Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/70

 and life, and the perturbations which atmospheric changes produce in the electrical state of the globe."

In order to protect my readers from the base impositions of empirics, I will teach them briefly how to detect certain physical abnormal states by the analysis of urine. Of course, if the sickly state consequent upon either the reactions of the human loves upon the body, which frequently originate chemical conditions favorable to the development of minute organic life in the form of animalculae, parasites, living atoms, infusoria, abnormal vegetations, etc., or which spring from the absorption of poison, either ethereal, electric, magnetic, or from contact, the examinations must proceed by means of the microscope, the blood being the substance of analysis instead of the urine, as hereinafter directed how to be done.

When a person is mortally bitten by the cobra, molecules of living germinal matter are thrown into the blood, and so rapidly multiply that in a few hours millions upon millions are produced. Chemical action is interfered with, combustion is extinguished; coldness, sleepiness, insensibility, slow breathing, and death follow. How mysterious is the influence of poison!

Much of our conduct depends, no doubt, upon the character of the food we eat. Perhaps, indeed, the nature of our meals governs the nature of our impulses more than we are inclined to admit, because none of us relish well the abandonment of our idea of free agency. Bonaparte used to attribute the loss of one of his battles to a poor dinner, which, at the time, disturbed his digestion: how many of our misjudgments, how many of our deliberate errors, how many of our unkindnesses, our cruelties, our acts of thoughtlessness and recklessness, may be actually owing to a cause of the same character? We eat something that deranges the condition of the system. Through the stomachic nerve that derangement immediately affects the brain Moroseness succeeds amiability; and under its influence we do that which would shock our sensibility at any other moment. Or, perhaps, a gastric irregularity is the common result of an over-indulgence in wholesome food, or a moderate indulgence in unsuitable food. The liver is afflicted. In this affliction the brain profoundly sympathizes. The temper is soured; the understanding is narrowed; prejudices are strengthened; generous impulses are subdued; selfishness,