Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/59

Rh gleaned as rapidly and as fully as possible; while to any one who has personally reached the point where he can carefully differentiate the essential features of the more frequent cases of a mind diseased, as these appear in different communities or families, and especially to one who has come more or less to fully appreciate some or all of its discouraging perplexities, depressions, fears and apprehensions; or its disappointments, emotional perversions and interferences; or the accompanying loss of confidence and hope, inordinate sense of dependence, seemingly irrevocable detachment from human and divine fellowship; and perhaps something of the shame and degradation, the general unfitness for planning work, and the conscious inadequacy of power to do it, incident thereto;—who has in fact rightly comprehended what goes to make up dire mental pain, and the inevitable "sickness of soul" that centers in and clusters about the innermost selfhood in all these distressing cases—to such an one a prompting to further study and to more skilful practise, as well as to enthusiastic hope regarding it all, becomes so irresistible that any suggestion of apology for even intrusive interest and propaganda is not to be thought of.

With respect to the manner in which this kind of suffering comes to be, it may be said that almost every unusual experience has in it one or more elements of causation of subsequent mental pain and derangement. Most certainly, even such experiences as broken bones may lead to it; likewise, post-infections as well as certain endogenous poisonings are sources not to be neglected; also, too many children, too heavy financial burdens, too prolonged hours of arduous labor, physical or mental; too overweening or unrealized ambitions; or poorly cooked food and noxious air; disappointed love or social aspiration; financial reverses and other forms of "ill-luck"; as well as unsatisfied deeply implanted longings of every sort; weak will or over-emotionalism; gluttony and laziness; early impressive childish experiences, especially terrorizing dreams, frightful shocks, prolonged perversions of development; gloomy or inadequate education; unpropitious parenthood; vicious or disturbing neighborhood—all these may contribute, in incalculable proportion, yet never except by their due share, either to the genesis of a mind painfully diseased, or to its prolongation and deepening, or worse still, in many instances, to most serious interference with cure.

Thus, by way of particularizing in respect to our present purpose, let us consider an instance where the mental pain has developed in the course of recovery from some kind of not unusual physical injury, or of ordinary infection from without.

In a certain proportion of such cases, it is to be noted, especially in the more impressionable constitutions, that long before the physical trouble or infection can be recovered from, even though most prompt and efficient measures have been resorted to, the tendency to the