Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/329

Rh temperaments are deemed trifling; and then again, on the contrary, make most surprising recoveries. With them the will-power is oftentimes an element in the recovery, throwing off disease by the determination not to yield to its influence. There is no doubt but that this temperament is more liable to mental derangement than any other; the great emotional intensity and the difficulty of moral control laying the mind open to causes that tend to produce insanity. Many of the nervous constituents of this type belong to the bilious temperament. We have but to tone down the nervous excitability of the first by an addition of the phlegm of the lymphatic, and add flesh to the spare, nervous figure, and we have the bilious temperament. In its typical phase, the subject is apt to be grave, taciturn, even morose; mind and body move slowly but surely, not eccentrically, but by determination and conviction. Persons of this temperament are remarkable for inflexibility of will, sound judgment, strong convictions, abiding affections, and great love for those dependent upon them.

The study of the relations of temperaments to development and vitality is one of great interest. While we know tolerably well their reaction with disease, and the groups of diseases that are liable to cluster round them, we have but few facts bearing upon the normal relations of the temperaments to vital capacity. There are many difficulties in the way of this study. In the first place, we have no unit of measure or comparison, and, in the next, it is difficult to collect the facts. In a very remarkable work consisting mainly of tabulations of a vast number of data relating to anthropometry, or the measurement of men, I discovered facts that throw considerable light upon this subject. During the late war of the rebellion the provost-marshal-general had to pass upon the fitness for military service of a vast number of conscripts. The results of over a million examinations are embodied in two massive quartos, by Dr. J. H. Baxter, late chief medical officer of that bureau of the War Department. From the elaborate statistical table of Dr. Baxter, I am able to construct a few tables that throw light upon some of the more obscure relations of temperaments. The facts embodied in the tables are picked out here and there from this mass of tabulation; while the figures have suffered no manipulation, except such as may be necessary to arrive at mean values.

A word as to the value of complexion as indicating temperament. A light color of the hair and skin, and blue or gray eyes, instead of indicating any one temperament, define broadly a group of two—the sanguine and lymphatic. A sallow or dark complexion, with black eyes and hair, indicates the bilious and nervous, and in this country, among natives, probably an excess of the latter. If, for the sake of narrowing the dark-haired group, we adopt the more modern