Neuroomia

“ The Penguin was gone. Even gliding away in the distance she was a beautiful sight. I felt a choking sensation in my throat, and notwithstanding the beauty, attractions, and happiness of Neuroomia, I would have given anything at that moment to be on board the vessel I loved. Yondozi hoisted a flag that he had brought with him for the purpose, but I do not think they noticed it. I examined her through my glass, and recognised Septimus on the bridge, looking in the direction of the ice. ”

“ I am aware the people of Neuroomia are happy," she continued, "but have thought it possible for an equal, if not greater, happiness to exist elsewhere. However, I believe you have already almost dispelled that idea," she went on. "I had pictured to myself, in my dreams, seas and islands more lovely than our own, human beings more perfect and fair, and flowers and birds more beautiful." ”

“ There was the great city itself, with its circular streets, gently rising amid the foliage in the form of terraces, and the glorious Polar Fountain, with its everlasting rainbows in the centre. I gazed for some time at this picture, then said that I thought it even more lovely than Atazatlan and its surroundings.
"Yes," she answered, "Tehana is not only the greatest, but is also considered to be the most beautiful city in Neuroomia." ”

“ It was the only result, as far as known, of the largest expedition that ever left Neuroomia. The movement took its origin from the enthusiasm of a number of brave and hardy men who were fond of adventure and filled with a desire to penetrate the mysteries of the great ocean beyond and the beautiful lands it was believed to contain. They fixed their ship, the Valina, on a huge sledge, and by powerful mechanical appliances managed to drag her over the frozen field. It was, however, a hazardous undertaking, and the men endured terrible sufferings on the ice ”

“ I again sought out Alvarez, and we left the dreamy Pendalozzi Valley for the palace before the masses began to depart, and while the games and other amusements were still at their height; for, notwithstanding the gaiety of the throng, I enjoyed myself more alone with Alvarez than with the many.
On our way I inquired if there were no plotting or scheming over love matters in Neuroomia.
"Lovers are perfectly free to think out their own affairs, and what course in life they intend to pursue," was the reply. "You surely do not think that any one else would interfere with them?" ”

“ He then departed through the forest, in the direction of the great river, and was lost to view. The summers came and went, but he returned not. Yet, many of the hunters averred that when the moon shone through the twilight in the remote parts of the forest, they heard sounds like his voice, and saw forms like his and the maid he loved. They called to him, but he heeded them not, and both forms vanished in the shadows. Nor did he ever return. Yet the people of Neuroomia followed his counsels and revered his memory. ”

“ In other words, there is every reason to believe that numerous "centres," in this restricted sense, exist in the brain that have as yet eluded the investigator. Indeed, the current conception regards the entire cerebral cortex as chiefly composed of centres of ultimate co-ordination of impressions, which in their cruder form are received by more primitive nervous tissues—the basal ganglia, the cerebellum and medulla, and the spinal cord.
This, of course, is equivalent to postulating the cerebral cortex as the exclusive seat of higher intellection. ”

“ Owing to the existence of a chain of neurons, that is, a succession of nervous elements, instead of one continuous nerve fiber from center to periphery, it is possible for one of the neurons of the chain to be so disturbed that the conducting apparatus is interrupted and impulses do not flow. Hence, if a strong impression is produced on the mind with regard to a particular part of the body the neurons leading to it may be so disturbed that trophic nerve impulses do not flow down, the blood supply of the part may be disturbed through the vaso-motor system and consequent changes may take place. ”

“ The cerebrum, or fore brain, is divided into two hemispheres, each of which is further divided into numerous lobes consisting of grey and white nervous substance and millions of nerve cells and fine blood vessels. The hemispheric ganglia are the instruments through which the intellectual powers manifest themselves. If these instruments have become imperfect in structure through retarded development by wrong environment and education, or have been damaged in any manner by severe shock, violence or disease, the manifestations of intelligence are affected in a corresponding degree. ”

“ We meet with the preponderance of nervous diseases in the refined and cultivated classes, where, by premature and stimulating processes of education, there has been forced an elaboration of brain-structure, hastening the functional activity of the brain, with no due regard to the law of evolutional precedence. Normal growth and development will give us healthy minds, while a structurally degraded centric nervous system, or an altered quality of blood, and secondary disturbance of nerve-function, will antagonize healthy mental manifestation. ”

“ Physiologists tell us that there are the almost inconceivable number of something like 7000 million nerve cells in the brain of the newly born child and these, which neither increase nor decrease throughout life, undergo a development of interconnection by means of the branching fibres they send out in every direction. When through disease or malformation or any other cause this development is arrested we have mental deficiency or idiocy.
The brain is an organ of immense complexity and has a great deal more to do than only to turn stimuli into sensations. ”

“ Sometimes, indeed, the two sets of filaments are combined into one nerve cord, but if traced to their origin these are found to arise from different brain centres. Thus it was clear that a hitherto unrecognized duality of function pertains to the entire extra-cranial nervous system. Any impulse sent from the periphery to the brain must be conveyed along a perfectly definite channel; the response from the brain, sent out to the peripheral muscles, must traverse an equally definite and altogether different course. ”

“ By the separation of a main branch of one of the nerves of sensation, although all the operations of life will still proceed, the organ to which that nerve goes is dead to its particular sense. In like manner, if one of the nerves of volition is divided, the member will not obey the inclination of the brain. It is evident, therefore, although many of the great phenomena of vital force are dependent on the nervous system, and the paralysis of a member ensues upon the separation or the disease of a nerve, that the nerves are but the channels through which certain influences are carried. ”

“ This would seem to indicate that the greater mental activities of higher animals depend more on richness in complex associations than on mere increase in number of neurons. The latter, however, is by no means unimportant as may be seen in man, for instance, in whom it is estimated that the cerebral cortex, that is, that part of his brain in which his more complex mental processes transpire, contains some nine billion more nerve cells than does the corresponding region of the brain of an anthropoid ape. ”

“ From it in turn come a great many connecting nerve cells whose axons pass along the spinal cord and form nerve junctions with the motor nerve cells; and so nervous disturbances coming from the cerebellum can arouse the muscles to activity. We all know that walking or any other locomotor act, after it has once been learned, is carried on successfully without our performing any intellectual work in connection with it. What we do have to do is to start the act, and this is done through a discharge from the cerebrum ”

“ In the nervous system of man our attention is therefore especially demanded by three essentially distinct parts—the spinal cord, the sensory ganglia, and the cerebrum. They are the automatic, the instinctive, the intellectual. Of the first, the spinal cord, the action is automatic; by its aid we can walk, from place to place, without bestowing a thought on our movements; by it we swallow involuntarily; by it we respire unconsciously. The second portion, the sensory ganglia, is, as we have seen, the counterpart of the cephalic ganglia of invertebrates ”

“ All the psychic activities of the brute, such as sensation, object-perception, imagination, associative memory, sensual emotion, etc., are organic functions of the sensitivo-nervous type. In all of them the agent and recipient is not the soul alone, but the psycho-organic composite of soul and organism, that is, the soul-informed sensory and central neurons of the cerebrospinal system. The sensory neurons are nerve cells that transmit centerward the excitations of physical stimuli received by the external sense organs or receptors, in which their axon-fibers terminate. ”

“ We should remember that the nervous system is one continuous structure, and it is only the necessities of nomenclature and the ingenuity of anatomists that have divided it into so many parts. It is as continuous as is an oak tree with its various branches. The spinal cord and the nerves are composed in varying proportions of the same materials as is that part of the system which we call the brain: injury and disease with them give rise to symptoms analogous to similar injury or disease to the brain. ”

“ All Mental Process Accompanied by Neural Process.—Whatever the ultimate decision of psychologists may be regarding the relation of mind to the sensory and nervous mechanism of man it is certain that there is so close an association between them that the least alteration in the mechanism means a parallel effect in the mind, or in the words of Huxley, “every psychosis is definitely correlated with a neurosis.” The rind or cortex of gray matter which constitutes the surface of the large cerebral hemispheres of the [Pg 196] human brain is regarded as the seat of consciousness. ”

“ Since we know that the basis of many nervous diseases is an obliteration of certain cells of the brain or of the spinal cord, or certain tracts of the central nervous system through which impulses must pass if they are to be effective as motion, sensation or function in some other form, we realize that we cannot recreate these portions of highly organized tissue and that therefore organic nervous diseases are beyond the action of any remedies we now know or may even hope to discover. ”

“ This conclusion is confirmed by pathology. Disease of the striatum is followed by paralysis on the opposite side of the body. Disease of the thalamus, while not always so uniform in its testimony, does still, sometimes, give striking evidence of a sensory significance of the organ. It should be distinctly borne in mind, when speaking of these bodies, that paralysis of sensation and of voluntary motion may be produced by lesions in the cell-matter of the cerebrum apart from any injury to the thalamus and striatum ”

“ With disease or willful destruction of the cerebral tissue the personal initiative is affected-- the animal becomes more distinctly a mechanism; the cerebellum is probably concerned in the coordination of muscular movements; and the medulla is a centre for the higher and more complicated respiratory reflexes, yawning, coughing, and so on. The great majority of reflex actions centre, however, in the spinal cord, and do not affect the brain. ”

“ The neurologist traces first the effect of stimuli along the bodily nerves, then integration at nerve centres, and finally the rise of a projective reference beyond the body with a resulting motor efficacy in renewed nervous excitement. In biochemistry, the delicate adjustment of the chemical composition of the parts to the preservation of the whole organism is detected. Thus the mental cognition is seen as the reflective experience of a totality, reporting for itself what it is in itself as one unit occurrence. ”

“ At the same time the nervous centres, the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the spinal marrow, experience a very powerful impression. As the state progresses, consciousness is lost, and the subject is as it were in a state of delirium. The will is suspended, and the muscles are not controlled by it, but by the nervous centres which are so much irritated. Thus the trunk and limbs are agitated by involuntary motions and chills. ”

“ No wonder that the nerve-corpuscles are numerous and minute, and the nerve-channels many and complicated.
When we come to the seats of the intellectual faculties the question becomes still more obscure. They are probably situated in the hinder and front parts of the surface of the brain, and depend on the grey matter consisting of an immense number of minute sensory cells. It has been computed that there are millions in the area of a square inch, and they are all in a state of the most delicate equilibrium, vibrating with the slightest breath of nervous impression. ”

“ In psychopathic troubles the neuron itself may remain unaffected, may be perfectly normal and healthy. The disorder is due to association with systems of neurons which are usually not called into action by the function of that particular neuron system.
By Organopathies or Necropathies I indicate a group of psychophysiological symptoms, accompanied by structural, necrotic changes of the neuron, terminating in the ultimate death of the neuron systems, involved in the pathological process. ”

“ The only thing they can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones; and the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call it an organ in which currents pouring in from the sense-organs make with extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course, a simple habit, like every other nervous event—the habit of snuffling, for example, or of putting one’s hands into one’s pockets, or of biting one's nails—is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex discharge; and its anatomical substratum must be a path in the system. ”