Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/566

524 we may suppose that the subconscious memory of that experience is capable of becoming from time to time strong enough to disturb the coordination of the upper consciousness. Indeed, most of these causes may produce chronic incoordination without going so far as to destroy coordination altogether. Now, all these cases may be generalized under one conception. In my first article I compared the system of activities underlying consciousness to the system of forces upon which the existence of the soap bubble depends. We all know that the introduction of any new and intense factor into that system, as when one pricks the bubble with a dry pin, instantly destroys it. It would appear that much the same is true of the system of cortical activities.

The precise effect of the nerve storm upon consciousness, however, varies with the region upon which its force is chiefly spent. In the so-called masked epilepsies or periodic insanities consciousness is directly affected, and with greater or less severity, but the complex disturbances so produced can not be reduced to definite classes. New elements are introduced, old elements are destroyed, or weakened or intensified, as the case may be, and the character temporarily modified. Whenever the disturbance is very great, however, memory is more or less impaired, as our theory would lead us to expect. In the true epilepsies the violence of the storm is expended upon the motor region, producing movements, sometimes of a purposive character and sometimes not. Whenever the storm is at all severe, consciousness is disordinated and no memory remains. After the storm is over the patient sinks into a state of true unconsciousness, and often he recovers from it but slowly, passing through stages of automatism as the elements of consciousness slowly find one another and are built up into a system. If you question him after his recovery, he says he was unconscious the whole time. But we have reason for believing that during the period of convulsion mental states—such as muscular sensations, sensations of pain, and probably horrible dreams and nightmares—really existed, while in the comatose state there was nothing of the kind. The first was a state of disordination; the second, of true unconsciousness.

The symptoms of incoordination are, as one would expect, of infinite variety and incapable of classification. It is known in medicine as hysteria, and I can say but little of it here.

In its simpler forms there seems to be a general inability to think of much at once. Consequently, what is in consciousness is very much there, to use a colloquial phrase, and tends to work out its own results. The patient is easily abstracted, fails to notice things, is narrow and prejudiced. In practical matters he has bad judgment, for good judgment implies the ability to weigh many considerations at once. It is difficult to convince him of a