Charles Fayette Taylor

“ But mental influence over bodily function is exhibited not alone in connection with the muscles in determining their relaxation or rigidity, in certain cases; but what are called bodily sensations are even more dominated by the mental timbre of the individual. We have local and general hyperæsthesias and anæthesias both as transient and as permanent conditions from this cause. I feel obliged to employ phrases as they are employed in common use, but, strictly speaking, there are no bodily sensations, for all sensation is mental—there is and can be no other. ”

“ The nature of what we call mind and its relation to the functions of the body is a very wide field of inquiry—too wide, indeed, for our present consideration. But having had unusually favorable opportunities for observing certain phases of psycho-biological relations, I ask your attention while I present some studies which may help us, possibly, to arrive at more practical results, through more satisfactory explanations of certain phenomena, than we have hitherto possessed. ”

“ WHATEVER that thing, fact, function, or idea which we call mind may be, or whether the brain, as is generally believed, is or is not its sole organ of manifestation, it is universally admitted that varying bodily conditions are accompanied by related variations of mental states. ”

“ Confinement, from any cause, is more apt to be demoralizing than elevating, at the best, and it is not strange that a certain number of bedridden cases should, more through the ignorance and want of tact of those around them than original desire to deceive, form the habit of, first, making the most of their infirmities to increase sympathy, and, finally, come to exaggerate and to falsify ”

“ Hysteria, or, more properly, imperfect sexual hygiene in both male and female, by perturbing the system, does produce a condition favoring modifications of the mental states; but the phenomena under consideration are not themselves hysterical. Any thing or any influence—and they are many—which can increase the mental tension and impressionability beyond a certain normal standard, will produce a modification of the timbre such as we see exemplified in so many instances. ”

“ The exciting cause, or that which called her attention to her foot, was the alleged slipping of the tendon of the peroneus longus muscle where it passes under the outer ankle-bone. She had no theory, fancy, or any other sentiment regarding her lameness whatever. She simply dropped her toes when walking, and was obliged to lift that limb very high to advance the foot and prevent stumbling. When, in examining her, I asked her to raise the foot, she was unable to do so. The muscles moving the ankle-joint were powerless. ”

“ Mental influence over bodily function is in itself a constant and therefore a normal condition of existence. But one of the products of civilization is to exalt the mental into a too preponderating influence. In that exaltation the mind easily becomes hyper-susceptible. ”

“ As we have seen that bodily functions may be profoundly modified under unconscious mental influence, so it will be found, when carefully analyzed, that the product of the mental operations themselves may be likewise modified, under peculiar subjective influences, without arousing the consciousness. In a word, the mind may be in a condition of what we may, illustratively, call mental allotropism, during which the laws ordinarily controlling mental operations seem to be reversed, with corresponding products of intellection. ”

“ All sensations, including unpleasant sensations or pains, represent mental qualities only, and these always correspond, no matter what the exciting cause, with the capacity of the mind to be impressed ”

“ It is claimed, on the one hand, that this lady is a perfectly truthful person, with a highly endowed moral sense, intelligent, kind, benevolent, and shrinking from notoriety, and that her statements ought to be taken as conclusive in regard to the facts. ”

“ Nevertheless, while the mental timbre is an independent condition, it does not prevent the introduction of moral qualities also. A person may lose the use of a member, for instance, through loss of consciousness of power in that member, and at the same time she may have so much pleasure in the sympathy which the disability excites in those around her as to prefer to be lame or bedridden. ”

“ The imagination is often given full play in many of these cases, and undoubtedly assists in producing that mental state which ultimately ends in mental allotropism. But, however conspicuous the imagination may be in such a case, its only importance consists in being one of the many factors tending to produce a certain definite result, which, when reached, is not imagination nor the direct product of the imagination. ”

“ Now, there are various circumstances which favor modifications of psycho-biological relations, but which do not themselves directly cause them. Among those most frequently coming under professional recognition, hysteria may be instanced as a potent influence; but, in the light of the facts in my experience, it is incorrect to speak of the hysterical foot or the hysterical stomach or knee. We have the phenomena exhibited in both sexes, in children of tender years and in men and women in advanced life. ”

“ But no injury had been done to the hip-joint.
This child was so young when the affection first appeared that it was never made out what were the particular sensations which influenced the volition in the way they did.
It is necessarily more easy to get demonstrations and illustrations of the various influences of the mind over the sensations and the voluntary muscular actions than of the involuntary processes of life. ”

“ We see them eat enough to maintain them well nourished, and yet they assert that they do not eat enough for the bodily requirements. Again, the difficulty lies, not in the fact of eating, nor in any desire to falsify, but in the fact that, in their peculiar mental condition, their eating, though seen by others and by themselves, makes no impression on their minds. ”

“ To continue the illustration, the instrument worn by the child intellectually low down may, by the mother's ignorance and neglect, become buried in the flesh, with slight murmur, compared to the distress caused by a crumb of bread or a wrinkle in the linen under the points of pressure in the mentally active child. ”

“ Intimately connected with, and in fact growing out of, the subject of the influence of mental timbre over the functions of the body, are many interesting questions of mental ethics which, it seems to me, ought to be studied from a somewhat different point of view than that from which they are commonly regarded. ”

“ The foot, ankle, knee, and hip joints are all frequently referred to when there is no organic affection at the point indicated by the mental impression, and I might go on almost indefinitely relating instances, if time permitted. But it may be sufficient to indicate the frequency of disturbed psycho-biological relations to say that I estimate that not less than one half of all cases applying to me for relief from joint affections belong to the class under discussion. ”

“ But not only the same person has different degrees of sensation at different times, according to his mental timbre at the time, but different individuals and different classes of persons feel both pleasures and pains more or less according to their individual or class elevation in the intellectual scale. ”

“ If obscured by an anæsthetic or if asleep, provided the impinging on the nerves is not sufficient to waken me, or even if my attention be very much absorbed, I shall not be conscious of the pricking. On the other hand, if I have been pricked before so that my fears are aroused, or if I am worried or weary or ill, then the pain is many hundred times greater than under the opposite circumstances. We go to a dentist one day when we are in a hurry, and with the mind troubled about some matter. ”

“ I mean, of course, some circumstance or event which is calculated to fix the attention and make a mental impression. But, in the majority of instances, no such "exciting cause" is traceable. It generally simply happens that the subject finds himself with certain abridgments or apparent exaltations of the purturbed function, without being able to trace the event which determined the character and location of the mental influence. ”

“ But when he falls on the ice and gets hip-disease, his sufferings correspond to his mental rather than to his bodily condition, and his pains, like his pleasures, are as much greater than those of the first-mentioned child as his mind is more active and thus more susceptible. ”

“ If a knife were thrust into the flesh, in corresponding locations and to the same depth, in twenty people, no two would feel the incision to the same degree, and the difference in sensations would be simply the difference of mental constitutions, that is, it would be wholly mental. ”

“ Besides, abnormal mental timbre, productive of positive effects on the organism, is quite as apt to be manifested in certain wholly unimaginative persons as in the imaginative. The most marked cases which have come under my observation have been those of persons whose characteristics have been strong common sense and self-forgetfulness. ”

“ The most that we can strictly say is that we feel in the mind, but refer the cause of such feeling to certain locations in the body. Stick a pin in my flesh, and whether I feel it or not, and how much I may feel it, will depend wholly on the state of my mind. ”

“ Besides the peculiar cases given as illustrations, there is a large class of what are called "simulated diseases," persons with local sensations or pains which do not arise from or represent corresponding local diseases. These can not have even a passing allusion here. Time also prevents me from entering into a discussion of the important subject of mental influence on actual disease, even if that aspect of my subject did not more properly belong to the medical department of biology. ”

“ And, on the other hand, the cultured and aesthetic should comprehend, more than they do, that an increased capacity for painful sensations is the direct result and the constant accompaniment of the refinements of civilization, and that to suffer is inevitable along with the pleasurable emotions, which constitute at once the compensation and the charm of the higher civilized existence. ”

“ While it can not for a moment be admitted that a person can live nine years, or any number of years, without food, yet it would be contrary to related facts, and illogical, to assume that she intends to deceive. ”

“ The feeble hold on life of the suicidal, and the surprising recoveries from serious diseases and after apparently fatal injuries, in persons whose mental characteristics are hopefulness and determination, are often-recurring facts, familiar to all. ”

“ The absence of any motive for propagating an unprofitable, ridiculous falsehood is held as confirmatory of her allegations. On the other hand, it is as stoutly maintained that she is an arrant impostor, whose sole purpose is to acquire a transient notoriety ”

“ Every physician has had cases of persons who asserted that they did not sleep at all for long seasons at a time, while the fact was that such persons did actually sleep a good deal, as proved by being seen asleep, and by the fact that they did not suffer in health, as they must have done if sleep had been entirely absent. ”

“ I say she could not, because, though there was power in the muscles, there was no consciousness of power, and thus there could be no volition.
The plan of securing an unconscious volition is often very useful and sometimes indispensable in determining questions of diagnosis growing out of mental influence over function. The following incident occurred within the last few weeks: A young lady nineteen years old was sent to me from Albany for what was supposed to be partial paralysis of the left foot and ankle. ”

“ The same improvement in the general health, but in an even more marked degree, was manifested in the second case above related.
Adult life is not alone liable to the class of mental influences which we are now discussing. Young persons and even quite small children are frequent subjects for psycho-biological study. ”

“ Suffice it here to say that, as must be inferred from the facts and arguments already adduced, no system of therapeutics can be complete which does not embrace the design of controlling psycho-biological relations in general, and with reference to chronic disease especially. ”

“ There was a history of some slight injury, with periods of improvement during the first six months of her lameness, but with a final loss of ability to use it on account of its exceeding painfulness at every attempt to bear her weight upon it, and she had been for that length of time on crutches. The foot and ankle were very thin, cold, and clammy, and even very gentle manipulation caused considerable pain. ”

“ In due course of time the fracture united, and the patient got about with some shortening of the limb, and walked with perfect facility for one year, when, in crossing the street, he fell and broke the same bone again about four inches, so they told me, below the seat of the former fracture. Neither of the physicians who had attended him on the previous occasion being in the city, a third medical man, a surgeon of national reputation, was called, who proceeded to apply the proper bandages for fracture. ”