Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/679

Rh of Byron. These two women had lived years and years, the one preserving in the depths of her heart the calm despair of an impossible love, the other the bitter recollection of a love that was spurned; but neither of them could outlive the affliction of seeing the object of her affection taken away by death. There are some cases in which the resistance is not of so long duration, and where the ravages of passion are such that the organism becomes dislocated with fearful rapidity. Indeed, it is no rare thing for a physician to be summoned to a patient who is wasting away with sadness and dejection. No organic cause can be discovered to account for the malady; the usual remedies are of no avail; the patient does not mend, and usually keeps the secret of his griefs to himself. In such cases the physician should always strive to discover whether there is any passion of the soul which produces this disorder of the functions, and makes his remedies of no effect. Usually such a passion exists. Thus it was that the physician Erasistratus discovered that Antiochus loved his step-mother, Stratonice. Boccaccio likewise tells of a physician who by chance detected the true cause, previously unknown, of the complaint with which a certain young man was suffering; whenever a young female cousin of the patient entered his room, his pulse beat quicker. It often happens that the melancholic becomes incapable of bearing his afflictions, or of waiting for death to relieve him. This is the origin of suicide. The history of medicine and literature is full of narratives, real or fictitious, of suicide determined by an unfortunate passion. While we admire what is touching and dramatic in such narratives, we cannot fail to see that suicide is in se a fact of the morbid kind. Its cause is a total aberration of the instinct of self-preservation; and, as the latter has its seat in a certain part of the brain, we are authorized in locating the cause of suicide in a cerebral disorganization, brought about more or less rapidly by certain more general changes in the economy.

Similar changes are produced sooner or later under the influence of resentment, hate, and anger. Resentment is a secret passion which draws its plans in silence. Hate is taciturn, or finds utterance only in imprecations. Anger has its crises. Whereas resentment is disquieting, hate painful, and anger distressing, revenge is a kind of pleasure. It has been compared to the feel of silk, to indicate at once its imperious nature and our gratification, in appeasing it. When anger and the desire of revenge distend the veins, flush the face, stiffen the arms, brighten the eyes, bewilder the mind, and lead it to the commission often of criminal acts, the soul feels a sort of delight, but it is of short duration; and the momentary excitement is followed by a