The Cigarette

MENTAL INFLUENCE 903

Blood Vessels, gives several striking instances of the influence of mind over body, a few of which I will here relate During the French revolution a nobleman, thirty years of age, was condemned to die by the guillotine. The night before his execution he was up quite late conversing with friends, and did not go to sleep until early next morning. As the time for the execution approached, a friend went to awaken him, and happened to touch the back of his neck with his cold hand, when he opened his eyes for a moment, made a few jerky movements with his legs, and then died. No one among his friends or kindred had seen any sign of apoplexy or other illness, for he was apparently in perfect health at the time. It was the concensus of opinion that the sensation of the cold hand at the moment of awakening, after the mind had been directed for days and weeks on his approaching death, had given the impression of the knife of the guillotine with the same fatal effect. We are told that when morphine is taken from persons addicted to its use, often times the kidneys refuse to work because of the unhappy feeling that results, and that when the drug is again taken, and the patient feels happy, the action of the kidneys is found to be normal. Yet the drug itself has no direct effect upon those organs.Dr. Hirshfield concludes several pages of remarkable instances of this kind with the following commentary :

It must be admitted that, in theory, the mind may even control the growth of a tumor, as, by regulating the width of blood-vessels it may cut the tumor out of circulation and starve it to death, or on the other hand, can make it grow faster by directing attention and congestion to it. The mind can influence the body the same as poison, or as it is affected by the thyroid and suprarenal gland; it can widen the blood-vessels as the former does, and almost close them, as the latter does, with the same effect on the health. * * * The influence of the mind on the circulatory apparatus is a fact on which not enough stress can be laid. Today we know that arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) often represents the wornout condition of blood-vessels which have been overworked by the continual pulling on their muscular walls of an emotional and restless heart.

Dr. Charles A. Lauffer, in his work on electrical injuries, says a person's susceptibility thereto largely depends upon the mental attitude of the individual at the time, and cites the case of an old lineman who accidentally touched a wire that usually carried a heavy voltage, but which at the time was uncharged, and died almost immediately from fright alone. I call to mind another well authenticated case (and there are many of them in the experience of old medical practitioners) of a man who was so seriously injured that his recovery was despaired of. He asked the doctor what were his chances for recovery, providing a certain very necessary and serious surgical