do, which in some cases has amounted to a true monomania. Secondly, by procuring the adoption of some visionary and vicious scheme of living, and the introduction of arbitrary rules and formula to regulate diet, and to destroy half the pleasures of life, to the entire neglect of the wants of the system and the dictates of nature and common-sense.

The effects of the mind upon the health, and particularly upon invalid health; and more especially still, its effects upon disordered functions of the stomach and its associated organs, the complaint most common among the valetudinary, the studious, and the sedentary, is a matter as yet very imperfectly understood by unprofessional men. True, it is known, that there is a relation, and a near relation too, between the intellectual and bodily man; but literally nothing is known of its closeness, its intimacy. The dyspeptic has learned from experience, the disturubing influence of intense or long-continued thought or emotion upon the powers of the stomach; but he is not acquainted, nor can he often be made so, with the effects of too much and too anxious attention to his own disease. He cannot believe, that this anxiety is the most important part of his malady, and that it has the relation of cause in the first place, and subsequently of both cause and effect, of all his complaints. The following case is one of a class. A student, a member of one of our literary institutions, of a delicate constitution and nervous temperament, after a time of unusual confinement and neglected exercise and relaxation, finds his energies impaired, his mind wandering, his sleep disturbed, the appetite capricious, and his whole system, mental and bodily, irritable. He has often had similar feelings before, which have passed off unregarded, in consequence of some temporary change in his habits; but he now, for the first time, becomes concerned for his health. At this juncture, he falls in with a sympathizing friend who tells him that he has the dyspepsia, and that he must diet. He reads Prof. Hitchcock's work, and other popular books on health, and finds, that, true enough, he has the dyspepsia, and a thousand other complaints which he never thought of. He looks at his tongue, feels his pulse, and enters upon a most rigid plan of regimen. His stomach has of a sudden become exceedingly fickle. He cannot bear butter, or any thing but the lightest, plainest food. Every mouthful which he takes he swallows as though he was suspicious of poison; and when it is down, he is at special pains to observe how it sits upon his stomach, that he may derive benefit from his experience. He eats as if it were a duty rather than a privilege; full of danger, but still necessary to be done. He does every thing by rule; eats, drinks, sleeps, walks, thinks, and even masticates, after certain approved formula which he has found in the books. Consequently, he is full of aches, and acid, and

whims, and wind, and every sort of canting nonsense about his poor stomach. In short, he becomes that which he most feared, and which all his precautionary measures have tended to make him, an inveterate dyspeptic. It is well known, that medical students of an excitable mind, who have recently commenced their studies, very often have the disease, at least in imagination, about which they happen to be reading. It is well known, too, that the disturbing effects of the mind upon the organs supposed to be implicated in such cases, is so considerable as to produce very serious derangement, even when none, or almost none, before existed. A learned medical friend of ours, who is supposed to be laboring under some disease of the heart, well aware of the influence of the mind on the organs, particularly when they are already disordered, never suffers himself to feel his own pulse. It is for this same reason-the injurious effects of too anxious attention to one's own complaints, upon such complaints,-that the diseases of medical men are apt to be so much more intractable than those of other persons. The organs will not bear to be watched in their operations; much less will they suffer their integrity to be suspected. Let a man suspect his stomach to be diseased, and watch it as though to prove its guilt, and forthwith disease is present, the product of his own apprehension. Leave this organ to itself, to do its own work in its own way, and it rarely proves false to its own trust; vex it with unseemly questions, bring vile accusations against it, and then guard it as you

*The influence of an excited imagination upon the animal economy, and particularly the influence of a strong expectation of certain organic effects upon those functions concerned in bringing about such effects, is strikingly illustrated in the remarkable case of the second Lord Lyttleton, (if all the facts in this case are truly narrated,) who predicted, within a few minutes, the time of his own death, on the supposed information of an apparition. An instructive instance, proving the same remarkable influence, fell under the notice of Sir Humphrey Davy, when, in early life, he was assisting Dr. Beddoes in his experiments on the inhalation of nitrous oxide. It is to be found in Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology," (extracted from Paris' life of Davy,) page 258, Harper's edition. "Dr. Beddoes having inferred that the oxide must be a specific for palsy, a patient was selected for trial, and placed under the care of Davy. Previously to administering the gas, Davy inserted a small thermometer under the tongue of the patient to ascertain the temperature. The paralytic man, wholly ignorant of the process to which he was to submit, but deeply impressed by Dr. Beddoes with the certainty of its success, no sooner felt the thermometer between his teeth than he concluded the talisman was in operation, and in a burst of enthusiasm declared that he had already experienced the effects of its benign influence throughout his whole body. The opportunity was too tempting to be lost. Davy did nothing more, but desired his patient to return on the following day. The same ceremony was repeated, the same result followed; and at the end of a fortnight he was dismissed cured, no remedy of any kind, except the thermometer, having ever been used.' It is in virtue of the principle under consideration, that quacks and niountebanks sometimes succeed in effecting what are called remarkable cures. Exceedingly little is even yet known of the wonderful connections and relations of body and mind.

would a felon, and it is ready to play all sorts of naughty tricks. There can be no doubt that the manner in which the public attention has, within a few years, been turned to the disorders of the stomach, has done great, irreparable injury to the community, particularly that part of it,-the sedentary and studious,—which from its habits and pursuits is most obnoxious to diseases of this organ. The attention of invalids, and those of weak digestive powers, has been riveted upon that very subject which should have been farthest from their thoughts. Disease has thus been developed and confirmed. Thus a class of cases, which, in former days, were comparatively rare, has become so numerous as to embrace nearly every third person in the community, particularly in the cities. Valetudinarianism has been multiplied a hundred fold. It is so common, especially in good society, as to have become quite fashionable. Broken down health, ruined constitutions, and elongated and wo-begone countenances, even in the morning of life, are now plenteous enough. Indeed, it is almost vulgar now a days to be healthy. It proves, that a man has no refinement, no taste, or is no student.

**

Of course, we do not consider those lecturers and book-makers who have been so active in administering to the morbid excitement to which we have referred, as contributors to the wealth or happiness of a community. They (at least the mass of them,) have proved themselves novices in the matters about which they profess to give advice; or, at any rate, they furnish no evidence of having yet grown to the dignity and wisdom of teachers. It has so happened, that these men, as a general rule, have been broken down dyspeptics, whose minds have been directed to the investigation of their own complaints, and who have come before the public in order to give their experience and to discharge what they have called a duty to the world,-men who have become exceedingly whimsical and visionary in those matters about which they suppose themselves, from their much study, best informed, relying on, as they say, the sure evidence of fact. Though no one can place a higher value than ourselves on experience, as a source of knowledge, yet, as a general rule, we can think of no more disqualifying circumstance in a teacher of the art of preserving health, than the fact, that he has himself been an old sufferer, and claims to draw his conclusions from his own feelings. It is true, the views of a man may be so enlarged, so liberalized by observation and extensive acquaintance with the laws and phenomena of disease in general, or, in other words, by those studies

* It is believed that it is not quite so common as it was a few years ago; the ex citement about it, following the course of other unnatural excitements, having passed its acme and begun to decline.

and pursuits which are appropriate to the physician,--as to enable him to get the better of that perversion of judgment which is the result of close and continuous attention to one's own complaints. He may perhaps view his own disease with such profound indifference, so much with the eye of a philosophical anatomist, and so little with the feelings of a man,-that he will judge soundly respecting it. But this coolness, this indifference, is frequently impossible; particularly when the mind itself is disordered, or sympathises intimately with the deranged functions, as in cases of dyspepsia, etc.; in which cases it has been supposed, by some, that the brain is the organ primarily diseased.

The reader will not infer, from what has been said, that we would make popular instructors on health responsible for all the sickness which has appeared since the day of their devotion to the cause of humanity; but he may suppose, that we charge them as being a prominent cause (ignorantly no doubt,) of the recent vast increase of stomach-complaints, nervous irritability, and poor health. There are other causes of this increase, which we cannot at present notice.

We are induced to transfer to our pages, in this connection, the following extract from a learned and judicious medical writer:

On the whole, after a pretty attentive consideration of the subject, I am strongly inclined to believe, that the popular treatises on diet and regimen, the habitual lecturing of students upon their health, and the newspaper recommendations and prescriptions of food and drink, have been the cause of ten cases of dyspepsia in the place of one which they have prevented or removed. It is said that no susceptible person can fix his attention upon his heart for five minutes at a time, without producing pain or distress, or varying the action of that vital organ. The same is probably the fact with the stomach. A regular habit of using the bounties of Providence with temperance and moderation, is about all that can ever be enforced upon the public to advantage. All popular directions, besides the rules of common-sense and common prudence, are liable to be misunderstood and perverted, and be carried to extremes, which render them worse than useless,-increasing the evils which they were benevolently, but injudiciously, designed to diminish.'

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The second bad effect of popular teachings on health, has been the adoption of vicious and visionary plans of living, to the entire neglect of common-sense and the instructive voice of the organs,an effect which would have been far more disastrous than it is, had it been possible to cause these plans to be generally embraced. The truth is, the great majority of those who are in good health, who have been accustomed to depend on the impulses of nature for guidance in the ordinary affairs relating to health, and who have no reason to suppose their appetites to be

perverted or false, cannot be persuaded to practice the austerities of ascetics and schemers. They will not consent to wear the harness of invalids; to be cramped and shackled by rules which they do not understand, and which they feel, that they do not need; to be governed by precise formula of other men's invention in such vulgar matters as eating and drinking; and it is well that they will not. They are not the men to break their necks, or even waste their time, in chasing phantoms. They would as soon think of weighing the air they breathe as the food they eat; and it would certainly be as rational a thing for them. How think you, gentle reader, the New-England farmer would appear, if seated at a table pretending to be furnished after some approved recipe of a modern lecturer on health, and engaged in the preliminary business of reading over a printed list of forms and regulations, touching the modus operandi of eating and drinking, or rather starving, and prescribing the weight and measure of "airy nothing" to be taken, etc.? And what would be his emotions on finding himself in such a situation? Would he not feel, that he was insulted and mocked? Would he even be tempted to go over with the mummery of eating? Would he not rather rise from his seat, indignant and mortified, and turn his back upon so beggarly a sight? Thanks to the conservative tendencies of instinct and common-sense, which, in most men, have power to regulate such common matters as eating and drinking, sleeping and exercise, without the aid of dyspeptic monitors, oracles and guides to health, and all the silly prescriptions of empirical lecturers; which are able to dispel the vagaries of dreaming and speculating men, even in spite of the warnings and croakings of alarmists.

Though, in general, the excitement about health, which has pervaded other ranks of society, has not reached the laboring classes, yet, it is not to be denied, that it has occasioned a slight movement, even among them. Even among them, there are those who have caught the fashionable mania; who must have their bran bread, and who can talk current nonsense about weak stomachs and dietetic rules. And just so far as this excitement has pervaded the classes in question, and occasioned the substitution of prescribed forms for natural impulses and native good sense, just so far it has multiplied the "pale faces." As it regards living, and particularly eating, we do not believe, that the New-England farmers, as a body, (a class with which we claim a pretty intimate acquaintance,) can be benefited by any rules which their own discernment will not discover. We do not believe, that, as a general thing, they eat too much, or food of an improper quality; though there are, doubtless, individual exceptions to this remark. There is not a better fed, a more amply nourished, and at the same time a healthier, sturdier, longer-lived race of men on earth; and, in