Fear Page #15

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.

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Whenever we called him by name, it seemed as though an impetuous wave of blood rushed into the brain, causing the convolutions to swell. As this was invariably the case, there could be no doubt that the brain was still sensitive to the impressions of the external world, even during a heavy sleep. When the patient was shaken till he woke, I could see the circulation changing little by little, as though the material conditions of consciousness were being restored.

He often spoke a few indistinct words, opened his eyes, or moved his hands, and then slowly fell back into the previous stupor, while we saw the pulse grow weaker, the brain decrease in volume, the rhythm and force of the breathing change.

It was one of the most interesting sights to observe in the stillness of night, by the light of a little lamp, what was going on in his brain, when there was no external cause to disturb this mysterious life of sleep. The brain-pulse remained for ten or twenty minutes quite regular and very weak, and then began suddenly, without any apparent cause, to swell and beat more vigorously. Then the agitation subsided and there was a second period of quiet; then came stronger blood-waves which flooded the convolutions, raising the height of the pulsations, which were automatically marked by the apparatus applied to the brain. We scarcely dared breathe. The one who was observing the instruments communicated with the other, who was watching over the patient, by pressing his hand. Looks full of interrogation and wonder would meet, and exclamations had to be forcibly repressed.

Did dreams, perhaps, come to cheer the repose of the unhappy boy? Did the face of his mother and the recollections of his early childhood grow bright in his memory, lighting up the darkness of his intelligence and making his brain pulsate with excitement? Or was it perhaps only a morbid phenomenon, like the jerky movements of a broken wheel, or the index of a machine out of order, swinging idly to and fro? Or was it an unconscious agitation of matter, like the ebb and flow of an unknown and solitary sea?

What a contrast between the pleasing emotion which this work roused in us and the sadness of the surroundings! Even that quarter of the city in which the asylum is situated has something characteristic about it, which De Amicis compared to the silence and mystery of an Oriental town. Sometimes, when late on winter evenings I made my way along the deserted streets, I could not even hear my own footsteps as they fell noiselessly on the snow. In the long dormitories of the hospital the dim light of the lamp could not dissipate the gloom in the remote corners of the room. However much care I took to glide softly through the room, in order not to disturb the sleep of those poor wretches, many were yet sitting upright in their beds, with staring eyes, seeming to await my coming and ready to shriek at me as I passed. Others, uncovered and naked, in spite of the winter cold, gazed at me with empty, fixed eyes; while others again, bound, to prevent their injuring either themselves or others in their mad fury, followed my steps with wild glances.

What a cheerless sight for a physician, and for me, who came amongst them to study the brain. At the end of these rooms was a little chamber in which I watched my subject. Often I had to interrupt my investigations, and, lamp in hand, go to the most noisy, begging, imploring them to be silent for one minute. It was a waste of breath. Caresses, presents, threats--all were alike of no avail. And when, late at night, discouraged at the failure of my experiments, I left that abode of pain, they were still awake, staring at me with the fixed, impenetrable gaze of a sphynx or the malignant smile of a demon; and when I stepped out into the desolate street again it seemed to me as though I had just escaped from a vision of spectres.

V

Physiologists may wait a long time before finding a more suitable subject on which to study the circulation of blood in the brain than my Bertino. He had a hole in the very middle of the forehead, that seemed made to allow one to look into the skull as an old Greek philosopher once wished to do with the human heart.

To my regret the man only sojourned for a very short time in Turin, and I could only study him during one week. He was a sturdy mountaineer, who suffered from home-sickness, and seemed to be ashamed of his disfigurement. In July 1877, as he was working under the belfry of his village, he was struck on the head by a brick which a mason, working near the roof, at a height of fourteen metres, let fall out of his hand. Bertino fell to the ground as though struck by lightning. He told me that he remembered nothing of it all, not even the blow he had received, and that he regained consciousness after one hour. The earliest recollection which he preserved of the accident was of the moment before the blow. He remembered that he was standing under the belfry watching a comrade dipping bricks into water; then came a period of darkness in his mind, and when he came to himself again he found himself, to his astonishment, in bed, while a surgeon held a watch before him and asked him what time it was. From that moment his mind had been quite clear. The terrible blow made an opening of the size of a shilling in the middle of the forehead. When the splinters of bone had been removed, the brain was seen through the opening, uncovered and pulsating. After having been twenty-four hours in bed, he came on foot to Turin. My friend, Dr. De Paoli, took me to see him. The patient had lost nothing of his power of movement, of his intelligence, his speech, or his memory; he was only very much afraid, and had a perpetual expression of distrust and timidity, even about the most unimportant things, which he tried in vain to conceal.

I must remark that in fractures of the skull the time favourable to study is very short. Large wounds admit with difficulty of the application of the instruments; the smaller ones are better adapted, but they close much sooner from underneath by cicatrisation. When I made the acquaintance of Bertino, the best time was already past; nevertheless the investigations which I made on him are, according to the judgment of competent physiologists, the most complete that have as yet been published.

Eighteen months later I wrote to him, asking him to come to Turin, as I wished to see him. He came at once, and told me that if he had not escaped from the hospital he would have died of melancholy; that he had not been able to bear being in rooms full of dying people, while at home wife and children and fields were awaiting him. The opening in the skull had closed, and the movements of the brain were no longer visible.

VI

Let us now see how the brain writes when it guides the pen itself. I have already collected a few volumes of these autographs, from which I here give a single line as an example, written by Bertino’s brain in the night of September 27, 1877. He was lying on a sofa. I had applied the apparatus which traces the movements of the brain to his forehead, and watched the pen writing on the cylinder while I waited for him to fall asleep. At first the pen traced large undulations, a certain sign of great restlessness in the blood-vessels of the brain; the pulse-lines were considerably modified from time to time in form and height, and this, although profound silence reigned. I might have asked him what he was thinking of, but I did not do it, as I wished urgently to see him fall asleep. At last the undulations began to decrease, becoming lower and less frequent, sometimes separated from each other by long periods of repose, like a lake gradually growing calm, but upon which from time to time a little wave ripples, troubling the smooth surface. At length Bertino fell asleep. Consciousness was extinguished, the troublous thoughts of life had ceased, only the last sentinels of the nervous system were still vigilant. At the slightest noise a wave of blood disturbed the surface of the brain. If the hospital clock struck the hour, or someone walked along the terrace, if I moved my chair, or wound up my watch, or if a patient coughed in the next room--everything, the slightest sound was accompanied by a marked alteration in the circulation of the brain, all immediately traced by the pen which the brain guided on the paper of my registering apparatus.
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