Isaac George Briggs

“ Our subconscious mind does not let the past jar with the present, for life would be made bitter by the eternal vivid recollection of incidents best forgotten. Every set of ideas, as it is done with, is locked up separately in the dungeons of subconsciousness, and these imprisoned ideas form the basis of memory. Nothing is ever forgotten, though we may never again "remember" it this side the grave. ”

“ DIGESTION
"We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may live without books,
But civilized man cannot live without cooks."
The human digestive system consists of a long tube, in which food is received, nutriment taken from it as it passes slowly downwards, and from which waste is discharged, in from sixteen to thirty hours afterwards.
Six glands pour saliva into the mouth, where it should be—but how rarely is—mixed with the food, causing chemical changes, and moistening the bolus to pass easily down. ”

“ We usually think of our mind as the aggregate of the various emotions of which we are actually conscious, when, in reality, consciousness forms but a small portion of our mentality, the subconscious—which is composed of all our past experiences filed away below consciousness—directing every thought and act. Inconceivably delicate and intricate mind-machinery directs us, and our idlest fancy arises, not by chance as most people surmise, but through endless associations of subconscious mental processes, which can often be laid bare by skilful psycho-analysis. ”

“ Their character is a tangle of mercurial moods, the neuropath being passionate but loving, sullen one moment, overflowing with sentimental affection the next, vicious a little while later, quick to unreasoning anger, and as quick to repent or forgive, obstinate but easily led, versatile but inconstant, noble and mean by turns, full of contradictions and contrasts, at best a brilliant failure, vain, deaf to advice or reproof, having in his ailing frame the virtues and vices of a dozen normal men. ”

“ To hedge in the child's little world, the most wonderful it will ever know, by hidebound rules enforced by severe punishments, is to repress a child, not to train it. While the commonest error is to spoil a child, it is just as harmful to crush it. ”

“ It is rare in old age.
Ambition, the race for "success", the struggle to carry out projects beyond the reasonable capacity of one man, and the ceaseless work and worry with little sleep and no real rest which mark life to-day are responsible for this disease.
Competition has increased in all conditions of life; free course is given to ambition, individuals impose on their brains a work beyond their strength ”

“ They are ready to forgive when there is magnanimity, vainglory and probably folly in forgiveness, but will not overlook the most trivial affront when there is every reason for so doing. They have brain, but not ballast, and their whole life is usually a lopsided effort to "play to the gallery". ”

“ There must be no disparity of age, for at the menopause the woman no longer seeks the sexual embrace, and if her husband be young unfaithfulness ensues. Not only that, but she, knowing, probably to her sorrow, how rarely the hopes of youth mature, cannot take a keen interest in his ambitions like a younger woman, or fire his dying enthusiasm at difficult parts of the way. If he be his wife's senior he will be as little able to appreciate her ideas and habits. ”

“ In mind as in body, from the moment he is conceived to the moment his dust rests in the tomb, man is directed by immutable laws, though he is not simply a machine directed by impulses over which he has no control. ”

“ Since Freud has traced a sex-basis in all our dreams, many worthy people have been much worried about the things they see or do in dreams. Let them remember that virtue is not an inability to conceive of misconduct, so much as the determination to refrain from it, and it may well be that the centres which so determinedly inhibit sexual or unsocial thoughts in the day, are tired by the very vigour of their resistance, and so in sleep allow the thoughts they have so stoutly opposed when waking to slip by. ”

“ An excitable, volatile, garrulous, "neighbourly" woman, or one who can do little save strum on the piano or make embroidery as intricate as it is useless, means divorce or murder. For him, sweetness, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense, shrewdness, and domestic virtues are incomparably superior to any mental brilliance or physical comeliness. He needs a "homely" woman, and should remember that no banking account can match a sweet, womanly personality, and no charms compare to a sunny heart, and an ability steadfastly to "see the silver lining". ”

“ Dreams are dissociations in sleep, while the scenes conjured up by crystal-gazing are only waking dreams, in which the dissociation is caused by gazing at a bright surface and so tiring the brain centres, whereupon impressions of past life emerge from the subconscious, to surprise, not only the onlookers to whom they are related, but also the gazer herself, who has long "forgotten them". ”

“ As unconsciousness supervenes, the patient becomes pale, and gives a cry, which varies from a low moan to a loud, inhuman shriek. The head and eyes turn to one side, or up or down, the pupils of the eyes enlarge and become fixed in a set stare, and the patient drops as if shot, making no effort to guard his fall, being often slightly and sometimes severely injured. ”

“ Persuade, rather than prohibit or prevent, a child from doing harmful actions. If it wants to touch a hot iron, say clearly it is hot, and will burn, but do not move it. Then, if the child persists, it will touch the iron tentatively, and the small discomfort will teach it that obedience would have been better. Let it learn as far as possible by the hard, but wholesome, road of experience.
Makeshift answers must never be given to a child. ”

“ The use of set prescriptions for set diseases is obsolete; the doctor of to-day treats the patient, not the disease.
A few patent medicines are of limited value; many are made up from prescriptions culled from medical works, and the rest are frauds, like potato starch. The evil lies in charging from three to four hundred times a just price, in ascribing to a medicine which may be good for a certain disorder, a "cure-all" virtue it does not possess, and in inducing [pg 91] ignorant people to take powerful drugs, reckless of results. ”

“ Man suffers from no purely imaginary ills, for mental ills are as real as physical ills, and though an individual be ailing simply because he persuades himself he is ailing, his mind so affects his body that he is actually unwell physically, though the cause of his trouble is purely mental.
The suffering of this world is out of all proportion to its actual disease, many people being tortured by fancied ills. ”

“ There is no drug treatment for either hysteria or neurasthenia, and when the doctor gives medicines for these complaints, it is to remedy organic troubles, or, more often because necessity forces him to pander to the irrational and pernicious habit into which the public have fallen of expecting a bottle of medicine whenever they visit a doctor. Osier, the famous Professor of Medicine at Oxford, truly observed that he was the best doctor who knew the uselessness of medicines. ”

“ The crux of digestion is to
"Chew! CHEW!! and KEEP ON CHEWING!!!" for until food is thoroughly masticated there will be no relief. The only part of the whole digestive process placed under the control of consciousness is mastication, and, paradoxically, it is the only part that consciousness usually ignores.
A healthy man never knows he has a stomach; a dyspeptic never knows he has anything else, because he will not eat his food, but throws it into his stomach as the average bachelor throws his belongings into a trunk. ”

“ If the experimenter puts his hands on the toy, and a friend talks to him, while another whispers questions, he may write more or less coherent answers, though all the time he goes on talking, and does not know what his hand is writing. His mind is split into two smaller minds, each ignorant of the other, each busily liberating memory-prisoners from its own block of cells in the gaol of the subconscious. ”

“ If, at the moment, we bottle up our emotions, they obtrude later at inconvenient times until we "get them off our mind" by confiding in some one, when we get peace of mind. Open confession is good for the soul, and it is better to "cry your eyes out" than to "eat your heart out". ”

“ If the cause be removed, and vigorous treatment instituted, the victim may be well in a couple of months, but in most cases there are obstacles to radical treatment, and the disease drags on indefinitely.
Egoism, moral cowardice, and sexual excess play a part in much neurasthenia, but relatives must not forget, in their indignation at these laxities, that the patient really is ill; it is unkind, unjust and useless to tell an ailing man the unpalatable truth that it is his own fault. ”

“ If a patient be an optimist and persuades himself he is improving, he does improve. This is the explanation of "Faith moving mountains", for the curative power of prayer, Christian Science, laying-on of hands, suggestion treatment and patent medicine, depends on man's own faith, not on the supernatural.
A doctor in whom a patient has perfect confidence, will do him far more good with the same medicines, or even with no medicines at all, than one of riper experience in whose skill he has no faith. ”

“ The doctor's earnestness inspires confidence, and the patient unburdens his secret troubles, discusses means of remedying them, and turns from pain to promise, from remorse to resolve, from introspection to action, from dreading to doing. ”

“ The father is alcoholic because he lacks control, consequent upon the factors which make for control having been absent from his germ-plasm. He passes on this lack; if the mother does the same, the defect occurs—in a worse form—in the son. If the mother gives a control factor, the son may be unstable or apparently stable, this depending entirely on chance, but if the mother's plasm contains a strong control-factor, the defect will lie dormant in her son, who will have self-control, though if he marries the wrong woman he will have weak-willed children. ”

“ Epileptic attacks are of every degree of violence, varying from a moment's unconsciousness, from which the patient recovers so quickly that he cannot be convinced he has been ill, to that awful state which terrifies every beholder, and seems to menace the hapless victim with instant death. Every degree of frequency, too, is known, from one attack in a lifetime, down through one in a year, a month, a week, or a day ”

“ The most resolute of men are influenced by tactful suggestions, which quietly "tip-toe" on to the margin of consciousness, awaken ideas which link up more and more associations, until an avalanche is started which forces itself on to the field of consciousness, the subject thinking the idea is his own.
Author and actor try by suggestion to make us think, laugh, or weep at their will, books are sold by suggestive titles, and many clothes are worn only to suggest wealth or respectability. ”

“ A well-nourished mother, free from care and disease, may have a finer child than a half-starved woman, crushed by worry and work, but neither starvation nor nourishment alter the inborn character of the child.
The body-cells are greatly changed by disease, poison, injury, and overwork, but these changes are not passed on, and despite the influence of disease from time immemorial, the germ-cell produces the same man as in ancient days. ”