Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1875 — The Hopefulness of the Consumptive. [ARTICLE]

The Hopefulness of the Consumptive.

In diseases of the lungs the condition of depression is rarely present, and when so present is possibly due to some abdominal complication; though, of course, some of the existing depression may be fairly attributed to the anxiety naturally arising from an intelligent comprehension of the danger impending. In tuberculosis of the lung there is commonly such an emotional attitude in the patient as has earned for itself (he designation of spe» phthieica. Here the hopefulness is as irrational as is the depression of eoine other affections. The consumptive parent just dropping into the grave will indulge in plans stretching far into the future, ignoring his real condition and the impossibility of any such survival as he is calculating upon. It is a curious yet familiar state. Hope seems to rise above the intelligence just as in certain abdominal diseases there is a depression which defies its corrections. The intellect is not equal to finding the true bearings or of correcting the exalted emotional centers. In curious relation to these conditions stand well-known differences of the pulse. In chest-diseases the pulse is usually full, sometimes bounding; in abdominal disease it is small and often thready. The pulse of pneumonia .and the pulse of peritonitis are distinctly dissimilar and contrast with each other. It is well, known that there is much more tendency to collapse in abdominal than in thoracic disease; taking the conditions of the pulse together with the emotional attitudes of these affections, the synthesis is unavoidable that some effect is produced by the tubercular disease in the lungs upon the emotional centers as opposite to the effect of abdominal disease as are the varied effects upon the pulse; and further that the result is probably produced through the circulation. The explanation which is shadowed out, for it really does not amount to more, is that abdominal disease causes a depletion of the emotional centers—of which depression is the outward indication—while phthisis leads to a plethoric state associated with exalted emotional conditions. In either case the intellectual and volitional centers appear unequal to the task of maintaining the balance which normally exists. As a matter of fact, there are certain mental attitudes found in some diseases which are so regularly present, so well marked and pronounced, that they may fairly be included as a part of the rational symptoms. Bo commonly is mental depression found along with biliary disturbances that the name melancholia was given to these conditions of mental gloom; and modern observation is but establishing the propriety of the term.— Dr. J. M. Fothergill, in Popular Science Monthly for March.

—Prof. Fowler, the phrenologist, examined the head of the Detroit Free Press humorist, and, not knowing who his subject was, said: “Young man, I cannot commend to you any intellectual pursuit in life. You may guide a plow with some degree of intelligence; may even hoe potatoes without danger; but attempt nothing more exhausting to the cerebral tissues. You have not the brain, sir, for an intellectual life behind the counter.” And Fowler has learned more about his own faults from the Detroit Free Press than he ever knew.—Cincinnati Commefdal. SiESKTGU. Randolph, of New Jersey, has invented a stitching-machine and one of the best plows in use.