Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/529

1868.] The most careful examination failed to show the least mental aberration or any physical disturbance other than that due to a delicate and highly impressible nervous system.

The nervous temperament is more frequently met with in women than in men. Their habits of life, mode of education, the requirements of society, and, above all, the intimate relation existing in them between the sympathetic system and the reproductive organs tend to increase the irritability and diminish the tone of their nervous structures. The little cares of life come principally to the lot of women, and these, when numerous, are more wearing than the large ones. Like the drops of water, which, falling continually upon a rock, cause its disintegration, these petty annoyances and difficulties slowly but certainly tell with great power on the brain and nerves.

Women are more imitative than men, and "nervousness" is often acquired by the mere force of example. I have frequently seen hysterical women infect others, apparently in good health, with all their spasms, and contortions, and sobbings, and other manifestations of disordered nervous systems. Most physicians engaged in hospital practice have seen examples of this kind. Any powerful mental impression will stop the course of the disorder. A woman, in a hospital which I attended as a student, used every day to be seized with hysterical convulsions, during which her body was bent backward to such an extent that it rested only on the head and heels. As regularly as she was attacked all the other women in the ward (thirty or more in number) displayed evidences of nervous excitement by laughing, crying, or twisting their faces. One morning the physician in attendance called a nurse, and, in a loud voice, which all could hear, ordered him to bring a red-hot poker, and, having got it, with a vessel of living coals, he turned toward the women and threatened to draw it down the spine of all who at the end of thirty seconds had not stopped their hysterical symptoms, and to use it daily till they ceased having their tantrums. Within the period specified every woman was as calm as if the even current of her nervous fluid had never been disturbed, and their paroxyms did not recur while the unfortunate cause of their difficulties remained in the ward.

The scenes which take place at "revivals" and "awakenings" are too often due to an abnormal influence exerted upon the nervous systems of impressible women, who become epileptic, cataleptic, or affected with hysterical mania through the terrific pictures held up before them by indiscreet and over-enthusiastic preachers. It is well known that these hysterical manifestations pass from one to another by the contagion of example, and sometimes prevail epidemically. A few years ago these phenomena were much more frequent than at the present day, and, perhaps, as religion is better understood, and is taught by ministers who appeal to the intellect rather than to the passions of mankind, they will disappear altogether from our places of worship.

Many years ago epidemics of hysterical mania swept through the convents of Europe. However conducive to holiness—and there are many charming examples of nuns whose lives have been devoted to noble and self-denying works—a conventual life is not that which combines the greatest number of hygienic advantages. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when these epidemics were at their height, hygiene, as a science, was unknown, and the unfortunate victims, instead of being subjected to medical and moral treatment, were turned over to the exorcist to have the devils expelled, who were supposed to have taken up their residence in their poor bodies. The symptoms exhibited