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Show PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE. The Physiological Tolas of nn Active, Well n-p;ulatoa Imnslnatlon, The wholesome and stimulating influence of a well guided imagination has been strongly urged by a writer in The Journal ! of tho American Medical Assoriation, from i which tho followinginteresting statements) I are gleaned: ' Tyndal says that those -who have denounced de-nounced the imagination because they havo seen its disastrous effect on weak ves-nela ves-nela "might with equal justice point to exploded ex-ploded boilers as an argument against the use of -steam." But the weak vessels wrecked by imapnuation are really fewer than is commonly supposed. Now and neain some erratic genius of highly strung nervous temperament gives himself up to the pleasures of Imagination till lie becomes be-comes intoxicated with them and staggers over the boundary of sanity; but for one case of insanity caused by excess of imagination thcro a dozen caused by want of it Apathetic Apa-thetic dullness and torpor of mind are apt to deepen into dementia. A vulgar error as to the nature of insanity insani-ty has perhaps conduced to exaggeration as to the dangers of imagination. Visitors to asylums invariably arrive expecting to find growths of morbid invention and belief, be-lief, wild, tangled and luxuriant as a tropical trop-ical forest, and leave much disappointed by tho barrenness of the land, for the insane in-sane are the least imaglnativo of beings. At rare intei valsa madman is encountered who dazzles all around him by the meteoric me-teoric brilliancy of his conceptions; but, na a rule, the lunatic is as dull as a stone, lie is tho virtim of a fixed idea, or his delusions de-lusions pursuo a threadmill round, or occur oc-cur in groups so unvarying that, if yoa have ascertained one of them, you can predict pre-dict all the rest. His mind is a blank or a blurred and unreadable page, or his fan- ' cies, if they come thick in the tumult of mania, are so disjointed or huddled together to-gether as to defy recognition. Idiocy is the absolute negation of imagination, im-agination, and insanity undermines and destroys or enfeebles it more or less, and when we try to drive out insanity the first thing we do is to invoke imagination's aid, for moral treatment consists mainly in appeals ap-peals to this faculty, and fully acknowledges acknowl-edges its iiygienic uses. The first recorded cure of melancholia was by the harp of David, and today in every lunatic hospital worth the name persistent per-sistent efforts are made by music, by pictures, pic-tures, by poetry and the drama to stimu-lute stimu-lute the imagination and thus "cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." |