Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1884 — Mental Phenomena Reduced to Figures. [ARTICLE]

Mental Phenomena Reduced to Figures.

Any physician, we apprehend, will consider it quite within the bounds of probability that 1 per cent, of the population of the country is snbjeot to remarkably vivid dreams, illusions, visions, etc. This will make half a million people in the United States. Each of these persons may be supposed to have fifty friends or relations, of whom 1 per annum dies. If they are subject to a dream or vision once a week, there is one chance out of seven that they have one on the same day that the friend dies. Let ns suppose that it takes a combination of eight separate and independent points of resemblance, between the vision and the ciroumstanee attending the death of the friend, to constitute a remarkable coincidence, and that each of these has a probability 6f one-half. We shall have, in one case ont of 256, a remarkable eombination of coincidences. Putting these results together, we may infer that, as a matter of f&ot, some extraordinary coincidence between the circumstances of death and the dream or vision by a friend of tbe dying person does occur somewhere in the conn try nearly every day in the year.— Science. A prize of 2,000 t is offered by the Temperance Society of l*aris for the best work on drinks, both alcoholic and other. The sulqect may be treated with regard to the action on the body of the liquors or theilr composition. £_J : A well-known Baltimore physician, has been very successful in the cure of cases of St. Yitns’ danoe by a tea made of the herb called skullcap—a wine-glassful given three times a* day for one month.