote a remarkable production; Gassendi, "the little doctor," preached at 4; and at 10 wrote an important dis- course ; Goethe, before 10, wrote in several lan- guages ; Meyerbeer, at 5, played remarkably well on the piano; Niebuhr, at 7, was a prodigy, and at 12 had mastered eighteen languages; Michael Angelo at 19 had attained a very high reputation; at 20 Calvin was a fully-fledged reformer, and at 24 pub- lished great works on theology that have changed the destiny of the world; Jonathan Edwards, at 10, wrote a paper refuting the materiality of the soul, and at 12 was so amazingly precocious that it was predicted of him that he would become another LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS 265 Aristotle; at 20 Melanchthon was so learned that Erasmus exclaimed : " My God ! What expectations does not Philip Melanchthon create !" Causes of the Exceptional Longevity of Great Bra in - Workers. The explanation of the surprising longevity of great brain-workers is quite complex. The readiest answrer to the problem would be that brain-work is healthful; and that, therefore, the better the brain and the harder it is worked, the longer the life of its possessor. Such a solution would not be entirely true; and if it were true unqualifiedly, it would clear up but one side of the question. The answer is to be found, not in any single con- sideration, but in many considerations, as follows:— 1. Great men usually come from healthy, long- lived ancestors. Longevity is a correlated inheritance of genius. In order that a great man shall appear, a double line of more or less vigorous fathers and mothers must fight through the battles for existence and come out triumphant. However feeble the genius may be, his parents or grandparents are usually strong; or if not especially strong, are long lived. Great men may have nervous if not insane relatives; but the nervous temperament holds to life longer than any other temperament. The great man may himself be incapable of producing other great 266 LONGEVITY OF GBEAT MEN. men ; in him, indeed, the branch of the race to which he belongs may reach its consummation, but the stock out of which he is evolved must be vigorous, and usually contains latent if not active genius. Longevity is hereditary, like all qualities or tenden- cies of organized life; and if great men come from long-lived stock, this fact is a most potent explana- tion of their exceptional longevity.* 2. A good constittttion usually accompanies a good brain. The cerebral and muscular forces are often correlated; the brain is a part of the body. This view, though hostile to the popular faith, is yet sound and supportable; a large and powerful brain in a small and feeble body is a monstrosity. When a specially small and delicate frame sustains a speci- ally large and potent brain, men wonder, as at a tree bowed to the earth by the weight of its overabun- dant fruit. Everywhere nature is a slave to the necessity of correlation or correspondence of parts and organs with each other; and unless she heeds it, all organized life would become awry and misshapen. In all the animal realm, there is a general though * I have had an opportunity to confirm the conclusion of Mr. Galton by observations made in the States. This is a young coun- try to study the inheritance of anything ; but out of a list of three hundred Americans, who in science, in invention, in literature, in statesmanship, in commerce, in art, and in war, have been more or less illustrious, more than two-thirds had distinguished relatives; over one hundred were fathers and sons, or grandfathers and grandsons, LONGEVITY OF BBAINWOBEEBS. 267 not unvarying relation between the brain and the body of which it is a part and to which it minis- ters ; a hundred great geniuses, chosen by chance, will be larger than a hundred dunces anywhere — will be broader, taller, and more weighty. In all lands, savage, semi-civilized, and enlightened — the ruling orders, chiefs, sheiks, princes by might and mind, scientists, authors, orators, and merchants of renown weigh more than the slaves, peasants, and riffraff over whom they rule; and bear the evi- dences of their superiority so clearly that they need no other insignia. In any band of workmen on a railway, you shall pick out the " boss," by his size alone: and be right four times out of five. " In monstrosities Nature reveals her secrets," says Goethe. Those monstrosities where genius is cab- ined in a small body, show the law by their very rarity. 3. Great men who are permanently successful have cm-respondingly greater will than common men ; and force of will is a potent element in determin- ing longevity. The one requisite for great success is grit; and, more uniformily than any other single quality or combination of qualities, it is found in those who attain high distinction. In the grand struggle for life it is everywhere the stiff upper lip that conquers; the timid and the yielding are cowed and crushed, and over them rise the courageous and 268 LONGEVITY OF GBEAT MEN. the strong. In certain of the arts extraordinary gifts may lift their possessor into fame with but little effort of his own, but the choicest seats in the tem- ples of art are given only to those who have earned them by the excellence that comes from consecutive effort, which everywhere test the vital power of the man. That longevity depends not a little on the will, no one will dispute. The whole subject of the relation of mental character to longevity is one of vast interest, and is too far-reaching to be here dis- cussed ; but this single point must be granted with- out argument, that of two men every way alike and similarly circumstanced, the one who has the greater courage and staying force will be the longer-lived. One does not need to practice medicine long to learn that men die that might just as well live if they had resolved to live and that many who are invalids, could become strong if they had the na- tive or acquired will to vow that they would do so. Those who have no other quality favorable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by life- shortening influences, yet do live by the determina- tion to live alone. Races and the sexes illustrate this ; the pluck of the Anglo-Saxon is shown as much on the sick-bed as in Wall Street or on the battle-field. During the late war I had chances enough to see how thoroughly the black man wilted under light LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 269 bickness, and was slain by disease over which his white brother would have easily triumphed. When the negro feels the hand of disease pressing upon him, however gently, all his spirit leaves him. The great men of history are as much superior in their will-power to the average of their fellows, as are the races to which they belong to the inferior and uncivilized races; they live, for the same reason that they become famous; they obtain fame because they will not be obscure; they live because they will not die. 4. Great men work more easily than ordinary men. Their expenditure of force to accomplish great things is less plenteous than the expenditure of ordinary men to accomplish small things. A Liverpool draft-horse draws with ease a load at which a delicate racer might tug and strain with out moving it. The greatest work is done easily; the best action is the unconscious; it is the essence of genius to be automatic and spontaneous. Many a huckster or corner tradesman expends each day more force in work or fretting than a Stewart 01 a Vanderbilt. "As small print most tires the eyes, so do little affairs the most disturb us;" the nearer our cares come to us the greater the friction ; it is easier to govern an empire than to train a family. It is notorious that Beecher's sermons cost him only an hour's musing or so, while many speakers 270 GBEAT LONGEVITY OF CLEBGYMEN. grind for a week over "efforts" that suggest no thought, except sorrow for the composer. Great genius is usually industrious, for it is its nature to be active; but its movements are easy, frictionless, melodious. There are probably many school-boys who have exhausted themselves more over a prize composition than Shakespeare over " Hamlet," or Milton over the noblest passages in " Paradise Lost." At one time I acted as surgeon on a gun- boat of the United States Navy on the blockade, which was under the command of a man who, I am sure, worried and distressed himself more over that little craft than did Admiral Farragut over the entire squadron. When he died, shortly after the close of the war, I was requested by his widow to use my influence in procuring a pension for her. This I was able to do most conscientiously, for I knew that he had worn himself out in the service, although the vessel under his charge, while I was on board at least, never went into action, chased no blockade runner, and experienced not one moment of real or suspected peril. The Great Longevity of Clergymen. When, in 1867, I first called attention to the fact that clergymen were longer-lived than any other large class of brain-workers, serious doubt was ex- pressed whether there might not be some error in LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 271 my statistics. So much has been said of the pernic- ious effects of mental labor, of the ill-health of brain-workers of all classes, and especially of clergy- men, that very few were prepared to accept the statement that the clergy of this country and of England lived longer than any other class, except farmers ; and very naturally a lurking fallacy was suspected. Other observers, who have since given special attention to the subject, have more than confirmed this conclusion, and have shown that clergymen are longer lived than farmers. The Rev. Josiah F. Turtle, D.D., President of Wabash College, Indiana, has ascertained the ages of 2,442 clergymen — 600 Trinitarian Congregation- alists, 317 Presbyterians, 231 Episcopalians, 268 Baptists, 208 Methodists, 166 Unitarians, etc.,— and found that the average was " a little over 61 years." " Considerably over one-half of the whole were over 60 years of age at their death; three-fourths of the whole were over 50 years old at death ; and seven-eighths of the whole were over 40 years of age at death." Dr.. Turtle found that the average age at death of 408 individuals (not clergymen), and who had died over 21 years of age, was a little over 51 years. This result pretty nearly corresponds with mine. But by far the more thorough investigation on this subject, and one that must fully settle the ques- 272 GBEAT LONGEVITY OF CLERGYMEN. tion for all minds over whom facts have any influ- ence, has been made by Rev. J. M. Sherwood, for- merly editor of "Hours at Home" (in which my paper on longevity was originally published), and now Secretary of the " Society for Promoting Life Insurance among Clergymen." This gentleman has labored long and patiently in this department, and has ascertained that the average age of our min- isters at death is 64. These conclusions differ slightly from mine, but the difference is in favor of clergymen. Mr. Sher- wood informs me that he had obtained the average from a list of ten thousand clergymen, whose ages at death he ascertained at great labor by consulting " the minutes of ecclesiastical bodies for thirty years past, the catalogues of theological seminaries, Wil- son's ' Historical Almanac,' Dr. Sprague's ' Annals of the American Pulpit,' biographical dictionaries, the files of religious journals, etc." A list of ten thousand is sufficient and more than sufficient for a generalization; for the second five thousand did nothing more than confirm the result obtained by the first. It is fair and necessary to infer that if the list were extended to ten, twenty, or even one hundred thousand, the average would be found about the same. In England, also, clergymen live to a greater age than any other class. According to the report LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 273 of the Secretary of the Clerical Mutual Life As- surance Society, the mortality is less than that in twenty other companies by a very important per- centage. Causes of the Exceptional Longevity of Clergy men. The reasons why clergymen are longer lived than any other class of brain-workers are these :— 1. Their callings admit of a wide variety of toil.— In their manifold duties their whole nature is exercised — not only brain and muscle in general, but all, or nearly all, the faculties of the brain — the religious, moral, and emotional nature, as well as the reason. Public speaking, when not carried to the extreme of exhaustion, is the best form of gymnastics that is known; it exercises every inch of a man, from the highest regions of the brain to the smallest muscle. In his public ministrations, in his pastoral calls, in his study, in his business arrange- ments, in his general reading, the pastor exercises more widely and variously than any other calling. 2. Comparative freedom from financial anxiety.— The average income of the clergymen of the lead- ing denominations of this country in active service as pastors of churches (including salary, house rent, wedding fees, donations, etc.), is between $800 and $1,000, which is probably not very much smaller 274 LONGEVITY OF CLERGYMEN. than the net income of all other professional classes. Furthermore, the income of clergymen in active ser- vice is collected and paid with greater certainty and regularity, and less labor of collection on their part, than the income of any other class except, perhaps, government officials; then, again, their earnings, whether small or great, come at once, as soon as they enter their profession, and is not, as with other callings, built up by slow growth. Worry is the one great shortener of life under civilization; and of all forms of worry, financial is the most frequent, and for ordinary minds, the most distressing. Merchants now make, always have made, and probably always will make, most of the money of the world; but business is attended with so much risk and uncertainty, and consequent anxiety, that merchants die sooner than clergymen, and several years sooner than physicians and lawyers. The average income of families of all classes in tnis country is small — about $700 a year — and for the laboring classes, not more than half that sum; and if the same efforts were made to obtain the de- tails of the financial history of every family in the land, as has been done in the case of clergymen, there would be some very dreary reading indeed. 3. Their superior mental endowments. — I speak calmly and discriminate^, and from a careful com- parison of biographical data, when I say that clergy- LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WORKERS. 275 men—as represented by the Congregational, Pres- byterian, Unitarian, and other leading denominations —have presented a higher average of the higher, though not, perhaps, of the very highest kinds of ability, than any other equally large class in modern history. During the past fifteen years, there has been a tendency, which is now rapidly increasing, for the best endowed and best cultured minds of our col- leges to enter other professions, and the ministry has been losing, while medicine, business, and science have been gaining. 4. Their superior tem^perance and morality.— Clergymen are more regular in their sleep, meals, and exercise, than any other intellectual class; and are less exposed to injurious influences and conta- gious diseases than some other occupations. Consolation for the Nervous. Persons nervously organized are unquestionably cheated somewhat in the game of life, shorn of at least a portion of their possible happiness and use- fulness, prisoners of their own feebleness, with no certain hope of perfect and permanent liberation. There are those who come into life thus weighted down, not by disease, not by transmitted poison in the blood, but by the tendency to disease, by a sen- sitiveness to evil and enfeebling forces that seems 276 CONSOLATION FOR THE NERVOUS. to make almost every external influence a means of torture; as soon as they are born, debility puts its terrible bond upon them, and will not let them go, but plays the tyrant with them until they die. Such persons in infancy are often on the point of dying, though they may not die; in childhood numberless physical ills attack them and hold them down, and, though not confining them to home, yet deprive them, perhaps, of many childish delights; in early maturity an army of abnormal nervous sensations is waiting for them, the gauntlet of which they must run if they can; and throughout life every function seems to be an enemy. The compensations of this type of organization are quite important and suggestive, and are most con- solatory to sufferers. Among these compensations, this perhaps is worthy of first mention — that this very fineness of temperament, which is the source of nervousness, is also the source of exquisite pleas- ure. Highly sensitive natures respond to good as well as evil factors in their environment, salutary as well as pernicious stimuli are ever operating upon them, and their capacity for receiving, for retaining, and for multiplying the pleasures derived from ex- ternal stimuli is proportionally greater than that of cold and stolid organizations: if they are plunged into a deeper hell, they also rise to a brighter heav- en ; their delicately-strung nerves make music to the LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKERS. 277 slightest breeze; art, literature, travel, social life, and solitude, pour out on them their selected treasures; they live not one life but many lives, and all joy is for them variously multiplied. To such tempera- ments the bare consciousness of living, when life is not attended by excessive exhaustion or by pain, or when one's capacity for mental or muscular toil is not too closely tethered, is oftentimes a supremo felicity. The true psychology of happiness is grati- fication of faculties, and when the nervous are able to indulge even moderately and with studied cau- tion and watchful anxiety their controlling desires of the nobler order, they may experience an exquis- iteness of enjoyment that serves, in a measure, to reward them for their frequent distresses. In the human system, as in all nature, everything is in motion, and all motion is rhythmical, and movement in any one direction is the more forcible and spon- taneous when it follows movement in another di- rection ; the motions that constitute what we call health are most delicious and satisfying when fol- lowing quickly after debility or pain. Perfect health of itself is not a condition of positive hap- piness, and is not at all essential to happiness. The happiest persons I have seen, or expect to see, were partial invalids—not those who were racked and tor- tured with nameless agonies, or kept prostrate by absolute exhaustion, but who were so far under bond- 27S HAPPINESS OF INVALIDS. age to susceptible nerves as never to realize even approximate health; even in their slavery they were sufficiently free to indulge some, at least, of their higher faculties, and to that degree were capable of enjoyment all the more intense from contrast with the restrictions that disease imposed on the rest of their organization. I recall the case of a lady who, as an effect of severe functional nervous disorder, had become temporarily paralyzed, so that none of the limbs had power of self-motion, and yet she was apparently and really more joyous than the majority of those who have full physical liberty. The mystery, long noted by physicians, that patients who are half cured of a severe malady are more grateful than even those fully cured, is ex- plained by the fact that we need a certain degree of debility, a limited and bearable amount of pain or discomfort, to keep us constantly mindful by contrast of the pleasantness of our present state as compared with what it has been or might be. The physician who collects his fee before his patient has quite re- covered, does a wise thing, since it will be paid more promptly and more gratefully than after the recovery is complete. Nervous organizations are rarely without reminders of trouble that they escape —their occasional wakefulness and indigestion, their headaches and backaches and neuralgias, their disa- greeable susceptibility \o all evil influences that may LONGEVITY OF BRAIN- WOBKEBS. 279 act on the constitution, keep them ever in sight of the possibility of what they might have been, and suggest to them sufferings that others endure, but from which they are spared. The most exquisite physical pleasure, it has been said, is sudden relief from violent pain. This pleas- ure is quite often the experience of the nervous: alternations of depression and vigor, of pain and the relief of pain, of wakefulness and sound sleep, mark the lives of thousands. While it is true that pain is more painful than its absence is agreeable, so that we think more of what is evil than of what is good in our environment, and dwell longer on the curses than the blessings of our lot, and fancy all others happier than ourselves, yet it is true likewise that our curses make the blessings more blissful by contrast; the bright colors of the picture seem all the lighter against the dark and stormy background. I have heard of a prominent public man who, when governor of his State, once remarked to an acquaintance that he was suffering from a slight pain in his hand, and that it was the first real pain he had ever felt in his life. This statement was probably, in scientific strictness, untrue; he had no doubt experienced pains, perhaps many of them, that had been forgotten, but his life must have been, up to that time, unusually free from physical evils. A freedom from disease so absolute as that 280 HAPPINESS OF INVALIDS. can be a source of negative pleasure only; it is not of necessity any positive mental possession; it may not be thought of from year to year, any more than the existence of sunlight or of oxygen in the air, save when we are shut out from them, and there- fore can be but an uncertain element of consolation amid the struggles and disappointments of life. In contrast with this painless life there are in this land immense numbers who pass no day free from pain ; who are ever conscious, unless diverted by mental or other employment, of disagreeable if not distressing sensations; and who, notwithstand- ing, are cheerful and, to a degree, in love with life. There are those who though never well are yet never sick, always in bondage to debility and pain, from which absolute escape is impossible, yet not without large liberty of labor and of thought; held by a long tether which gives them, within certain limits, free play, but never condemned to utter con- finement ; ignorant alike of perfect health and per- fect prostration. Such persons may be exposed to every manner of poison, may travel far and care- lessly with recklessness, even may disregard many of the prized rules of health ; may wait upon and mingle with the sick, and breathe for long periods the air of hospitals or of fever-infested dwellings, and come out apparently unharmed. When the poison of fever enters the strong, LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 281 phlegmatic constitution, it at once intrenches itself and finds protection in its solid walls, and then is driven out only with difficulty; but in the nervous constitution there are no such means of defence — it is vulnerable on every side, and the intruder hav- ing no means of holding his position, may be ex- pelled with slight effort. Natural History of Nervousness. The nervous may also find consolation in the fact of medical observation that nervousness, like other physical evils, tends to cure itself. After remedies, and even hygiene, have done their best, and have been foiled — after the wisest physicians have found their Waterloos or Sedans — time, co- operating with the natural growth of the constitu- tion, may bring deliverance. This recuperative ten- dency of the nervous system is stronger, oftentimes, than the accumulating poison of disease, and over- masters the baneful effects of unwise medication and hygiene. Between the ages of 25 and 35, especially, the constitution often consolidates as well as grows, acquires power as well as size, and throws off, by a slow and invisible evolution, the subtile habits of nervous disease, over which treatment the most judicious and persistent seems to have little or no influence. There would appear to be organ- izations which at certain times of life must needs 2S2 NATUBAL HISTOBY OF NERVOUSNESS. pass through the dark valley of nervous depression, and who cannot be saved therefrom by any manner of skill or prevision ; who must not only enter into this valley, but, having once entered, cannot turn back: the painful, and treacherous, and agonizing horror, wisdom can but little shorten, and ordinary misdoing cannot make perpetual; they are as sure to come out as to go in; health and disease move in rhythm; the tides in the constitution are as demonstrable as the tides of the ocean, and are sometimes but little more, under human control. I call up here the experience of a gentleman once under my care for profound and protracted disease of the nervous system, and whose life, mainly through his own fault, was but a series of alterna- tions of ups and downs, which, though modified by treatment, could not be, at least were not, entirely broken up. One day, as I called to see him, he was much better than usual, and was clearly mending, and I made a remark to that effect. "Yes," said he, "I'm getting ready for another relapse." It is an important consolation for those who are in the midst of an attack of sick-headache, for ex- ample, that the natural history of the disease is in their favor. In a few days at the utmost, in a few hours frequently, the storm will be spent, and again the sky will be clear, and perhaps far clearer than before the storm arose. LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 283 Cycles of Debility. The capacity of the system for bearing pain, like its capacity for pleasure, is limited: it is only possible to suffer, as it is only possible to enjoy, a certain measure of sensation; the power to appreciate disagreeable sensations is and must be restricted by the forces in the organism, and can no more exceed them than the drawing-power of the locomotive can exceed the measure of the latent force of the consumed fuel. Thus it is that nearly all severe pain is periodic, intermittent, rhythmical: the violent neuralgias are never constant, but come and go by throbs, and spasms, and fiercely-darting agonies, the intervals of which are absolute relief. After the exertion expended in attacks of pain, the tired nerve-atoms must need repose. Sometimes the cycles of debility, alternating with strength, extend through long years — a decade of exhaustion being followed by a decade of vigor. There are those also who pass entirely and permanently out of the stage of depression; whose constitutions, originally sen- sitive, capricious, untrustworthy, slowly acquire strength and endurance, and are able to transmit these acquired qualities to their children and chil- dren's children. There are those who pass through an infancy of weakness and suffering and much pain, and through a childhood and early manhood in which the game of life seems to be a losing one, 284 CYCLES OF DEBILITY. to a healthy and happy maturity ; all that is best in their organizations seems to be kept in reserve, as though to test their faith, and make the boon of strength more grateful when it comes. The early life of some of the world's best heroes was passed in debility and strife with maladies over which, in time, they became victorious. Not a few of the most useful and most honored names in history were scarcely thought worth the raising — the ques- tion being, not whether they should be famous and laborious, but whether they could live at all; whether they must not early go down in the strug- gle for being. The fineness, the delicacy, the com- plexity of the highest organizations render them liable to manifold disturbance, to be more easily dis- ordered in the play of the various machinery than those of coarser and simpler fibre; but, when once they have succeeded in adapting themselves to their environment, when the initial battle of the campaign of life has been won, they seem to be stronger for the oppositions and difficulties they have met and overcome, and may endure and achieve far more, and last all the longer. Changes in the con- stitution of the kind here described take place, as it sometimes appears, not through any regimen or care, but in obedience to inevitable development ; they are signs of growth, which may, indeed, be modified but not radically changed by any de°ree LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKERS. of medical skill or practical wisdom, and only the most atrocious and persistent violation of the laws of life can avail to absolutely arrest their progress. Nervousness a Constant Warning. Perfect health is by no means the necessary condition of long life; in many ways, indeed, it may shorten life; grave febrile and inflammatory diseases are invited and fostered by it, and made fatal, and the self-guarding care, without Which great longevity is almost impossible, is not enforced or even suggested. " The only fault with my con- stitution," said a friend to me, " is that I have nothing to make me cautious." Headaches, and backaches, and neuralgias, are safety-valves through which nerve-perturbations escape, and which other- wise might become centres of accumulated force, and break forth with destruction beyond remedy. The liability to sudden attacks of any form of pain, or distress, or discomfort, under overtoil or from disregard of natural law, is, so far forth, a blessing to its possessor, making imperative the need of fore- sight and practical wisdom in the management of health, and warning us in time to avoid irreparable disaster. The nervous man hears the roar of the breakers from afar, while the strong and phlegmatic steers boldly, blindly on, until he is cast upon the shore, oftentimes a hopeless wreck. 286 NERVOUSNESS A WARNING. The familiar malady called writer's cramp,* for example, does not in its worst form usually attack the weak, but the comparatively strong; it is. in fact, in its severer phase, the penalty for having a good constitution. Those who are sensitive, and nervous and delicate, whom every external or internal irrita tion injures, and who appreciate physical injury in- stantly, as soon as the exciting cause begins to act, cannot write long enough to get writer's cramp; they are warned by uneasiness or pain, by weariness, local or general, and are forced to interrupt their labors before there has been time to receive a fixed or persistent disease. Hence it is that those who suffer from this disorder are surprised when the symptoms come upon theni; they declare that they have always been well, and wonder that they do not continue so: had they been feeble they would have been unable to persevere in the use of the pen so as to invite permanent nervous disorder. As with this malady of writers, so with other affections not a few, some of which are of a more serious and di- rectly fatal character. The nervous are frequently saved from incurable disturbances of the brain by a constant succession of symptoms that individually are trifling, but by their recurrence cause at first * See my paper entitled " Conclusions from the Study of One Hundred and Twenty-five Cases of Writer's Cramp and Allied Affections : also Neurasthenia." Second edition, p. 128. LONGEVITY OF BRAIN- WOREERS. 287 annoyance, then uneasiness, and then positive dis- tress, and finally compel a moderation in labor, perhaps a suspension of employment, which at this stage is all that the system needs for complete re- cuperation. Without such warnings they might have continued in a life of excessive friction and exhausting worry, and never have suspected that permanent invalidism was in waiting for them, until too late to save themselves either by hygiene or medication. When a man is prostrated nervously, all the forces of nature rush to his rescue; but the strong man, once fully fallen, rallies with diffi- culty, and the health-evolving powers may find a task to which, aided or unaided, they are inade- quate. The history of the world's progress from savag- ery to barbarism, from barbarism to civilization, and, in civilization, from the lower degrees towards the higher, is the history of increase in average lon- gevity, corresponding to and accompanied by in- crease of nervousness. Mankind has grown to be at once more delicate and more enduring, more sensitive to weariness and yet more patient of toil, impressible but capable of bearing powerful irrita- tion : we are woven of finer fibre, which, though apparently frail, yet outlasts the coarser, as rich and costly garments oftentimes wear better than those of rougher workmanship. 288 LONGEVITY AND CIVILIZATION. The tendency to live long runs in families ; mental discipline also, the result of opportunities for education and intellectual society, becomes a family inheritance, and thus favors family lon- gevity. Even in this young country there are not a few well-known families in which longevity is an heirloom, many of whose members have passed by a number of years the highest average age of brain-workers. Healthy Old Age. Among our educated classes there are nervous invalids in large numbers, who have never known by experience what it is to be perfectly well or severely ill, whose lives have been not unlike a march through a land infested by hostile tribes, that ceaselessly annoy in front and on flank, without ever coming to a decisive conflict, and who, in advanced age, seem to have gained wiriness, and toughness, and elasticity, by the long discipline of caution, of courage, and of endurance ; and, after having seen nearly all their companions, whose strength they en- vied, struck down by disease, are themselves spared to enjoy, it may be, their best days, at a time when, to the majority, the grasshopper becomes a bur- den, and life each day a visibly losing conflict with death. I have known many who have survived a youth LONGEVITY OF BRAIN-WOBKERS 289 and manhood of wearisome nervous invalidism, to an old age of comparative vigor and freedom from physical vexation; until past fifty, or even sixty, they have never known what it is to have no sense of weariness or pain ; the irritability, the sensitive- ness, the capriciousness of the constitution, between the ages of 15 and 45, have, in a degree, disappeared, and the system has acquired a certain solidity, stead- iness, and power; and thus, after a long voyage against opposing winds and fretting currents, they enter the harbor in calmness and peace. Recent Progress in the Treatment of Nervous Dis- eases. The nervous, likewise, have the consolation that progress of the most important character, indeed, unprecedented in its rapidity, has been made, and is now being made in the medical treatment of functional diseases of the nervous system. It may be doubted whether, in the history of disease of any kind, there has been made so decided and so satisfactory an advance as has been made within the last quarter of a century, in the treatment of ner- vousness in its various manifestations. This new treatment does not consist only in the use of medi- cines alone, although many new medicines have been introduced, and new modes of administering medicines, and new ideas in regard to doses—smaller -;,.'<» NERVOUSNESS SUCCESSFULLY TREATED. doses in some cases, and very much' larger in other cases; but, also, in the scientific study of diet, of ex- ercise, of sleep, of rest; in the application of such agencies as electricity, water, cold and hot, in va- rious forms, and by methods adapted to the nervous and sensitive constitution. One great factor in the modern treatment of these functional nervous dis- eases is individualization, no two cases being treated precisely alike, but each one being studied by itself alone. Among wise physicians, the day for whole- sale treatment of nervous diseases can never return. The result of all this progress is, that thousands who formerly would have suffered all their lives, and with no other relief except that which comes from the habitual addiction to narcotics, can now be cured, or permanently relieved, or at least put into working order where they are most useful and happy. If, in the future, as in the past, nervous diseases are to be a measure of our civilization,—if every increase in the illuminating power of the .mind is but an increase of surface to be eclipsed,— if all new modes of action of nerve-force are to be so many added pathways to sorrow,—if each fresh discovery or invention is to be matched by some new malady of the nerves,—if insanity and epilepsy and neurasthenia, with their retinue of neuroses, through the cruel law of inheritance, are to be organized in families, descending in fiery streams LONGEVITY OF BBAIN-WOBKEBS. 291 through the generations, ance,—that science, with are not slow, is seeking prevention and of relief. we yet have this assur- keen eyes and steps that and is finding means of CHAPTER V. PHYSICAL FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. From the vantage-ground of the above facts and philosophy, and with the light afforded by the past and present experience of races and nations, it be- comes possible to see, though dimly and for a lim- ited period, into the physical future of the Ameri- can people. In the twentieth century, as now, America will be inhabited by all the leading races of modern civilization, although by that time there will have been an enormous advance towards unity. At the present time it is observed that the process of Americanization among our recent foreigners, goes on with great rapidity; the peculiarities of our climate being so decided, universal, and deter- minate, that even the second generation of stolid and plethoric Germans, often acquires the sharp- ness of features, delicacy of skin, and dryness of hair, that everywhere, and for a long period, have been rightly looked upon as American character- istics. I have seen highly nervous Englishmen and Irishmen, who early emigrated to this country and engaged in severe mercantile or professional pur- PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 293 suits; such persons are sometimes so changed, even in a half or quarter of a century, as to become, in their physique, thoroughly Americanized. This increase of neuroses cannot be arrested sud- denly ; it must yet go on for at least twenty-five or fifty years, when all of these disorders shall be both more numerous and more heterogenous than at pres- ent. But side by side with these are already de- veloping signs of improved health and vigor that cannot be mistaken ; and the time must come — not unlikely in the first half of the twentieth century — when there will be a halt or retrograde move- ment in the march of nervous diseases, and while the absolute number of them may be great, rela- tively to the population, they will be less frequent than now; the evolution of health, and the evolu? tion of nervousness, shall go on side by side. Relation of Health to Wealth and Poverty. Accumulated and transmitted wealth is to be in this, as in other countries, one of the safeguards of national health. Health is the offspring of rela- tive wealth. In civilization, abject and oppressed poverty is sickly, or liable to sickness, and on the average is short-lived; febrile and inflammatory dis- orders, plagues, epidemics, great accidents and catas- trophes even, visit first and last and remain longest with those who have no money. The anxiety that 294 HEALTH AND WEALTH. is almost always born of poverty; the fear of still greater poverty, of distressing want, of sickness that is sure to come; the positive deprivation of food that is convenient, of clothing that is comfortable, of dwellings that are sightly and healthful; the con- stant and hopeless association with misery, discom- fort, and despair; the lack of education through books, schools, or travel; the absence of all but forced vacations — the result, and one of the worst results, of poverty — added to the corroding force of envy, and the friction of useless struggle, — all these fac- tors that make up or attend upon simple want of money, are in every feature antagonistic to health and longevity. Only when the poor become abso- lute paupers, and the burden of life is taken from them and put upon the State or public charity, are they in a condition of assured health and long life. For the majority of the poor, and for many of the rich, the one dread is to come upon the town; but as compared with many a home the poorhouse is a sanitarium. The inmates of our public institutions of charity of the modern kind, are often the hap- piest of men, blessed with an environment, on the whole, far more salubrious than that to which they have been accustomed, and favorably settled for a serene longevity. Here, in a sanitary point of view, the extremes of wealth and poverty meet; both conditions being similar in this — that they remove PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 295 the friction which is the main cause of ill-health and short life. For the same reasons, well-regu- lated jails are healthier than many homes, and one of the best prescriptions for the broken-down and distressed, is for them to commit some crime. The augmenting wealth of the American people during the last quarter of a century is already mak- ing its impress on the national constitution, and in a variety of ways. A fat bank account tends to make a fat man ; in all countries, amid all stages of civilization and semi-barbarism, the wealthy classes have been larger and heavier than the poor. Wealth, indeed, if it be abundant and permanent, supplies all the external conditions possible to humanity that are friendly to those qualities of the physique — plumpness, roundness, size — that are rightly be- lieved to indicate well-balanced health: providing in liberal variety agreeable and nourishing food and drink, tasteful and commodious homes, and com- fortable clothing; bringing within ready and tempt- ing access, education, and the nameless and power- ful diversions for muscle and mind, that only a reasonable degree of enlightenment can obtain or appreciate; inviting and fortifying calmness, stead- iness, repose in thought and action; inspiring and maintaining in all the relations of existence, a spirit of self-confidence, independence, and self-esteem, which, from a psychological point of view, are, in 296 HEALTH AND POVEBTY. the fight for life, qualities of the highest sanitary importance; in a word, minifying, along all the line of the physical functions, the processes of waste and magnifying the processes of repair. So insalubrious are the hygienic surroundings of the abjectly poor that only a slow adaptation to those conditions makes it possible for them to retain either the power or the desire to live. In India this coincidence of cor- pulence and opulence has been so long observed that it is instinctively assumed; and certain Brahmins, it is said, in order to obtain the reputation of wealth, studiously cultivate a diet adapted to make them fat. Poverty has, it is true, its good side from a hy- gienic as well as from other points of view; for, practically, good and evil are but relative terms, the upper and nether sides of the same substance, and constantly tending to change places. The chief advantage of poverty as a sanitary or hygienic force is that, in some exceptional natures, it inspires the wish and supplies the capacity to escape from it and in the long struggle for liberty we acquire the power and the ambition for something higher and nobler than wealth; the impulse of the rebound sends us farther than we had dreamed; stung by early deprivation to the painful search for gold, we often find treasures that gold cannot buy. But for one whom poverty stimulates and strengthens, there are thousands whom it subjugates and destroys, en- PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 297 tailing disease and an early death from generation to generation. The majority of our Pilgrim Fa- thers in New England, and of the primitive settlers in the Southern and Middle States, really knew but little of poverty in the sense in which the term is here used. They were an eminently thrifty people, and brought with them both the habits and the re- sults of thrift to their homes in the New World. Poverty as here described is of a later evolution, following in this country, as in all others, the path- way of a high civilization. In the centuries to come there will probably be found in America, not only in our large cities, but in every town and village, orders of financial nobil- ity, above the need but not above the capacity or the disposition to work: strong at once in inherited wealth and inherited character; using their vast and easy resources for the upbuilding of manhood, physi- ;al and mental; and maintaining a just pride in transmitting these high ideals, and the means for realizing them, to their descendants. Families thus favored can live without physical discomfort, and tvork without worrying. Their healthy and well- itdjusted forces can be concentrated at will, and in the beginning of life, on those objects best adapted to their tastes and talents; thus economizing and utilizing so much that those who are born poor and sickly and ignorant are compelled to waste in often- 298 INHEB1TED WEALTH. times fruitless struggle. The moral influence of such a class scattered through our society must be, on the whole, with various and obvious exceptions and qualifications, salutary and beneficent. By keep- ing constantly before the public high ideals of culture, for which wealth affords the means; by ele- vating the now dishonored qualities of serenity and placidity to the rank of virtues, where they justly belong, and by discriminatingly co-operating with those who are less favored in their toils and con- flicts, they cannot help diffusing, by the laws of psychical contagion, a reverence for those same ideals in those who are able but most imperfectly to live according to them.. Thus they may help to bring about that state of society where men shall no more boast of being overworked than of any other misfortune, and shall no longer be ashamed to admit that they have both the leisure and the desire for thought; and the throne of honor so long held by the practical man shall be filled, for the first time in the history of this nation, by the man of ideas. The germs of such a class have even now begun to appear, and already their power is clearly perceptible on American society. The essence of barbarism is equality, as the essence of civilization is inequality; but the increasing in- equality of civilization may be in a degree corrected by scientific philanthropy. PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 299 Comparative Ilealthfulness of Different Orders of Brain - Work. While all brain-work is so far forth healthful and conducive to longevity, yet the different orders of mental activity differ very widely in the degree of their health-giving power; the law is invariable that the exercise of the higher faculties is more salu- tary and more energizing than the exercise of the lower. The higher we rise in the atmosphere of thought the more we escape the strifes, the competi- tions, the worryings and exhausting disappointments — in short, all the infinite frictions that inevitably attend the struggle for bread that all must have, and the more we are stimulated and sustained by those lofty truths for which so few aspire. The search for truth is more healthful as well as more noble than the search for gold, and the best of all antidotes and means of relief for nervous disease is found in philosophy. Thus it is in part that Germany, which in scientific and philosophic discovery does the think- ing for all nations, and which has added more to the world's stock of purely original ideas than any other country, Greece alone excepted, is less nervous than any other nation ; thus it is also that America, which in the same department has but fed on the crumbs that fall from Germany's table, has devel- oped a larger variety and number of functional ner- vous diseases than all other nations combined. 300 LIMITATIONS OF GBOWTH Evolution in Relation to National Health. The commanding law of evolution — the highest generalization that the human mind has yet reached — affords indispensable aid in solving the problem we are here discussing. This law, when rightly understood, in all its manifold dependencies, devel- opments, complications, ramifications, divergencies, sheds light on numberless questions of sociology which formerly were in hopeless darkness. It is a part of this law that growth or development in any one direction, or along any one line of a race, family, or tribe, in time reaches its limit, beyond which it cannot pass, and where, unless re-enforced by some new or different impression or influence — a supply of vital force from some centre outside of itself to take the place of that which is expended in the exhausting processes of reproduction and ex- pansion — it dies utterly away Not more surely does a branch of a tree subdivide into numerous twigs, all of which must sooner or later reach their respective terminations, than do the various families of any people tend to their own elimination. The capacity for growth in any given direction, physical or mental, is always limited; no special gift of body or mind can be cultivated beyond a certain point, however great the tenderness and care bestowed upon it. The more rapid and luxurious the growth the sooner the supply of potential force is exhaust- PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 301 ed; and the faculty or gift, whatever it may be, is lost, only to be renewed in an entirely distinct family, or by the injection of the blood and nerve of a radically different race. The infinity of nature is not in the endurance or permanency of any of its elements — everything is changing, everything is dy- ing— but in the exhaustlessness of the supply. In horses only a certain rate of speed, in cows only a limited milk-forming power, in fowls but a moderate fertility, can be reached in any line of stock by any degree of mortal prevision and skill. The dying is as natural and as inevitable as the living; declen- sion is as normal as ascension, as truly a part of exceptionless law. In man, that higher operation of the faculties which we call genius is hereditary, transmissible, running through and in families as demonstrably as pride or hay-fever, the gifts as well as the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children and the children's children ; general talent, or some special talent, in one or both parents rises and expands in immediate or remote offspring, and ultimately flowers out into a Socrates, a Shakespeare, a Napoleon, and then falls to the ground; a very great man can never be the father of a very great man. In accordance with this law, it is inevit- able that many of the strong and great families of America at the present day must perish, and their places be supplied by the descendants of those who 302 FEW BRAIN-WOBKEBS IN SOCIETY. are now ignorant and obscure. This does not mean, as many have fancied, the dying out of the Ameri- can people: the race lives while tribes and families perish ; the periodical crops ripen and decay while the tree that produces them is every year adding to its growth. It is also a part of this law of evolution that the lower must minister to the higher. The strength of the strong must come, in part, from the weakness of the weak; millions perish that hun- dreds may survive. That a single family may rise to enduring prominence and power, it is needful that through long generations scores of families shall endure poverty and pain and struggle with cruel surroundings; shall vainly desire and perhaps strive for wealth and fame and position and ease, and sink at last in the conflict. For every brain-worker there must be ten muscle-workers. Even in Greece, the flower of all the civilizations, the majority of the population were slaves; that a few thousand might cultivate the intellect, hundreds of thousands must cultivate the soil. One cannot imagine a nation in which all should be rich and intelligent; for a people composed wholly of educated millionnaires, intelligence would be a curse and wealth the worst form of poverty. For America, as for all people, this law is as remorseless as gravity, and will not go out of its way at the beck either of philan- PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 303 thropy or philosophy. The America of the future, as the America of the present, must be a nation where riches and culture are restricted to the few — to a body, however, the personnel of which is con- stantly changing. But although the distance be- tween the extremes of society will still be great, perhaps even greater than in the past, the poor will have comforts and luxuries which now they cannot even picture, and correspondingly their health and comeliness should improve. The conserving and re- generating force of a large body of muscle-workers in society is enormous, and for the physical well-be- ing of a nation indispensable, since it not only pre- serves itself, but supplies the material to be engrafted on branches whose productive power is tending to decay; our cities would perish but for the country, our country would perish but for other countries. Yet further, it is a part of the law of evolution that nations, as well as the individuals of which na- tions are composed, can in time so fit themselves to unfavorable external conditions as practically to reverse them and make them favorable. This moulding of the internal to the external, with its accompanying disappearance of weak elements and persistence of the strong, is a process that never halts or wearies, but goes on without ceasing so long as there is any want of harmony between the internal and the external in the individual or the 304 A STBONG RACE EVOLVING. nation. A nation thrust into an unusual and hos- tile environment tends, with all the might of its subjective forces, to fit itself- to that environment, and to make itself at home there; old habits are dropped, new habits take their places; instinctively or rationally, there is constant sacrifice and study and deprivation, and correspondingly, friction of the internal against the external diminishes. Young America finds itself contending with the combined disadvantages of youth, an exhausting climate, and the heightened activity, common to all civilization, made necessary by the introduction of the railroad, the telegraph, and the periodical press. In the pro- cess of moulding itself to these conditions, it has been found necessary to seek out and develop num- berless modes of physical exercise, and reduce the philosophy of enjoyment and recreation to a science and art. Habits of the ages have been shifted, medicine and medical practice revolutionized, while inventive skill everywhere exhausts itself in the constant effort to supply mechanical devices for senses and faculties bankrupted through over-con- finement, over-excitement, and disproportionate use of the brain and nervous system. In this cruel pro- cess thousands have perished — are perishing to-day ; but from the midst of this confusion, conflict, and positive destruction a powerful and stable race has been slowly, almost imperceptibly, evolving. PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 305 Prospective Increase of Nervous Diseases — Inebriety a Type of all. Before the redeeming forces that are in a meas- ure to neutralize our nervousness shall be in full operation, there must be a still greater, perhaps even more rapid increase of nervousness and of func- tional nervous disease. The inebriates of our day and country must be counted already by tens and tens of thousands, and by the twentieth century their numbers must be very much greater; the law of inheritance, which, briefly stated, is that we are parts of our parents, together with the constant activity of the exciting causes of nervousness, as heretofore described, cannot be neu- tralized in the next quarter of a century, by any of the agencies suggested, to a sufficient degree to pre- vent rapid increase. Inebriety being a type of the nervous diseases of the family to which it belongs, may properly be here defined and differentiated from the vice and habit of drinking with which it is confounded. The functional nervous disease inebriety, or dip- somania, differs from the simple vice of drinking to excess in these respects:— First. The disease inebriety is more irresistible than the mere vice. The simple habit of drinking even to an extreme degree may be broken up by nledges or by word promises or by quiet resolution, 306 INEBBIETY DEFINED. but the disease inebriety can be no more cured in this way than can neuralgia or sick-headache, or neurasthenia, or hay-fever, or any of the family of diseases to which it belongs. Secondly. Inebriety is frequently or usually pre- ceded, or accompanied, or followed by certain ner- vous symptoms, and it is powerfully hereditary like all other nervous diseases. Of the nervous symp- toms that precede, or accompany, or follow ine- briety, are tremors, hallucinations, insomnia, mental depressions, and attacks of trance, to which I give the term alcoholic trance; striking cases of this form of trance have been reported by Dr. T. D. Crothers. Inebriates or those who have a tendency to ine- briety—may go off for several da}rs in states of un- consciousness of what they do, and are consequently irresponsible, and in this state may transact business and commit crime. The details of these cases of alcoholic trance are among the most interesting facts of medical literature; and will be recorded in a work on trance on which I have been many years engaged. Among the nervous diseases there is no one, not even hay-fever, which is more demonstrably hereditary; even drunkenness in a parent or grand- parent may develop in children epilepsy or in- sanity, or neurasthenia or inebriety. Third. Inebriety is distinguished frequently by the suddenness of its attacks. These attacks may PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 307 come on as suddenly as an attack of neuralgia of the face, with no more warning than cases of epi- lepsy; in some cases simply coining in contact with salt air will bring an attack of inebriety. Some attacks are of a subjective character quite indepen- dent of any external irritations, and in that respect differ from the forms of intoxication. Fourth. The attacks of inebriety may be peri- odical ; they may appear once a month, and with the same regularity as chills and fever or sick-head- ache, and far more regularly than epilepsy, and quite independent of any external temptation or in- vitation to drink, and oftentimes are as irresistible and beyond the control of will as spasms of epilepsy or the pains of neuralgia or the delusions of in- sanity. Inebriety is not so frequent among the classes that drink excessively as among those who drink but moderately, although their ancestors may have been intemperate; it is most frequent in the nervous and highly organized classes, among the brain-workers, those who have lived in-doors; there is more excessive drinking West and South than in the East, but more inebriety in the East. The habit of drinking may by insensible gradations develop into the disease inebriety; in some cases an attack of inebriety may appear without any previous habit of drinking. While there is to be, probably, less and less 308 INCREASE OF OPIUM HABIT. drinking in certain classes of American society dur- ing the next quarter of a century, there must, for the reason stated, be an increase of the disease ine- briety, and there is little doubt that even the West, beyond the Mississippi, must in time suffer from this malady; already, indeed, our far-away States and Territories are enacting prohibitory laws, which are the combined products of our nervousness and our non-expertness. The opium habit, likewise, is fated to increase during the next quarter of a century. Within twenty years the amount of opium imported into this country has increased five hundred per cent., being in 1S59 seventy-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine pounds, in 1880, three hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds; probably no country outside of China uses, in proportion to population, so much opium as America, and as the pains and nervousness and d3bility that tempt to the opium habit are on the increase, the habit must inevitably develop more rapidly in the future than in the past; of hay-fever there must, in a not very dis- tant time, be at least one hundred thousand cases in America, and in the twentieth century hundreds of thousands of insane and neurasthenics. Women, though more nervous than men, are not eo likely to suffer from inebriety, for two reasons : First. Because they have on the negative side PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 309 less temptation to drink than men, while on the pos- itive side they have socially more dissuasion from drinking; thus positively and negatively they are impelled and driven into temperance; but excep- tions enough there are among the women of our land to make it necessary to erect a large building for the treatment of inebriety in females, as Dr. Turner is now doing. Increased Susceptibility to Muscular Exercise. There must be, also, an increasing number of people who cannot bear severe physical exercise. Few facts relating to this subject are more in- structive than this — the way in which horseback- riding is borne by many in modern times. In our country, I meet with large numbers who can- not bear the fatigue of horseback-riding, which used to be looked upon — possibly is looked upon to-day — as one of the best forms of exercise, and one that is recommended as a routine by physi- cians who are not discriminating in dealing with nervously-exhausted patients. I find it is necessary to be very careful indeed in recommending this mode of pleasure which our fathers could indulge in freely without ever asking whether it was healthy or not. I have been consulted by physicians whose ner- vous symptoms were brought on, or at least inten- 310 SUSCEPTIBILITY TO MUSCULAB EXERCISE. sified by horseback-riding in country places, and I have seen attacks of spinal congestion induced in the same way, in persons who are accustomed to that mode of exercise, and who are reasonably strong and enduring. The greatest possible care and the best judgment are required in prescribing and adapting horseback-riding to nervous individuals of either sex; it is necessary to begin cautiously, to go on a walk for a few moments; and even after long training excess is followed by injury, in many cases. Gymnastics, also, must be administered in small doses ; the nervous weaken themselves by trying to make themselves strong by dumb-bells, Indian clubs, parallel bars, and imitations of rowing; not because these exercises have not a place in hygiene, but because where the quantity of nervous force is limited there is the greatest danger possible of drawing too heavily upon it; and especially is this true where there are classes and ambition of one to do what another can not do. If either extreme is to be chosen, it is well, on the whole, to err on the side of rest rather than on the' side of excess of physical exertion. I can see that twenty-five years hence the number of those who, though they may be in reasonable health, yet can not ride, row, or exercise in gymnastics recklessly will be much larger than now, and probably much greater in pro- PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 311 portion to the population. A few years ago it was pretty safe to advise a person who was somewhat broken down to ride, or row, or practise gymnastics; now, it is not safe to give that advice indiscrimi- nately, especially to natives of the United States. Reconstruction of Systems of Education de- manded. The systems of education in colleges and uni- versities, and at home, are, in almost all respects, adapted to exhaust the nervous system — from their very cradles our children are trained to nervous- ness; our schools are too often on the road to the asylum. In the philosophic analysis of any case of ner- vous disease or of nerve sensitiveness not yet devel- oped into active disease, we are to go back to the ancestry, near or remote — then we are to go back to childhood — we are to follow the infant from the maternal arms through home-life, school and university, business and professional life, to the time when the symptoms of nervousness first appeared. For various reasons which can be traced and ana- lyzed, if one should choose to attempt the task, the science and art of education are kept in the rear of the other sciences and arts; but during the last century, pre-eminently perhaps, during the last de- cade— most of all, indeed, during the last five 312 RECONSTRUCTION OF EDUCATION. years, and never more than during the past year, there has developed an inquiry in the scientific study of the problems of education. This inquiry is to extend until the existing modes of discipline and instruction shall have only an historic and antiquar- ian interest. Why Education is behind other Sciences and Arts. Schools and colleges everywhere are the sanctu- aries of mediaevalism, since their aim and their pow- ers are more for retaining what has been discovered than for making new discoveries ; consequently we cannot look to institutions or organizations of educa- tion for the reconstruction of that system by which they enslave the world and are themselves enslaved. It is claimed by students of Chinese character, that that great nation has been kept stationary through its educational policy — anchored for centimes to competitive examinations which their strong nerves can bear while they make no progress. In a milder way, and in divers and fluctuating degrees, all civilized nations take their inspiration from China, since it is the office and life of teaching to look backward rather than forward ; in the rela- tions of men as in physics, force answers to force, and as the first, like the second childhood is always reactionary, a class of youths tend by their col PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 313 lective power to bring the teacher down more than he can lift them up. Only conservative natures are fond of teaching; organizations are always in the path of their own reconstruction; mediocrity begets mediocrity, attracts it, and is attracted by it. Whence all our institutions become undying centres of conservatism. The force that reconstructs an organization must come from outside the body that is to be reconstructed. To psychologists are we to look for the philosophy of education which in time is to give a new life to all the universities of the world. The Gospel of Rest. The gospel of work must make way for the gospel of rest. The children of the past genera- tion were forced, driven, stimulated to work, and in forms most repulsive, the philosophy being, that utility is rjroportioned to pain; that to be happy is to be doing wrong, hence it is needful that studies should not only be useless but repelling, and should be pursued by those methods which, on trial, proved the most distressing, wearisome, and saddening. That this philosophy has its roots in a certain truth psy- chology allows, but the highest wisdom points also to another truth, the need of the agreeable; our children must be driven from study and all toil, and in many instances coaxed, petted, and hired to 314 THE GOSPEL OF REST. be idle; we must drive them away from schools as our fathers drove them towards the schools; one must be each moment awake and alive and active, to keep a child from stealthily learning to read; our cleverest offspring loves books more than play, and truancies and physical punishments are far rarer than half a century ago. Dr. Pallen, of this city, has lately attempted to make some statistical study of the methods by which the schools, especially for girls, are conducted in this country. Of a large number of circulars of inquiry which he sent out, satisfactory replies were received only to a few; but these were sufficient to clearly show that nearly everything about the conduct of the schools was wrong, unphysiological and un psychological, and that they were conducted so as to make very sad and sorrowing the lives of those who were forced to attend them ; it was clear that the teachers and managers of these schools knew nothing and cared nothing of those matters relating to education that are of the highest importance, and that the routine • of the schools was such as would have been devised by some evil one who wished to take vengeance on the race and the nation. Scarcely anything taught that needs to be taught, almost everything that ought not to be taught, and which girls ought not to know, everything pushed in an unscientific and PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS 315 distressing manner; nature violated at every step • endless reciting and lecturing and striving to be first; such are the female schools in America at this hour; but this picture, dark as it is, is brightening in many features, at least in some respects they are less bad than they were a quarter of a century ago.* * Dr. Treichler read before the sections of Psychiatry and Neurology, at the 52 d meeting of the German Association of Natural Historians and Physicians, in Baden-Baden, in 1879, a very important paper on " Habitual Headache in Children." From investigations at Darmstadt, Paris, and Neuremburg, he concludes that one-third of the pupils suffer more or less from some form of headache. It is not probable that these headaches in children, which are common enough in tins country, are the result purely of intellectual exertion, but of intellectual exertion combined with bad air, with the annoyances and excitements and worries, the wasting and rasping anxieties of school life. If children would only study that which was well for them to study, and study only in a psychological way,—if their studies were con- ducted on sound psychological principles instead of in opposition to all psychological principles, as they are, and if the pupils lived in pure air instead of impure, headaches and other nerve symptoms would be far less frequent. Even studies that are agreeable and in harmony with the or- gans, and to which tastes and talents are irresistibly inclined, are pursued at an expenditure of force which is far too great for many nervously organized temperaments. I have lately had under my care a newly married lady who for some years has been in a state of neurasthenia of a severe character, and of which the exciting cause was devotion to music at home ; long hours at the piauo, acting on a neurasthenic temperament given to her by in- heritance, had developed morbid fears and all the array of ner- vous symptoms that cluster around them, so that despite her fond- ness for a favorite art she was forced to abandon it, and from that time was dated her improvement, though at the time that I wag called in to see her she had yet a long way to travel before sh* would reach even approximate health. 316 EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE. It may be affirmed that the education of the future will differ from the education of the present and the past in these vital features : First. The recognition of the fact that there is very little in this-world worth knowing. Nearly all that passes for, and is believed to be, knowledge, is but different expressions of ignorance ; and for these the interest is psychological only. The reconstruc- tion of the principles of evidence, the primary need of all philosophy, which cannot much longer be delayed, is to turn nearly all that we call history into myth, and destroy and overthrow beyond chance of resurrection all but a microscopic fraction of the world's reasoning. Of the trifle that is saved, the higher wisdom of coming generations will know and act upon the knowledge that a still smaller fraction is worthy of being taught, or even remembered by any human being. Secondly. A recognition of the fact that out of all real knowledge but a trifle, an infinitessimal portion, is to be acquired by any individual. The fact that anything is known, and true and im- portant for some, is of itself no reason why all should know or attempt to know it; one might as well expect to devour every eatable substance, because it is eatable and nutritious, as to know ev. ery thing because it is known, and is of value to mankind. PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 317 In selecting ideas, as in selecting food, we are to consider relativity of individual capacity and the organic differences of taste and assimilative power in different individuals, and in the same individ- ual at different times, and under diverse surround- ings. Ignorance is power as well as joy, as even our knowledge takes its roots in our lack of knowledge; to know one thing, we must needs be ignorant of many other things, a very general though accurate acquaintance with what is farthest from us in sci- ence, and exhaustive knowledge of what is nearest to us and most in the line of our tastes and duty — the harmonizing of these two aims is the true ideal of scholarship. The constant and unwavering ad- mission of the fact that the human brain, in its very highest evolution, is an organ of very feeble capacity indeed, is the preliminary truth, by start- ing from which we shall reach other and more com- plex truths in the science and art of mental train- ing. The brain can hold but little—it is more like a sieve than a target — allowing the majority of all external irritations to sweep over it, leaving no trace of their presence. An army to make swift marches must dismiss its heavy baggage and take only what is imperative for a day; so the brain that is to do its best must forego or forget inipedimental facts that have been 318 IGNORANCE A NECESSITY. forced into it. In modern days an unschooled Edi- son, an unknown Bell or Gray, seize upon scientific inventions or discoveries that the grand scholar in universities, with all the appliances and all past experiences at his hand, shall not even comprehend. Thus even our sciences would seem to flourish best in the soil of ignorance and non-expertness. Our children are coaxed, cajoled, persuaded, en- ticed, bluffed, bullied, and driven into the study of ancient and modern tongues; though the greatest men in all languages, whose writings are the in- spiration to the study of languages, themselves knew no language but their own; and, in all the loftiest realms of human creative power the best work has been done, and is done to-day, by those who are mostly content with the language in which they were cradled. A quart measure that is filled to the brim with water has no room for wine, and the brain that is packed with foreign words and dialects is usually incapable of thinking, in any language; of all accomplishments, the ability to speak and write in many tongues is the poorest barometer of intellectual force, and the least satisfactory for hap- piness and practical use; a hundred pennies a day would buy for a lifetime the best couriers in Europe. Shakespeare, drilled in modern gymnasia and universities, might have made a fair school-master, PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 319 but would have kept the world out of Hamlet and Othello; — the popular delusion that one cannot know his own language without first knowing others, being best of all refuted, so far as it is pos- sible for a single case in illustration to do, by the fact that the ehief creator of our language knew no language, not even his own, and thus was made free, bold, and powerful to originate and organize. Of the sciences multiplying every day, but few are to be known by any one individual; he who has studied enough of the systematized knowledge of men, and looked far enough in various directions in which it leads to know which his tastes and en vironment best adapt him to follow, and who reso- lutely obeys his tastes, even in opposition to all teachers, philosophers, and scholars, has won the battle of life ■— success is his, even although he does nothing more; he has only to fold his arms, rest upon his oars, and float into victory. Thirdly. The recognition of the fact that not knowledge, but the power to acquire and use knowl- edge, is the supreme need. The athlete in fencing, boxing, sparring, rowing, running, or acrobatics, de- velops the power, that he may use it when the time comes. In physical training, modern customs, with some exceptions and extremes, are mostly wise; in intellectual training, we have been mostly unwise; Bince our schools load us with baggage far beyond 320 THE ART OF REASONING. our strength, in the unscientific expectation that we will gain strength by carrying it. It is of little concern how much or how little a man knows, but it is of all concern whether he knows how to know, and to concentrate, and vitalize his knowledge. He whose mental discipline is so perfect that all his faculties play together like per- fect machinery, and with the least friction, and most economical expenditure of force, finds the acquisi- tion of the knowledge necessary for his mental peace or for the acquirement of a livelihood, or glory, but trifling sport; and without conscious toil he rejects the useless and harmful, passes by all obstructions and goes straight and swift to the heart of truth. Mental discipline of this kind is secured in various ways; nearly all forms of self-culture in all the paths that , lead to success, require a cer- tain grade of intellectual control; the study of the art of thinking, of the philosophy of reasoning, in mathematics, poetry, science, literature, or lan- guage, is the best exercise for those who would gain this mental discipline ; but the art of thinking is what the schools have never thought of teaching, save through the century-old formula of logic that lead more to error than to ideas, and are, to a vi- talized system of reasoning, what a log hut is to the tree out of which it was constructed. The art of thinking, the study of the reconstructed princi- PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 321 pies of evidence can be made most fascinating as well as valuable, even to the immature mind, and mental discipline acquired by this process is far more complete, and attained at incomparably less cost of force, time, and money, than the methods of the schools. Fourthly. A recognition of the fact that educa- tion is but evolution — a mental growth — and, like all else in nature, without leaps, breaks, or chasms, from the single and simple elements towards the complex and multiform. The brain grows — the whole nervous system grows, and the mind grows with it, like a tree of the field, and the processes of education should follow the same natural processes. The mind does grow in this way — despite all the organized attempts to prevent it—the child becomes an adult by the assimilation of food, no matter how unwholesome it may be or how ill-advisedly, stint- ingly or extravagantly it may be given — the mind grows by assimilating the assimilable products of the vast and unnutritious material that is cast upon it, just as the tree grows by absorbing and vitalizing the inorganic constituents of earth and air. We can stunt the mind, as we can stunt the tree; we can aid the progress of the tree by fertilization and care — so we can aid the growth and progress of the mind in analagous ways; but, whether stunted or highly developed, the mind, like the tree, grows; 322 TEMPORARY KNOWLEDGE. so far as it makes any progress at all, it must grow; it cannot be fed by burying it in learning, any more than can the tree be nourished through the eupport of props and slabs. Fifthly. A recognition of the fact that very much knowledge that may be acquired is for tem- porary use only, to be laid aside when the occasion for its use is past. The brain is so organized that it can take possession of a fact at order, through a short or a long time, as may be needed, to be sur- rendered at the end of that time, just as we give notes, for a month, six months, a year or more. This psychological fact all actors understand, and they commit their parts with the expectation which is always met, that they may forget them in a week or more, as may be needed. To them the brain is a hotel where the words make but a short stay, or perhaps, stop but for a night, then pass on; were they to become permanent guests, the space would be at once over-crowded, and there would be no room for new comers. In all spheres of thought, the most hospitable of intellects, the most generous in their welcome to« new truths or dreams of truth, are those who have once learned the great secret of life—how to forget. He who wisely acquires and wisely forgets will be likely to use wisely what he needs. Conscientious professors in colleges oftentimes PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 323 exhort their graduates to keep up some of the stud- ies of college life during the activity of years — if those graduates are ever to do much in the world, it is by doing precisely not what they are thus advised to do. As well might they be urged to take with them their dumb-bells, their boxing- gloves, their Indian clubs, and bear them on their persons all their lives, and hang their boat shells and oars on their shoulders, because with these agen- cies they have gained strength of muscle, as to take with them in their brains, the mathematics, the phi- losophy, the logic through which their intellect has been trained. The details of geography, of mathe- matics, and of languages, ancient as well as modern, of most of the sciences, ought, and fortunately are, forgotten almost as soon as learned, save by those who become life-experts in these special branches; success in life of the highest order for the educated man, may oftentimes be measured by the rapidity and completeness with which he has forgotten what he has been taught in colleges and schools. Sixth. The recognition of the fact that the truly psychological and most economical method of edu- cation is that which makes the most use of all the senses. The mind is a highly evolved sense, and it is to be fed and developed from the roots up- ward, as a tree draws its nourishment from the soil. The education of the schools has sought, so far as 324 SENSES TO BE CHIEFLY USED. may be, to reverse the laws of nature, and to feed the tree through the leaves and branches. To put knowledge into the brain through other avenues than the senses, is like carrying food to a city and climbing over the walls or undermining them, in- stead of going through the open gates. The sys- tems of Froebel and Pestalozzi, and the philosophy of Kousseau in his " Emile," analyzed and formu- lated in physiological language, is, in substance, that it costs less force and is more natural and easy to get into a house through the doors, than to break down the walls, or come through the roof, or climb up from the cellar. Modern education is burglary; we force ideas into the brain through any other pathway and every other way except the doors and windows, and then we are astonished that they are unwelcome and so quickly expelled. Fortunately nature is stronger than our system of education, and our children, in spite of all our efforts, do get their education through the senses, since all the knowl- edge they acquire is obtained and retained through processes of mental imagery; they see with the mind's eye, though we close their eyelids. When a child reads history or biography or geography, it must unconsciously form the mental image of that which it is reading; it must see the men, the bat- tle, the country, the city, else it gains no fact. All education should be clinical. We should see the PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 325 case at the bedside; indeed, a right understanding of what medical education is and what medical ed- ucation ought to be, and what it is to be, unlocks the whole mystery of the general subject of educa- tion. Medicine has been taught in all our schools in a way the most unphilosophical, and despite all the modifications and improvements of late years, by bedside teaching and operations and demonstra- tions, the system of medical education is in need of reconstruction from the foundation; it begins where it should end; it feeds the tree through the leaves and branches instead of through the roots; physiology itself is taught unphysiologically; the conventional, hereditary, orthodox style is, for the student to take systematic text-books, go through them systematically from beginning to end, and at- tend systematic lectures, reserving study at the bed- side for the middle and later years of his study; the didactic instruction coming first, and the prac- tical instruction and individual observation coming last. Psychology and experience require that this should be reversed; the first years of the medical student's life should be given to the bedside, the laboratory and dissecting room, and the principles of systematic instruction should be kept for the last years, and then used very sparingly. The human mind does not work systematically, and all new truths enter most easily and are best retained 326 PBACTICE BEFOBE PBECEPT. when they enter in psychological order. System in text-books is a tax on the nerve-force, costly both of time and of energy, and it is only by forget- ting what has been taught them in the schools, that men even attain eminence in the practice of medicine. The first lesson and the first hour of medical study should be at the bedside of the sick man; before reading a book or hearing a lecture, or even knowing of the existence of a disease, the student should see the disease, and then, after having seen it and been instructed in reference to it, his read- ing will be a thousand-fold more profitable than it would had he read first and seen the case afterwards. Every practitioner with any power of analyzing his own mental operations, knows that his reading of dis- ease is always more intelligent after he has had a case, or while he has a case under treatment undei his own eyes, and he knows also that all his reading of abstract, systematic books is of but little worth to him when he meets his first case, unless he re- read, and if he do so, he will find that he has for- gotten all he has read before, and he will find, also, that he never understood what he read, and per- haps thoroughly and accurately recited on examina- tion. By this method one shall learn more what is worth learning of medicine in one month, than now we learn' in a year, under the common system, PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 327 and what is learned will be in hand and usable, and will be obtained at incommensurably less cost of en- ergy, as well as of time. So-called "systematic in- struction," is the most extravagant form of instruc- tion, and is really no instruction, since the informa- tion which it professes to give does not enter the brain of the student, though the words in which it is expressed may be retained, and recited or written out on examination. I read the other day an open- ing lecture by a professor in one of our chief medi- cal schools. I noticed that the professor apologized for being obliged to begin with what was dry and uninteresting, but stated that in a systematic course it was necessary to do so. It will not be his fault only, but rather the fault of the machinery of which he is one of the wheels, if the students who listen to and take notes of and worry over his lecture, never know what he means; five minutes study of a case of rheumatism or an inflamed joint, under the aid of an expert instructor, will give a person more knowledge of inflammation, in relation to the practice of medicine, than a year of lectures on that subject. I make particular reference to medical education, not because it is the leading offender, but because it has made greater progress than, perhaps, almost any other kind of modern education. It is already half a convert to the extreme revolutionary view 328 TEACHING OF LANGUAGES. that I am here advocating, and the next generation it will be a whole convert to it; and the time will come when men shall read with amusement and horror of intelligent, human, and responsible young men beginning a medical course by listening to systematic abstract lectures. All the other systems of professional education need the same reconstruc- tion. In theological seminaries, students are warned about preaching, or speaking, or lecturing during their first or second year, and tied and chained down to lectures and homiletics, and theology and history, just as medical students are warned about seeing the sick, to the study and relief of which their life is devoted. Aside from the study of lan- guage, which is a separate matter, the first day's work in a theological school should be the writing or preparing a sermon, and homiletics should follow —not precede. All languages should be learned as we learn our own language —not through grammars or diction- aries, but through conversation and reading, the grammars and dictionaries being reserved for a more advanced stage of investigation and for reference just as in the language in which we were born. Grammars, dictionaries, and didactic teaching are for experts; only those who are already scholars should use them. That the system of putting grammars and dictionaries last instead of first, is possible and PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 329 practicable, has been and is now being demonstrated in our country. The best and cheapest method of studying geography is to travel, and it would be much cheaper than to spend years in school. When my little daughter asks me where a certain place is I reply, " Wait a little and perhaps we will go and see." Thus she has travelled with her parents a distance nearly equal to the circumference of the globe, and it costs less than to send her to a fash- ionable seminary. Fortunately, very little geography is worth knowing or remembering, except as gener- alities, and that little can be taught to those who cannot travel, by maps and blocks and other appeals to the senses. I applaud the English because they boast of their ignorance of American geography; of what worth to them, of what worth to most of us whether Montana be in California, or Alaska be or be not the capital of Arizona % The system of instruction by lectures and recita- tions is unpsychological as well as costly and weari- some to teacher and learner. Of the two, recita- tions are the least extravagant and unsatisfactory. But both methods of education are out of harmony with the laws of the mind, and, in the universities of Great Britain both these methods are in a degree displaced by a system which may be conducted in harmony with psychology; that is, private tutelage. The Harvard professor who says, or used to say, 330 LECTUBES VEBY COSTLY. that when students entered his room his desire was, not to find out what they knew but what they did not know, ought to have been born in the twentieth century, and possibly in the thirtieth, for his philosophy is so sound and so well grounded psychology that he cannot hope to have it either received or comprehended in his lifetime; and the innovation that Harvard has just promised, of hav- ing the teacher recite and the pupils ask the ques- tions, is one of the few gleams of light in the great darkness by which this whole subject of education has been enveloped. The universal habit of lecturing, which is so common in Germany, is one which the world ought to slowly outgrow. Lectures, except they be of a clinical sort, in which appeals are made to the senses, cost so much in nerve-force, in those that listen to them, that the world cannot much longer afford to indulge in them; and the information they give is of a most unsatisfactory sort, since questioning, and interrup- tion, and repetition, and reviewing are scarcely pos- sible ; whence it is, that what one derives from lis- tening to lectures is not so much knowledge as a suspicion of knowledge. The human brain is too feeble and limited an organ to catch a new idea when first stated, and if the idea be not new it is useless to state it. PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 331 One of the pleasantest memories in my life, is that, during my medical education, I did not attend one lecture out of twelve — save those of a clinical sort — that were delivered (brilliant and able as some of them were) in the college where I studied, and my regret is, that the poverty of medical literature at that time compelled me to attend even those. All the long lectures in m;y academical course at the college were useful to me — and I think were useful to all my classmates — only by enforcing the necessity, and inspiring the habit of enduring passively and patiently what we know to be in all respects painful and pernicious, provid- ing we have no remedy. It is by reading and con- stant reviewing, by having our teachers recite to us; by conversing informally with those who know more than we, by writing—above all, by seeing, and hearing, and tasting, and smelling, and touching, and by reflecting on what we see and hear, and taste, and smell, and touch, that we become truly wise. Work of this kind is healthful, as well as inspiring, and favors longevity; it is economical, and makes it possible for us to become learned without becoming nervous bankrupts. The hardest worker, in the best modes of work, and one of the healthiest men I ever knew, is Edison, whose perfect method of intellectual activity makes it safe for him to break almost every known 332 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBJECT TEACHING. law of health. Original thinkers and discoverers, and writers are objects of increasing worry on the part of their relatives and friends, lest they break down from overwork; whereas, it is not so much these great thinkers as the young school-girl or bank clerk that needs our sympathy. In my own experience I have had a remarkable opportunity to test the value of the sense of sight as a means of scientific and popular instruction. For years I have been writing and lecturing on the subject of trance—which, next to evolution, is the great scientific problem of the century, as is now beginning to be understood by scientific men all over the world—without obtaining any evidence of intel- ligent interest except with a limited body of experts in psychology; and I had questioned whether it would ever be possible, in my life time, to obtain any scientific or popular recognition of the importance of this subject; but, during the past year, I tried the experiment of giving, before the New York Acade- my of Sciences, a lecture on trance, illustrated by large numbers of experiments of various kinds on liv- ing human beings. The theory and philosophy ad- vanced in that lecture, and very many of the facts also, had been presented by me years before, in that same hall, and before some of the same audience, without exciting even a flash of interest; but these experiments, made before the eyes, on living human PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS 333 beings, aroused an enthusiasm which has not yet died away, but has developed what would appear to be a permanent and enduring interest in this fascinating and important realm of scientific study- It was, so to speak, an experiment in psychologica1 object teaching, quite uncongenial to my own taste, as I would have much preferred to give the facts, theories, and philosophies without any experiments. The experience was to me, most instructive and important in its relation to the subject here under review; it was a potent demonstration of the fact that the eye is the widest and most accessible of all the avenues that open to the brain. More worthy of note is this experience from this; that the lectures were given before scientific audiences whose intellects were supposed to be trained to thinking and to following logical proces- ses. In England during the last summer, I attempt- ed, without any human beings on whom to experi- ment, to explain some of the theories and philoso- phies of. trance before an audience composed of the very best physiologists and psychologists of Europe, and with no hotter success than at home. If I had had but one out of the twenty or thirty cases on whom I have lately experimented, to illustrate and en- force my views, there would have been, I am sure, no difficulty in making clear not only the facts, but what is of chief importance, the interpretation of the facts. 334 1MPB0VEMENT IN AMEBIC AN PHYSIQUE. Competitive Examinations. Modern competitive examinations are but slightly in advance of the system of recitations and lectures. They seem to have been invented by some one who wished to torture rather than benefit mankind, and whose philosophy was, that whatever is disagree- able is useful, and that the temporary accumulation of facts is true wisdom, and an accurate measure of cerebral force. Crammed-knowledge is ignorance ; in Montaigne's words, " Knowing by heart is not know- ing ;" the greatest fool may often pass the best ex- amination ; no wise man can always tell what he knows; ideas come by suggestion rather than by order; you must wait for their appearing at their own time and not at ours; we may be ready to shoot them when they fly, like birds on the wing, but we cannot tell when they will rise; he who can always tell what he knows, knows little worth knowing. Recent Improvement in the American Physique. Herein is the partial, though not the entire elu- cidation of the observed fact that, during the last two decades, the well-to-do classes of America have been visibly growing stronger, fuller, healthier. We weigh more than our fathers; the women in all our great centres of population are yearly becoming more plump and more beautiful; and in the lead- PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMERICANS. 335 ing brain-working occupations our men also are ac- quiring robustness, amplitude, quantity of being. On all sides there is a visible reversion to the bet- ter physical appearance of our English and German ancestors. A thousand girls and boys, a thousand men in the prime of years, taken by accident in any of our large cities, are heavier and more sub- stantial than were the same number of the same age and walk of life twenty-five years ago. Many years of careful study of the physical ap- pearance of our higher classes, in those places where representative types from all parts of the country are constantly seen — in our leading churches and concert halls, on Fifth Avenue and Broadway — have convinced me long ago that the combined in- fluences of wealth and culture, of better manners and better diet, are already bringing fulness and freshness to the angular cheek of the traditional Yankee; the American race is filling out; the next generation, as the experience of the late war gives us reason to hope, may equal our European ances- tors in strength, in solidity, and endurance, as our women have long surpassed them in personal at- tractiveness and beauty. This improvement in the physique of the Amer- icans of the most favored classes during the last quarter of a century is a fact more and more com- pelling the inspection both of the physician and the 336 IMPROVEMENT IN AMEBIC AN PHYSIQUE. sociologist. Of old it was said that the choicest samples of manly form were to be found in the busy hours of the Exchange at Liverpool; their equals, at least, now walk Broadway and Fifth Av- enue. The one need for the perfection of the beauty of the American women — increase of fat — is now supplied. It could not, in fact, be different, for we have better homes, more suitable clothing, less anxiety, greater ease, and more variety of healthful activity than even the best situated of our immediate an- cestors. So inevitable was this result, that had it been otherwise, one might well suspect that the law of causation had been suspended. The first signs of ascension, as of declension, in nations are seen in women. As the foliage of deli- cate plants first show the early warmth of spring and the earliest frosts of autumn, so the impressible, susceptive organization of woman appreciates and exhibits far sooner than that of man the manifesta- tions of national progress or decay. Not long since I had occasion to take a train at Providence on my way to Boston. It was a very stormy morning, and I was surprised to see a large number of ladies in the cars. I observed that the majority of them were, if not handsome, at least strong and vigorous, as though they lived well, and were equal to a long walk or, if necessary, a hard PHYSICAL FUTUBE OF AMEBICANS. 337 day's work. Still further, I noticed that many of them were of an intellectual cast of feature; vari- ous ages were represented, but nearly all were ma- ture. On inquiring what had called out such a host of brave females on so disagreeable a day, I learned that a Woman's Congress had just closed its sessions in Providence, and that the members were returning to their homes. On subsequently reading the re- ports of the congress, as published in the Provi- dence papers, I was both interested and mildly sur- prised to find that the essays were of a far higher order in topics and in treatment than I had been accustomed to expect in organizations sustained wholly by women; the subjects selected being more closely related to science, in its various branches, and the discussions were carried on in the scientific spirit; far less was said of politics, and far more of what requires higher and broader intellect than pol- itics— the difficult and complex problems of psych- ology, physiology, sociology, and educational reform. A well-trained intellect is itself medicine and hygiene, enabling its possessor to guard successfully against the appeals of passion and the storms of emotion, keeping the mind constantly supplied with the fresh and varied ' material for thought and action, and rendering the avoidance of exhausting pleasures at once spontaneous and intelligent. The nervous female patients of our time do not come 338 THE AMERICAN WOMAN IMPROVING. from the most intellectual of the sex. The pio- neers in feminine development are often sturdy and patient of physical and mental toil —capable of en- during the fatigue of travel, of public speaking, ot literary and philanthropic activity; and if, like George Eliot, of a sensitive frame, yet able to keep themselves out of helpless invalidism and in fair working order. This improvement in the physical appearance of our women is not equally distributed through all classes, nor has it reached all sections. The late Centennial gave an unusual opportunity to study American physique such as we have not had for a century, since there it was possible to see, on any day, every phase of American society, and from every State. It was observed that the women from many distant country places represented, in size, color, and features, the type that twenty-five years ago was national, almost universal; the wave of physical im- provement had not yet reached their class of neigh- borhood ; they were thin, angular, stooping, anxious, pale, and, in not a few cases, emaciated. The wives and daughters of farmers are often in some respects less favored hygienically than the fashionable classes of our great cities ; they give far too little thought and care to the preparation and mastication of food ; they labor oftentimes out of proportion to their. strength, and, in want of temptation to walk out PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 339 or even to ride during inclement seasons, really suffer more from confinement in excessively heated rooms than their sisters in city or town or village. American inventions are now assisting both American men and American women to diminish their nervousness; palace cars and elevators and sewing machines are types of recent improvements that help to diminish the friction of modern life. Formerly inventors increased the friction of our lives and made us nervous. Germanization of America. The Germanization of America — by which I mean the introduction through very extensive im- migration, of German habits and character — is a phenomenon which can now be observed, even la- the dullest and nearest-sighted, in the large cities of the Northern portion of our country. As the Germans in their temperament are the opposite of the native Americans, this process promises to be in all respects beneficial, encouraging in every way out-door life and amusements, tending to displace pernicious whiskey by less pernicious beer and wine, setting the example of coolness and calmness, which the nervously exhausted American very much needs. Quite true it is that the second and third genera- tions of Germans do themselves become Ameri- canized, through the effects of climate and the 340 GERMANIZATION OF AMERICA. contagion of our institutions; but the pressure ol immigration provides, every year, a supply of phleg- matic temperament. America of the past has been but England in a minor key. All that is good, all that is evil in the United States has come directly and mainly from Great Britain — the daughter is but a mild type of the mother. In the angry and inexpert discussions of national characteristics, it is forgotten that the difference between one country, and the other is far less than is suggested or commonly alleged. We have been all English.in our conservatism, a quality which has increased in proportion as we have gained anything of wealth or character or any mani- festation of force whatsoever, that is worth -pre- serving. To supplement the Anglican by German characteristics is a process to be developed during the coming half century. Americanization of Europe. Observations in both continents bring into vixr< another process, that is of supreme import in it. relation to the future of mankind, the American- ization of Europe. That Americans were more rapid in their movements, more intense in their whole life, and concentrated more activity in a certain period of time than any other people, has been the faith of all travellers, and this belief has a founda- PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 341 tion of reality; but in Europe at least, and to a less degree in Continental Europe, we now observe the same eagerness, intensity, concentration, feverishness, and nervousness that have hitherto been supposed to be peculiarly American. Particularly was I amazed by this when I was in Cork and Cambridge, attending meetings of the British Medical Association. The labor of a month was compressed into a week. Every one was in haste — officers and'members having only bits of time to breathe or speak; a procession of suppers, breakfasts, balls, banquets, scientific orations, garden- parties, and excursions at every point of the com- pass, crowded so closely as to tread upon each other's heels; after such a vacation one needed a vacation. At no gathering outside of political assemblages in America have I seen such excite- ment, such hurryings, such impatience, such evi- dences of imminent responsibility as among the leaders and officers of these meetings. This Americanization of Europe would seem to be the complex resultant of a variety, of influences — the increase of travel and trade, and concentra- tion, and intensifying of activity required by the telegraph, railway, and printing-press — the endos- mosis and exosmosis of international life — a reci- procity of character. It is clear that even in Europe each generation becomes on the whole rather more 342 AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE. sensitive than its predecessor, and in this patho- logical process even Germany shares; Switzerland, perhaps, being less affected up to the present time than almost any other part of Central Europe. The nervousness of the third generation of Ger- mans is a fact that comes to my professional notice more and more. Men whose parents on both sides were born in Germany, here develop the American type in all its details — chiselled features, great fineness and silkiness of the hair, delicacy of skin and tapering extremities. Such persons have con- sulted me for all phases and stages of functional nervous trouble. Indeed, I have seen no more severe examples of nervous suffering than in this class. Englishmen, even those who were born in England, develop either in their own country, or in this, the land of their adoption, many of the prominent symptoms of functional nervous diseases that are supposed to be especially and pre-eminently American. Quite a percentage of my patients are of German and English birth. I am told by one of the leaders of German science, Professor Erb of Leipsic, whose opportunities for getting facts on this theme are exceptionally good, and whose capacity for observing and for reasoning justly from his observations is very great, that in nearly all parts of Germany there can be found at the present day, and that too without very much seeking, cases PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 343 of functional nervous disease in all respects the types of what we see in America;, and that there has been an increase in these disorders. Within less than nine months after the publication of my work on Nervous Exhaustion, two independent requests for authority to translate it into German were made of me and my publishers by German physicians; this could not probably have happened if the disease were not increasing in Germany. Even Irishmen born in this land or brought here early are not entirely safe from the chances of ner- vous contagion. The increasing fluency of speech among English orators is, perhaps, one of the best of all the proofs of the Americanization of Europe. Not only are the " ha, ha's," of which so much sport was once made, heard much less frequently than formerly in public meetings, but there is a positive ease and attrac- tiveness to very many of the English speakers in and out of Parliament, in the pulpit and on the platform, that is thoroughly American; and this is noticeable, not only among orators of renown, like Gladstone or Bright, but in many who are in no wise famous. While I Was in London, during the last, year, the House of Commons spent a-good portion of a session in recapitulating, to the excessive amuse- ment of readers and listeners, the amount of talk- 344 THE OMNISTIC PHILOSOPHY. ing that had been done by both sides. By this inquiry — which was inaugurated by the Marquis of Hartington—it was proved that if all the speak- ers continued to speak as often and as elaborately as they had been speaking, a number of years would be required before they could adjourn. This difficulty, American legislative bodies have long recognized; but only lately has it become a matter of formal investigation in Parliament; but outside of Parliament—at public banquets, and on all occasions where oratory is required, there is no more fluent or attractive speaking than in Great Britain to-day. Great Britain has long had great orators — excelled by none of any modern nation, but this universal and widely diffused alertness and facility of speech, the contemplation of which kept Carlyle in a dolorous growl and ferment, is a late develop- ment. The Omnistic Philosophy applied to this subject. It is a part of the omnistic philosophy — and by omnistic philosophy I mean that which includes optimism on the one hand, and pessimism on the other, and makes the best of both — to see simul- taneously the redeeming and the destroying forces of society; to study them with a single eye in their relation to each other. Applying the omnistic philosophy to our sub- PHYSICAL FUTURE OF AMERICANS. 345 ject, we find that the American people are not coining to complete and immediate overthrow; the forces that renovate and save are mightier far than the forces that emasculate and destroy. Although mental friction is the most fruitful of all causes of nervousness, yet intellectual activity in the serene realms, is an antidote and a modifier of nervousness and other diseases. It is not a dream to predict that, under the in- spiration of the scientific sense, the last and best expression of the evolution of mind, there shall be developed on this continent a higher order of humanity from which shall be developed what the world, thus far, has never seen, a limited number of philosophers who, in all the eternal problems, shall think for themselves, as though the gods were blind, and they were alone upon their footstool. The American race, it is said, is dying out; but there is no American race. Americans are the union of European races and peoples, as lakes are fed by many streams, and can only disappear with the exhaustion of its sources. Europe must die before America. In sections of America, as in New England, and in large cities, the number of chil- dren to a family in certain classes is too small for increase of population; but these classes are a mi- nority in society,' and immigration is as certain as the future. Malthus forgot that the tendency 346 TYPICAL AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE. of all evil is, in a certain degree, to cure itself; the poison and the antidote being rooted in the same soil. The typical American of the highest type will, in the near future, be a union of the coarse and the fine organizations; the solidity of the German, the fire of the Saxon, the delicacy of the American, flowing together as one—sensitive, impressible, read- ily affected through all the avenues of influence, but trained and held by a will of steel; original, idiosyncratic; learned in this — that he knows what not to know, laborious in knowing what not to do; with more of wiriness than of excess of strength, and achieving his purposes not so much through the amount of his force as in wisdom and economy of its use. INDEX. Age, compensations of, 253. Age to work, relation of, 193. Air, dryness of, 143. America compared with Japan, climate of, 161. Trance in, 88. American beauty, 66. climate, differences in, 163. vs. English beauty, 68. female beauty, 68. humor, philosophy of, 82. Indians, health of, 182. language, 84. muscle-reading, 72. nervousness, causes of, 96. signs of, 18. oratory, relation of, 80. people, physical future of, 292. physique, recent improvement in, 334. Americanization of Europe, 340. Americans moderate eaters, 44. Ancient and modern world, comparative size of, 133. Animal life in America, intensity of, 95. Anxiety and insanity, 128. Athens, contrasted life in, 135. Australia, 192. Baldxess, 52. Bankruptcy, nervous, 9. Beauty to nervousness, relation of, 65. Biographies consulted, 220. Brain-workers have less worry, 202. have more comfort, 204. 348 INDEX. Brain-workers, longevity of, 193. old age easier in, 208. Bright's disease, 60. Business in modern times, increase in amount of, 115. Catarrhs, chronic, 61. Causes of longevity of clergymen, 273. Childhood and old age but imitators, 230. China, opium eating in, 180. Chorographic map of the United States, 158. Clergymen, longevity of, 280. Climate and race, 172. Climates contrasted, 166, heat and cold, 138, Civilization and nervousness, 176. modern, 171. Cold, sensitiveness to, 54. Compensations of age, 253. Consolations for the nervous, 275. Debility cycles of, 283. Dentition, puberty, and change of life, 76. Diabetes, Bright's disease and, 60. Diathesis, nervous, 25. Digestion, sensitiveness of, 42. Disease, change in, 90. Drugs, habit of taking, 64. sensitiveness to, 39. Dryness and electricity, 146. East and West, comparative physique of, 1M, Education, reconstruction of, 311. of the future, 316. why behind, 312. Electric light, analogy of, 98. Electricity, dryness and, 146. Elevated road, New York, 110. Emotion, repression of, 120. England, moisture of, 152. England, no summer in, 140. INDEX. 349 English vs. American drinking, 32 drinking capacity, 34. female beauty, 68. out-door life of, 154. winter, mildness of, 142. Evidence, principles of, 19. Examinations, competitive, 334. Exciting causes of nervousness, 174. Eye disease, tobacco and, 178. Eyes, weak, 41. Force in reserve needed, 12. Forethought, evils of, 130. Functional diseases not fatal, 22. Future of the American people, 292. Germanization of America, 339. Golden decade, the, 224. Heat and cold, extremes of, 138. sensitiveness to, 52. Humor and nervousness, 82. Indians, health and habits of, 181. indifference of, 132. Inebriety, 38. a type of all diseases of its class, 305. defined, 306. Insanity and anxiety, 128. Japan, climate of, 162. Jumpers, of Maine, 4. Longevity vs. nervousness, 24. of clergymen, 280. comparative, 200. nervousness favors, 206. Language, nervousness and, 85. Maine Jumpers, 4. Medicines, sensitiveness to, 64. 350 INDEX. Modern civilization, 171. world, activity of, 134. Moral decline in old age, 247. Muscular exercise, increased susceptibility to, 309. Myopia (near-sightedness), 46. Near-sightedness, 44. and weakness of the eyes, increase of, 44. Negroes, a study of, 188. Nerve-force, lack of, 5. Nerves, and noise,.106. Nervous bankruptcy, 9. Nervous, consolation for the, 275. diathesis, the, 173. increase of, 25. Nervous diseases, recent progress in, 289. increase of diseases not distinctively, 59. prospective increase of, 305. Nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia), 55. symptoms of, 8. Nervousness and civilization, 176. a constant warning, 285. distinguished from organic disease, 15. dry air causes, 149. evolution of, 55. humor and, 82. increased by inheritance, 94. inheritance of, 94. is nervelessness, 5. language and, 85. liberty and, 122. Nervousness favors longevity, 206. nature and definition of, 1. natural history of, 281. oratory and, 80. railway travelling and, 114. to indigestion, relation of, 40. to beauty, relation of, 65. to dress, relation of, 73. vs. longevity, 24. INDEX. 351 Neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion), 55. New York, contrasted life in, 135. Noise, nerves and, 106. Nose and throat, catarrh of, 62. Nursing, parturition, diseases of women, 76. Odors, disagreeable, 108. Old age and childhood, but imitators, 230. healthy, 288. imitates itself, 230. moral decline in, 249. of artists, 228. Omnistic, philosophy applied, 344. Opium habit, 308. Oratory, nervousness and, 80. Organic disease, distinguished from nervousness, 15. Original vs. routine work, 214. Parturition and nursing, 76. Perineum and womb, lacerations of, 78. Premature baldness, 52. Philosophy, omnistic, 344. Poverty and wealth, health related to, 393. Precocity, morbid, 361. Precocious, longevity of the, 355. Professions, longevity of, 255. Protestantism, 126. Puberty, dentition, and change of life, 75. Punctuality, necessity of, 103. Quantity of business increased, 116. Race and climate, 172. Railway travelling, 112. Rocky Mountain region, 144. Routine work and original, distinction between, 225. Savages, diseases of, 91. Sensitiveness to drugs, 39. Smoking, 38. Specialization, necessary evils of, 101. 352 INDEX. Speech, rapidity of, 87. Sorrow, increased, 118. Southern climate, caprice of, 168. South, less nervousness, 160. Statistics of little value, 30. Steam-engine, analogy of, 100. Stimulants and narcotics, susceptibility to, 30. Symptoms of nervous exhaustion, 8. Syphilis growing milder, 94. Teeth, early and rapid decay of, 48. of savages, 50. Telegraph, the, 105. Temperance, a modern virtue, 36. Thirstlessness, indigestion, 40. Throat and nose, catarrh of, 62. Tobacco and eye disease, 178. Trance in America, greater susceptibility to, 88. Treatment of nervous diseases, recent progress in, 389. Voice, pitch of, 87. Weak eyes, 44. West, nervousness in, 164. Woman in savage state, 184. Womb and perineum, lacerations of, 78. Women, diseases of, 78. parturition, nursing, 76. Works by George M. Beard, M.D. AMERICAN NERVOUSNESS; Its Causes and Conse- quences. i2mo. Cloth........ NERVOUS EXHAUSTION (Neurasthenia); Its Nature, Symp- toms, and Treatment. Second Revised Edition. . i 75 SEA SICKNESS; Its Nature and Treatment. New and En- larged Edition. i2mo. Cloth. . . . . . I 00 STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. 4th Edition. i2mo. Cloth........... 75 EATING AND DRINKING. 4th Edition. i2mo. Cloth: 75 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OP DELUSIONS. 8vo. Paper. (A new theory of trance). ■ ■ . . . .50 IN PRESS. INDUCED OR MESMERIC TRANCE (so called HYPNOT- ISM OR SOMNAMBULISM. Its nature and phenomena. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK Putnam's Handy-Book Series. REVISED EDITION. I.—The Best Reading. A Classified Bibliography for easy Reference, with hints on the selection of books, on the formation of libraries, public and private, on courses of reading, etc. ; a guide for the libra- rian, bookbuyer and bookseller. The classified lists, arranged under about 500 subject-headings, include all the most desirable books now to be obtained either in Great Britain or the United States, with the published prices annexed. New edition, corrected, enlarged, and continued to August, 1876. 12mo., paper, $1.00 ; cloth, . ■. . . $1 50 " The best work of the kind we have seen."—College Courant. " We know of no manual that can take its place as a guide to the selector of a library."—Independent. " For reference for the bookbuyer it is invaluable."—Fort Wayne Gazette. " The arrangement of the volume is excellent, and a vast amount of time and money may be saved, and a great deal of useless and hurtful trash may be avoided by consulting it."—A merican Historical Record. The Library Companion. Annual Supplement to the " Best Reading." Five volumes, for r877, 1878, 1879, 1880 and 1881, each, . . 50 II.—Hand-Book of Statistics of the United States. A Record of the Administrations and Events from the Organization of the United States Government to the present time. Comprising brief biographical data of the presidents, cabinet officers, the signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, and members of the Continental Congress, statements of finances under each administration, and other valuable material. i2mo, cloth,...........$1 00 " The book is of so comprehensive a character and so compact a form that it is especially valuable to the journalist or student."— N. Y. World. III.—What to Eat. A Manual for the Housekeeper; giving a bill of fare for every day in the year. 134 pages, . . boards . . 50 " Compact, suggestive, and full of good ideas."—Many Housekeepers. " It can hardly fail to prove a valuable aid to housekeepers who are brought to their wits' end to know what to get for the day's meals."—San Francisco Bulletin. IV.—Till the Doctor Comes, and How to Help him. By George H. Hope, M.D. Revised with additions by a New York physician. *** A popular guide in all cases of accident and sudden illness. i2mo, 99 pages, boards,...... . . . 50 " A most admirable treatise; short, concise and practical."—Harfier's Monthly (Editorial). " We find this an invaluable little compendium, embracing more information of use to bystanders in time of sickness or accident than we have ever seen put to- gether before. If one will study this small book well, put it in his pocket, and follow its directions carefully, he will often save some poor fellow's life, when a little delay might cause its loss."—A thol Transcript. " A perfect gem for the sick-room, and should be in every family."— Venann Spectator. J & G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Putnam s Handy-Book Series. V.—Stimulants and Narcotics ; Medically. Philosophically and Morally Considered. By George M. Beard, M.D. i2mo, 155 pages, cloth, .......... 75 " Dr. Beard has given the question of stimulants the first fair discussion in moderate compass that it has received in this country. * * * The book should be widely read."—N. Y. Independent. " One of the fullest, fairest and best works ever written on the subject."— Hearth and Home. VI.—Eating and Drinking. A Popular Manual of Food and Diet in Health and Disease. By George M. Beard, M.D. i2mo, 180 pages, cloth, . . . . . . . . . . . 75 " We can thoroughly commend this little book to every one."—N. Y. Evening Mail. " The best manual upon the subject we have seen."—N. Y. World. VII.—The Student's Own Speaker. By Paul Reeves. A Manual of Oratory, comprising new selections, patriotic, pathetic, grave and humorous, for home use and for schools. I2hk 215 pages, boards, 75 " We have never before seen a collection so admirably adapted for its pur- pose."—Cincinnati Chronicle. " It will be of real service to all young students of the art ol oratory."—Port- land Transcript. " This is an excellent Speaker."—N. Y. World. VIII.—How to Educate Yourself. A Complete Guide to Students ; showing how to study, what to study, and how and what to read. It is, in short, a "Pocket Schoolmaster." By George Cary Eggleston. i2mo, 151 pages, boards, ........ 50 " We write with unqualified enthusiasm about this book, which is untellably good and for good."—N. Y. Evening Mail. " We cordially commend this book."—N. Y. School Journal. IX.—A Manual of Etiquette. With Hints on Politeness, Good-Breed- ing, etc. By " Daisy Eyeeright." i2mo, boards, . . 50 " The suggestions and directions are given with taste and judgment, and ex- pre'ss the habits of good society."—Louisville Courier-Journal. X.—The Mother's Register. Current Notes on the Health of Children. Part I, Boys. Part II, Girls. " The Mother records for the Physician to interpret." From the French of Prof. J. B. Fonssagrives, M. D. i2mo, cloth,..........75 XI.—Hints on Dress. By an American woman. i2mo, 124 pages, cloth,...........75 CONTENTS: Outline History of Dress. What we Mean by Dressing Well. Things Indispensable. Color, Form, Suitability. Estimates of Cost. How and What to Buy. Economy and Taste. " This little volume contains as much sense as could well be crowded into its pages."—A7. Y. Mail. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Putnam s Handy-Book Series. XII.—The Home : Where it Shouid Be, and What to Put in it. Containing hints for the selection of a Home, its furniture and inter- nal arrangements, with carefully-prepared price lists of nearly every- thing needed by a housekeeper, and numerous valuable suggestions for saving money and gaining comfort. By Frank R. Stockton (of Scribner's Monthly). i2mo,' 182 pages, boards . ... 50 " Young housekeepers will be especially benefited, and all housekeepers may learn much from this book."— Albany Journal. XIII.—The Mother's Work with Sick Children. By Prof. J. B. Fonssagrives, M.D. Translated and edited by F. P. Foster, M.D. A volume full of the most practical advice and suggestions for Moth- ers and Nurses. i2mo, 244 pages, cloth . . . . 1 00 " A volume which should be in the hands of every mother in the land."— Binghamton Herald. XIV.—Manual of Thermometry. For Mothers, Nurses, Hospitals, etc., and all who have charge of the sick and the young. By Edward Seguin, M.D. i2mo, cloth.......75 XV.—Infant Diet. By A. Jacobi, M.D., Clinical Professor of Diseases of Children, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. Revised, enlarged and adapted to popular use by Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D. i2mo, boards ......... 50 " Dr. Jacobi's rules are admirable in their simplicity and comprehensiveness " —N. Y. Tribune. XVI.—How to make a Living. By George Cary Eggleston, au- thor of " How to Educate Yourself." i2mo, boards . . 50 " Shrewd, sound and entertaining."— N. Y. Tribune. "An admirable little treatise, full of sound, practical advice."—Christian Union. XVII.—Manual of Nursing. Prepared under the instructions of the New York Training School for Nurses, by Victoria White, M.D., and revised by Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D. Boards . '. 75 «. v. "• ?etteJ adaPted t° render the nurse a faithful and efficient cooperator with the physician than any work we have seen."—Home Journal. XVIII.—The Blessed Bees. An account of practical Bee-keeping and the author s success in the same. By John Allen. Boards 75 " We commend Mr. Allen's book. * * * It is based on thp Hirtir.,, tw !^5tl?rameth0dSdependS DOt UP°n ^WuSn^nS^K nating ^^^^^^^A£^^^^x^^ 1* *-*- G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York Pntnams Ha?idy-Book Series. XIX.—The Handy-Book of Quotations. A Dictionary of Common Poetical Quotations in the English Language. i6mo, boards . 75 "Compact and comprehensive. * * * An invaluable little volume."— Providence Journal. XX.—From Attic to Cellar. A Book for Young Housekeepers. By Mrs. Oakey. i6mo, cloth.......75 " An admirable collection of directions and counsels, written by a lady of large experience, in a style of perfect simplicity and great force. * * * I wish it were in the hands] of every housekeeper and every domestic in the land."—H. W. Bellows, D.D. XXI.—Emergencies, and How to Meet Them. Compiled by Burt G. Wilder, M.D., Prof, of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in Cornell University. i6mo, sewed . . . . . . 15 " Invaluable instructions, prompt attention to which would often save life or serious disaster."—Providence Journal. XXII.—The Maintenance of Health. By J. Milner Fothergill, M.D. Third and cheaper edition. Octavo, boards . . . . $r 25 " The most important book of its kind that has ever been published in this country."—Christian Union. " The most complete summary of this subject of general hygiene that we have ever seen."—N. Y. Nation. XXIII.—The Art of Cooking. A series of practical lessons by Matilda Lees Dods, of the South Kensington School of Cookery. Edited by Henrietta De Conde Sherman. i6mo, cloth extra . . $1 00 " The thoroughness of her preparation for the work which this experience has afforded is seen in the marked success of the experimental lessons that she is now giving. They are so clear and methodical, her manipulation is so deft and easy, and the dishes produced are so excellent, as to win the praise of all who hear her."—N, Y. 7irnes. XXIV.—Hints for Home Reading. A series of papers by Edward Everett Hale, F. B. Perkins, H. W. Beecher, Charles Dudley Warner, Joseph Cook, Lyman Abbott, M. J. Sweetser, Cyrus Hamlin, H. W. Mabie, and others. Edited by Lyman Abbott. To- gether with a new edition of " Suggestions for Libraries," with first, second, and third lists of 500, 1,000, and 2,000 volumes recommended as the most important and desirable. 8vo, cloth, $1 00 ; boards. 75 " We warmly commend the book for the guidance not only of bookbuyers but readers. Its suggestions are invaluable to both."—Boston Transcript.