Fear Page #14

THE learned and eloquent Professor of Physiology at Turin has given us in the book which he has entitled “Fear,” an analysis of this mental condition and its accompanying physical states, which, marked as it is by scientific accuracy and couched in charming and even in poetical diction, will take high rank as a popular exposition of our knowledge of the expression of one of the most interesting of the emotions of both men and animals.

• Health

								


The patient recovered strength after energetic treatment, and was able to walk about the garden after a few weeks. It was then that we began to study her brain. I shall not describe the various instruments we constructed, but only remark that we lost much precious time with different attempts, and when we were at last ready, the most favourable time was already past, the wound was covered with a thick scab, which dulled the pulse of the brain. Nevertheless, we made some rather important observations, the results obtained being the most complete up till that time in the physiology of cerebral circulation.

In order to give an instance of the delicacy of the apparatus, and to prove the accuracy of our investigations, I mention the following circumstance. One day we were assembled in the laboratory of Professor Giacomini, intent on studying the brain of the patient, who was sitting in her arm-chair, and seemed absent-minded. There were a few spectators in the room, who were told to remain quietly behind the patient’s back. In solemn silence we observed the curve marked by the cerebral pulse on the registering apparatus. Suddenly, without any external cause, the pulsations rose higher, and the brain increased in size. This striking me as strange, I asked the woman how she felt; the answer was, well. Seeing, however, that the circulation in the brain was very much altered, I examined the instrument carefully, to see whether it was all in order. Then I asked the patient to tell me most minutely what she had been thinking about two minutes before. She said that, as she had been looking absent-mindedly into a bookcase standing opposite to her, she had caught sight of a skull between the books, adding that it had frightened her by reminding her of her malady.

This poor woman was called Margherita; she was rather timid, but willingly allowed herself to be examined and studied, full of confidence in us, who vied with each other in showing her polite attentions. Her children often visited her, but she was ashamed to go back to her native place with her terribly disfigured face, preferring to remain away from her family and perform the duties of nurse to the other invalids in the hospital. After many years I felt a wish to see her again. As I pressed her hand to encourage her, she told me that she had at last given up the wish to die.

III

Chance furthered the continuation of these observations, new opportunities for this study soon offering themselves in Turin and elsewhere. In the lunatic asylum I found a boy a portion of whose skull was wanting. In the year 1877 I came across a man in the hospital of San Giovanni, who had an opening in his forehead which seemed made on purpose for examination; and finally, last year, I was able to repeat and conclude my investigations on a perfectly healthy man who had also a hole in his skull. As yet I have had no opportunity of publishing the observations and experiments made on this man.

How anxious and agitated we are when we enter upon a new field of science; when, at every step, the doubt arises whether some important phenomenon may not have escaped us! How we are tormented by the fear of not being able to face the most vital questions, nor to find out those phenomena most fruitful in results and most subtile! What trepidation overcomes one before one writes down even a few lines in the book of science!

Even amongst physicians it is not easy to find any who are able to write down the history of any fact or observation. The majority of them only know how to relate things in the same dogmatic words with which they are described in treatises, and only a few take the trouble to examine the development of an idea. And yet, in the study of human nature there is nothing more interesting than to follow the different phases of a problem, to see whence a thought arose, to know the first means by which nature was interrogated, then the sudden changes of method, the incidents, the errors and corrections, and at last the victory which crowns our labour and wins a fact for science. I believe if it could be seen near at hand how a research develops in the laboratories, the followers of the experimental sciences would be greater in number.

It is a work of patience. The only difficulty consists in gradually learning the language of Nature, in finding out the way to interrogate her and compel her to reply. In this struggle, in which we, humble pygmies, fight continually in order to wrest from Life its secret, there are moments of intoxicating emotion, rays of light amongst the shadows, which excite the imagination of the scholar and the artist.

IV

The second case, which I studied in company with Dr. Albertotti, was that of a boy eleven years of age, with an agreeable physiognomy and very beautiful physical proportions. He had scarcely reached his second year when he fell from a terrace, fracturing his skull and causing a severe concussion of the brain. After two years and a half he began to suffer from epileptic fits, and later, signs of insanity appeared which obliged his relatives to send him to the lunatic asylum in Turin.

When I saw him in February 1877, he had a large opening in the skull, a little above the right eye, and covered with skin; it was as big as the palm of his hand, and in the pit of it one could feel the pulsing of the brain. The terrible fall had for ever arrested his intellectual development. He was gay, smiling, and lively, like a big baby, but he could not speak. It was a saddening circumstance that in the midst of this ruin of his mind one single higher idea had remained, a remnant of his earlier intellectual life, a motto which he constantly repeated: 'I want to go to school.’

Of all the human cases I have studied, the observations made on this boy gave me the greatest trouble. As I had to do with an idiot, the least obstacles became great difficulties. No apparatus could be applied without his becoming restless, snatching it from his head, and breaking everything which fell into his hands. I had to confine myself to a few observations which could be made by surprising him while asleep. But he did not sleep regularly; I have often found him still awake, even when I made my nightly visit at a very late hour. It was more than sleeplessness, it was a nocturnal excitement, which presaged the storm of an epileptic attack. I have seen him the victim of the most terrible fits, while, on the nights following, his sleep was so deep as to leave one in doubt whether it was a natural phenomenon.

In the period of exhaustion and stupor, the blood-vessels of the brain seemed to relax, and at every contraction of the heart the pulsations became stronger. A faint noise which did not wake the patient was enough to produce a change in the brain and a more abundant gush of blood. It sufficed to touch him, or to approach him with the lamp: immediately, the volume of the brain increased, and a great elevation appeared in the curve of the pulse.
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