Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/54

40 RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. which follows enforced and overstrained mental effort or absorbing passion. The bodily disease strikes me most. I would describe all three, metaphorically, by saying that the nervous system has a difficulty in putting on a break; but when forcibly set in motion, tends to run on "by itself," as railway porters say. There is an involuntary and useless repetition of both psychical and physical processes, and the body is as much exhausted by them as if the will had directed their continuance. Do not suppose I am representing this rotatory recurrence of nervous work as a weakness or as a disease; it is, on the contrary, a mighty force, if rightly directed. It is too valuable to be wasted. And the most ready way of saving it is by alcohol, whose gentle, sedative control supplies the break that is required.

PSYCIIICUS. I can bear witness to the enormous value of alcohol in the management of insanity. That, and plenty of nourishing food, are the strong points in which we have improved of late years. Insanity is best treated as a disease of the stomach.

VAIN POMPS. I wish I understood all that scientific argument. I have always thought my glass of claret was a minor vice, and pleaded