---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 21
number: 10
published: 1918-08
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "The Cigarette," *Improvement Era* 21, no. 10 (August 1918): 901.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera21010unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera21010unse
start_page: 901
end_page: 901
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-08)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera21010unse
  publication_year: 1918
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Cigarette

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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