93^ 
tycujctbe EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
359 
EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY, 
(Read before the New York Odontological Society, March 18, 1879.) 
C. FAYETTE TAYLOR, M.D., NEW YORK. 
When the New York Odontological Society honored me with an 
invitation to read a paper before it on the subject of “ Necrosis,” I 
think I may assume that they did not intend to restrict me to any 
beaten track of thought or research ; for, if they desired a resume of 
our present knowledge of the morbid process denominated necrosis, 360 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
there are gentlemen connected with this society well able, by 
ability, education, and special research, to treat the subject exhaust- 
ively in its technical aspects. So I shall assume that in naming the 
subject they intended to make only a general suggestion of a theme, 
and would be quite satisfied to leave the particular line of thought 
to my own choosing. 
Under this assumption I have determined to present some views 
in regard to the deleterious effects upon the bodily development and 
health of civilized communities of early and excessive mental ac- 
tivity, and to show, as I think I can, that to this cause we must look 
for a far larger amount of injury to special organs as well as to the 
frame as a whole, than we have been accustomed to do. I am quite 
aware that it is no new thing to attribute bodily injury to mental 
overwork in young and old, and the evil habits of society are con- 
stantly heavily charged with many of our ills. But the fault lies in 
too broad generalizations and too few intimations, even, of the spe- 
cific direction from whence the evil charged has come. Hence im- 
portant facts, which society acknowledges as general truths, produce 
small effect in changing the course of events. People go on as before, 
not because they do not now know, as a general fact, that mental 
overwork is injurious, but because they have not been informed in 
regard to the way in which it is injurious, and have little definite 
knowledge of methods for avoiding what they do not see clearly is 
to be especially avoided. Knowledge concerning the mind is like all 
other knowledge, it must be definite before it is capable of practical 
application. So that it often happens that persons who are perfectly 
aware that they are suffering in bodily health from mental overwork, 
in their anxiety to correct the evil, and in their ignorance in regard 
to its source, often take courses calculated to increase, rather than 
diminish, the mental strain from which they suffer. 
In the first place, the mind, as a whole, may be said to be made 
up of several distinct parts or attributes. Some of these attributes 
may be active while others are at rest, and they all have very dif- 
ferent and very independent and distinct relations to, and influence 
over, the bodily functions. For instance, one of the most common 
errors is the supposition that thinking, as distinguished from other 
mental activities, is the source of injury when one’s health suffers 
from excessive mental strain; whereas mere thinking, disassociated 
from other mental phenomena, is one of the least likely to be in ex- 
cess of the individual capacity to bear, and the least exhausting in 
any degree. In fact, it is unquestionably true that an active, well- 
trained thinking capacity imparts positive strength to the bodily 
powers, increasing both health and longevity. It isn’t the thinking 
which breaks people down, but it is an excess—often an unnecessary EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
361 
excess—of other mental activities which works the bodily injury; 
and by “ other mental activities” I would especially include tho emo- 
tions as the most exhausting of all mental attributes. It is tbe 
emotion which so often accompanies thought which tires and exhausts 
the frame when it is supposed to be the thinking which does the 
injury. 
A well-known professor of theology, who had several times broken 
down from mental overwork, once told me that he had noticed that 
while recovering, after a period of rest, he would arrive at a point at 
which he could go on with his purely intellectual work with perfect 
ease and facility when he could not listen to a sermon, the emotions 
being then brought into play, without being completely overcome and 
physically prostrated by it. And what is true in the case of this 
theological professor is true with us all,—we are not to be 
injured by purely intellectual work. It is only when the emotions 
are excited that the excessive drain on tho bodily powers begins, to 
any injurious degree. This statement is confirmed by the well-known 
fact that cool and well-regulated dispositions are those which, as 
a rule, last the longest ; men of even temperaments, or those who 
have disciplined themselves to habits of uniformity and equanimity, 
are those who do the largest amount of intellectual work, and do it 
with the greatest ease. But excitable temperaments, those who easily 
become aroused and who find it difficult or impossible to subjugate 
their emotions, are the persons who can do the least intellectual 
labor, and who suffer the most bodily harm from mental activity, 
when in excess. The fact is, what and how much we do is of much 
less concern than the way we do it. The calm and placid man can 
go on forever, like the smoothly-flowing river, with his intellectual 
labors, while the emotional person is exhausted by his emotions 
even before he begins to think. We see this difference well enough 
in men ; we see the different amounts of mental as well as bodily 
labor which they can do, varying according to the nervous waste 
going on through their emotional activities, rather than measured 
by actual thinking. But the contrast becomes stronger when we 
observe the mental operations of women. Characterized as a sex 
with less manifestation of independent thinking, whether from a 
feebler endowment of reasoning powers, or whether because the 
intellect is so habitually subordinated to simple feeling, it is not 
necessary to discuss. But it is certain that the women of civilized 
communities are more emotional than are those of less favored re- 
gions, or else my observation has been at fault. While education 
in men makes them self-controlling, steady, deliberate, calculating, 
thinking out every problem, the intellectual being the preponderating 
force, the so-called “ higher education” for women seems to produce 362 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
the contrary effect on them. I am willing to admit and believe that 
it is not the fact of being educated which produces contrary effects 
in men and women, but the different ways in which men and women 
are educated. Still, it holds true that while men are calmed, women 
are excited by the education they receive. The emotions in savage 
men are the ruling forces, while they are subordinated to the intel- 
lect in the educated man. But the woman who has been put through 
the process deemed necessary to acquire the “ higher education” is 
nervous, excitable, and in every way more dominated by her emo- 
tions than the savage woman is. Or, if the conti’ast is not so ex- 
treme as this, she certainly does lack that equipoise which is the 
characteristic of highly-educated men. In my capacity of surgeon 
I have frequent occasion to observe how different classes of women 
act under corresponding circumstances. My experience is such that 
I do not want a so-called highly-educated woman to take care of a 
case of hip-joint disease, for instance. For patience, for reliability, for 
real judgment in carrying out directions, for self-control, give me the 
little woman who has not been “educated” too much, and whose 
only ambition is to be a good wife and mother. She can be trusted 
to keep cool under trying circumstances; she does not have the 
backache; she does not tear herself to pieces with imaginary troubles 
nor insist on taking only emotional views of every incident of life. 
Her reason has not been put under the dominant influence of unmixed 
feeling, intensified by the process through which she obtained what 
is called her education. Hence her head is cool and her judgment 
clear. Such women are capable of being the mothers of men. But 
modern communities have too few of the even tempered, such as I 
have just described. Civilization is not an unmixed good, it carries 
penalties as well as compensations in its train. 
It should not be lost sight of that women are emotional as a class 
of human beings, and there are many things incident to civilization 
which tend to increase to extraordinary proportions the emotional 
characteristics which pertain to them by virtue of their sex. The 
msthetic form of emotion is so ready to be made prominent, and is so 
pleasing in its legitimate expressions, that some form of emotional 
exercise very easily becomes the principal feature of female educa- 
tion, so that the first we know, unless, happily, we are continually 
on the watch, the girl whom we send to school is increasing the in- 
tensity of her feelings much faster than she increases her stock of 
knowledge. I am not, at this time, discussing how this can be 
changed. I only desire to call attention to facts which must be fa- 
miliar to every one. Thus tendencies endowed by nature, which 
would only harmonize her being to her position and destiny under 
favoring conditions, become exaggerated by inheritance and intensi- EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
363 
fiecl by the education of the schools and the atmosphere of society, 
till the woman of our modern civilization becomes the bundle of 
nerves which she is, almost incapable of reasoning under the tyr- 
anny of paramount emotion, and some of them wholly incapable of 
becoming the mothers of rightly organized children. So the children 
are born many of them with big heads and little bodies and almost 
no digestion at all, but whether born feeble or vigorous they are 
ushered into an atmosphere of an intensely emotional character. 
Whatever may be the stimuli to intellectual activity, there are ten 
or a hundredfold more agencies which act on the emotions alone. It 
is to the fact that children are brought up in a hot-bed of emotional 
excitements to which I wish to call your attention. It is sufficiently 
deleterious to incite mental activity prematurely; but to prematurely 
and unduly excite emotional manifestations is tenfold more hurtful. 
It is just here that there seems to be the densest ignorance. Chil- 
dren are made to minister to adult morbid craving for emotional ex- 
citation by having their own emotions brought prematurely and 
excessively into action, just as if their powers of endurance were 
unlimited in this direction. People, and especially the female portion 
of society, do not stop to reflect that all the fondling which children 
(American children, I more especially mean) receive is not for the 
children’s, but for their own sakes. Children are literally made to 
become little actors; but their fond relatives are not content with an 
hour or two a day, which is considered sufficient for adult actors, but 
they are kept going from morning until night. In my large practice 
among children I am certain that scores are literally killed by the ex- 
cessive amount of emotional excitement which they are forced to en- 
dure. And much of it is, when we properly anatyze it, from a purely 
selfish source. All this hugging and kissing and talking to them is 
to excite responses of the same emotional nature in the child for the 
pleasure and gratification of the parents and friends. There is really 
no thought that it is for the child’s good. They are not content 
without securing some response, some prattle that shall be considered 
pretty, some embrace that betokens warmth of feeling, some witty 
saying that shall show smartness and sentiment, some act which 
shall thrill the family audience with delight. In fact, our children 
are made the means of filling us with thrill after thrill of delight 
through their responses to the emotional manifestations which we 
purposely and for our own selfish pleasure excite within them. But 
at how great a cost! It does not better the matter that people are 
not generally aware that it is their own and not always the child’s 
pleasure which they seek in the excessive fondling which I am dep- 
recating. Because they do not recognize the purely selfish character 
of the motive which makes children act day by day for the pleasure 364 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
of the familj’ is the reason that it is done; and it is the reason also. I 
may say, that I think it my duty to raise a warning voice against 
the pernicious practice, at some risk of denunciation, I am very cer- 
tain. For it is a delicate thing to trench on the private ground of 
personal feeling and dispute with a mother how much and in what 
way she may love her child. But I hold that there is not a relation 
in life which may not be criticised in the right spirit, nor is there one 
which ought to bo left to blind instinct or unreasoning impulse. 
Even maternal love may be a purely animal feeling, and when exer- 
cised without reason it may become an engine of cruelty and even 
death. Many such cases I have seen ; one illustration will suffice for 
all. A mother brings her little child to me for a disease which is 
curable if immediately attended to, but fatal if appropriate treatment 
is delayed. I explain it all to her complete understanding. She sees 
that it may be cured, for she sees others like it which have been 
cured. She also understands that the chances are against its re- 
covery, because she meets others in sorry straits who have neg- 
lected or delayed. But she will not leave it. There are those who 
can remain,—an aunt, an older sister, a faithful nurse. All to no 
purpose. The mother has, perhaps, a jmungor child at home, and 
cannot herself remain, and so the sick one must go home to die, or, 
what is far worse, to endure years of agonizing suffering, and then 
to live a short, decrepit life, with all bright hopes blotted out forever. 
This is what unreasoning animal affection may do, and what it is 
continually doing, to my certain knowledge. Another child, a beau- 
tiful girl, lives in its grandfather’s family. Of parents and grandpa- 
rents, of uncles, aunts, cousins and friends there are seventeen. It is 
the only grandchild, and the household draws a certain large portion 
of its daily emotional pleasures from this babe. It continually passes 
from lap to lap and from lip to lip, not allowed ever to go without re- 
turning some pretty prattle for the urging and caressing which she 
receives from morning until night. What wonder is it that evening 
finds her tired, peevish, excitable, and wholly exhausted ? And when 
disease attacks her it finds weak resistance in a frame already en- 
feebled, at the tender age of four, by an overwrought bi’ain. In 
this case I could manage the mother, with whom I came in personal 
contact. But she found it impossible to make the other members 
of the family let the child alone, and she was actually obliged, 
under my advice, to imprison herself in a room with locked doors 
to keep her sickly child from continuing to be the plaything of the 
family. 
Now, what is the result of the system of child-management which 
keeps the young mind in continual excited tension ? 
There is a law of human force which proclaims that for every atom EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
365 
used in one direction there is an equivalent atom wanting in some 
other direction. How can there be a well-developed body in a child 
whose brain is kept excited and in whom a waste of force is going on 
far beyond the means of supply, except by drawing it from other 
directions? Thus the brain is supplied, in part, at the expense of 
the body; that is, the body is starved to support the brain, excited 
by the mind into unnatural and premature activity. And the worst 
of it is that there are no proper compensations. On the contrary, a 
condition of preternatural emotional preponderance is established as 
the inveterate habit of life. Hence the so-called “ nervous” invalids, 
which exist in all civilized communities and are especially abundant 
in this country: persons who are frightened at any sudden noise, and 
whom the sight of a mouse throws into a cold perspiration. Ho matter 
how sensible they may be in calmer moments, their reason is de- 
throned and subordinated by the superior influence of easily excited 
emotions. Such are the persons whose flabby muscles and nerveless 
frames are only surpassed as a phenomenal fact by the amount of 
pain they can bear and still exist. Such persons are the products of 
civilization,—of that civilization which does not seek for and find the 
causes of its abortive products and endeavor to so arrange the checks 
and balances supplied by intelligence that the race shall not deteri- 
orate through preventable causes. For the causes are largely pre- 
ventable, and preventive means are daily used among those who are 
better informed on the subject. But there should be greater pre- 
cautions used against the overaction of the brains of children, and 
it should be better comprehended that the overaction comes, for the 
most part, from the direction of the emotions. My professional life 
is spent, for the most part, in attending to children, and I have ample 
opportunities to see the evil effect on the bodily development of over- 
wrought emotions. Feebleness, asymmetry, excitability, premature 
arrest of growth, are some of them. So that populations of cities, 
which come under the influence of more things which tend to excite 
emotion, become less and less in size until, it is said, that cities would 
cease to be if it were not for the constant influx of persons who 
were reared in the country, and so escape some of the body-dwarfing 
influences to which the children of large centers are so much subjected. 
The extent to which the influences under consideration go no one 
would imagine, perhaps, unless he were in actual contact with large 
numbers of children. 
I may say that at least two-thirds of all lateral distortions of the 
spinal column are directly traceable to mental overaction, mainly, if 
not entirely, of an emotional origin. There can be no doubt that 
this is the fact, because not less than three-fifths of those of them 
who consult me in the earlier stages recover without any other 366 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
treatment than a cai'eful abstaining from whatever excites undue 
emotions in the subject of the distortion. 
One little incident occurred a number of years ago, which may 
serve to fix the moral in your minds if I should relate it. Being in 
Wilmington, Delaware, at the time, I was consulted by a lady con- 
cerning her daughter, who had begun to give evidence of curvature 
of the spine. She was a good-sized child of about twelve, and I 
sought in vain, for some time, to find a cause for the weakness of 
the muscles which allowed the bending of her spinal column. Her 
lessons did not seem to be too much for her, her exercise was regular 
and sufficient, her food was proper, and, altogether, she seemed to bo 
well managed. Still, there was an expression of fatigue in her face, 
and, though her rapid growth was exhausting her somewhat, as is 
always the case, that alone did not seem sufficient to cause the spinal 
muscles to give way and the spinal column to bend out of its proper 
direction. So I inquired particularly in regard to any outside in- 
fluences which might tend to excite the child’s emotions; but such 
inquiries were met by prompt denials. The mother was an unusu- 
ally intelligent woman and seemed to comprehend the subject better 
than most. Two days afterwards, this mother returned to say that 
perhaps she had found the source of the child’s loss of power,—for 
she was often nerveless and languid. She said that this girl was an 
especial favorite of her husband’s mother, and that it was her custom 
to pay her grandmother a visit twice every week; she added that, 
now that her attention had been called to the subject by my inquiries, 
she remembered that her daughter invariably came home from those 
visits tired, nervous, easy to cry, and she was always glad to get her 
off to bed as soon as possible, and even the next morning there were 
often traces of the nervous excitement which she showed more es- 
pecially the night before. Her grandmother, the lady said, was a 
very intellectual woman, and the child looked forward to her bi-weekly 
visits with great anticipations, but if I thought they had anything 
to do with the curvature she would stop them at onee. I replied 
that I had no doubt but that they had, and they were accordingly 
put an end to. In other respects no change was made in her course 
of life. Three months later I was in the neighborhood, when the 
child was brought to me, this time perfectly straight. Ceasing to 
visit her grandmother had cured a curvature of the spine: cured it 
by preventing the bi-weekly exhaustion through excessive emotional 
excitation; thus muscular tone was restored. As before remarked, 
growth, especially rapid growth, is an exhausting process, and it is 
of the greatest moment that the process of natural growth should 
not be interfered with by unusual demands made on the nervous 
forces at the same time. Indeed, I think there is even more danger EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
367 
to the health in excessive mental strain during the period of rapid 
growth at the age of puberty than in childhood even. This is es- 
pecially true in regard to girls. Their growth is generally more rapid 
than it is in the other sex. They pass through a stage of physical 
development in one or two years which boys require five or six to 
perfect. There is a correspondingly greater danger of overtaxing 
girls at this age. If we add to the natural bodily growth the devel- 
opment of the sexual functions, the important changes ’which take 
place in advancing fi*om girlhood into womanhood, all accomplished 
within a short period of time, and each one a special tax on the vital 
powers, we can better comprehend how the human female is subjected 
to great and special causes of nervous exhaustion of a perfectly normal 
character at this period of her life. In fact, all human beings, at 
this time, pass through what may be called a vulnerable period,—pass 
through safely enough when the circumstances surrounding them 
are favorable, but not without damage when their vulnerability, at 
this time of life, is not comprehended and guarded against. So severe 
are the demands made upon us at this time, so completely absorbed 
are our nervous energies in the work of bodily growth and the de- 
velopment of special functions, that, under natural conditions, the 
action of the brain is somewhat retarded, and we find, between the 
ages of twelve and fourteen or fifteen, varying in different individuals, 
a well-defined period of mental sluggishness. Girls and boys at that 
age are said to bo “ green,” which means that they are employed, 
absorbed, as they ought to be, in the more important acts of becoming 
men and women, and that, for the time, there is but little left for 
mental activities. This is nature’s method. Let them alone and 
they will grow into full-sized men and women. Their frames will 
be strong and well-knit, their muscles firm, their organs of digestion 
and assimilation sound, and their functions vigorous and healthy. 
After the growth has been completed and the functions established, 
there is a rest and a respite. The mental faculties now wake up, 
there is more abundant material to feed the brain, now that there is 
less call in other directions, and we have the pleasant spectacle of a 
“ sound mind in a sound body.” 
But what are the facts regarding modern and, especially, American 
civilized children ? I speak still more especially of girls, because 
they are affected more by elements which disturb the natural order 
of things than boys are, though boys do not escape unharmed, by 
any means. Cunningly devised means for exciting feeling only, 
begun at the cradle, are continued through child-life up to the very 
verge of womanhood. The aesthetic alone, or almost alone, seems 
to be the sole idea of female mental existence. Thus they arrive at 
twelve or fourteen and on the threshold of the most important period 368 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
of existence, utterly unfitted for passing through it. Excitable, with 
wide-open eyes and ears for every sight and sound which can excite 
feeling, rapid and intense in mental activity, with thin limbs, narrow 
chest, and ungainly back, we meet these twelve-year-old products of 
civilization going to school with an average of thirteen books under 
their feeble arms, for I have found by actual count that thirteen is the 
average number of studies which they “ take” nowadays. Do they 
study them?- Undoubtedly, for the sake of being at the head of the 
class, or of not being at the foot, or to recite them or to say they 
study them, etc. But you will find almost invariably some emo- 
tional motive connected with the education of girls, as now con- 
ducted, in the majority of instances. Now, what is the girl’s chance 
for perfect development under such adverse conditions as those which 
I have briefly pointed out? The chance is poor indeed, and the re- 
sult is deplorable. With the mind thus forced to an unnatural activ- 
ity, the emotions strained up to the highest tension, at such an im- 
portant period, what chance has the body to attain a perfect growth 
or the various functions to be properly developed ? Hence we see 
that generation after generation becomes smaller and smaller, until 
nature ceases to reproduce its own, and new blood has to be brought 
in to keep the race from dying out. Take a walk on the avenue of a 
Sunday afternoon and witness the large proportion of diminutive men 
and women which we shall meet. Then tell me if I have overdrawn 
the picture. 
How, whatever premature and excessive mental activity does in 
dwarfing the bodily growth and in enfeebling the functions in gen- 
eral, it effects, perhaps, even more the impairment of different organs 
and the curtailing of their special functions. There are very few 
well-formed bodies among our young women. The impression which 
an examination of the person gives is that they have been starved. 
And starved they literally" are. The major part of the nourishment, 
which they could digest and assimilate, has gone to keep up the con- 
stant, excessive expenditure through the brain and nervous system, 
leaving an inadequate supply for the bodily" growth and development. 
There is always a limit to human endurance at every period of life. 
Even with adults, the man who thinks much must be content to 
work less. He cannot do both in equal measure at the same time. 
Or if he works severely with his muscles he must be satisfied with 
less rapidity in his mental operations. The body is equally" starved, 
whether, like the Australian bushman, from insufficiency" of food, or 
like the Laplander, whose food is converted into fuel to keep up the 
animal heat; or like overworked children in some factory centers, 
whose bodies are dwarfed because all the food they eat is used to 
support their labor, and they have no vital remainder whereby EMOTIONAL PRODIGALITY. 
369 
growth may be effected; or as in the case of the overwrought brains 
of our “civilized” children, which absorb an undue share of the vital 
forces, and thus the body is left to starve. Hence ill shapes and dis- 
tortions. Hence want of symmetry as to the trunk, and disproportion 
in the extremities. Hence weak muscles and indigestion. Hence 
teeth imperfect in development, dentine soft, enamel defective and 
easily penetrated. Hence decay. 
One who is not accustomed to examine the persons of large numbers 
of people can have no idea of the varying characters of bodily defi- 
ciencies and imperfections which he will meet without attracting the 
notice of the ordinary observer. I have a patient now with one leg 
two inches longer than the other; and a difference of one inch in the 
lengths of the lower extremities is a relatively common occurrence. 
So of every portion of the body. It is seldom even tolerably perfect 
among the higher classes. And I have no doubt that the cause of these 
imperfections lies more in the diversion of the nutrition which should 
feed the bodily growth, from its proper direction, in consequence of 
emotional excitation, than any other cause which acts on the members 
of civilized communities. But, of course, there are exceptions to this 
rule as there are to every other; that is, there seem to be exceptions, 
but they are of such a character as to prove the rule. We see persons 
with poor apologies for bodies, but with excellent teeth ; while we also 
see persons with sound, strong bodies with defective teeth. When the 
nutritive supply is inadequate, accident determines which particular 
organ shall suffer most and which shall be comparatively well nour- 
ished. When any organ may suffer it is pretty certain that some one 
eventually will suffer. I repeat that those who seldom or never have 
occasion to examine the whole person can scarcely appreciate in 
what varied forms the results of the bodily starvation which I have 
pointed out in this paper may assume. I continually see persons with 
one-half of the trunk, perhaps, tolerably well formed, while the other 
half is defective in various particulars; not as the result of regular 
and recognized causes tending to produce a distortion of the spinal 
column, for instance, but as the result of imperfect growth and de- 
velopment alone. When an acorn is dropped on the steep, rugged 
hill-side, with scanty soil, the washing rains, the winds, the frosts, and 
the droughts, the tree it produces is blighted and dwarfed compared 
with its brother oak grown in the fertile valley. But no one can tell 
which particular branch of the scrubby oak will first decay. So with 
the starved and shrunken bodies; one cannot tell which organ will 
weaken and fail before the others. And it does not militate against 
the indictment which I bring against overworking the young brain 
by exciting intense emotions, to freely admit that multitudes escape 
in part or wholly many or all of the evils which others, with feebler 
VOL. XXI.—26 370 
THE DENTAL COSMOS. 
powers of resistance, suffer from. For, after all, human nature is 
hard to kill, else the race would have been extinct long ages ago. 
The surgeon’s skill, the physician’s art, the dentist’s wonderful 
dexterity, may often largely compensate for defective organs and 
curtailed powers. Sanitary science, also, ventilates our dwellings, 
gives us baths and household comforts, and inventive genius largely 
abridges the drain on human muscular strength; so that we find two 
opposing sets of forces acting in opposite directions on the individuals 
composing society. One set of forces tends to weaken and abridge 
human life, while another set tends to strengthen and to lengthen it. 
My object in this paper has been to call attention to some of the 
most important and, as I believe, less frequently appreciated of the 
influences which strongly tend to weaken and destroy life. 
I am aware that it has been proposed to correct imperfect bodily 
development by various expedients, all more or less directly con- 
cerning the nutrition, either as medicaments, containing, in larger 
proportion or in more easily assimilable form than is to be found in 
ordinary food, some of the elements supposed to be in diminished 
amounts in the sj’stems of delicate persons; or by a diet of substances 
containing the desired elements in greater abundance than exists in 
the ordinary food of the people. And there can be no doubt that 
something can be done in either direction which will have a good 
tendency and be calculated to ameliorate some of the worst results 
of the deteriorating effects of mental exhaustion. But, after all, 
such proposals must be considered as proceeding from very superfi- 
cial examination into the causes of bodily imperfection in civilized 
communities. The Chinese attain a good stature and have perfectly 
formed teeth on a diet of rice, and the Esquimaux have sound teeth 
on a diet of blubber. I do not pretend to say that either rice, blubber, 
or any other diet so imperfect as either must be will produce as good 
specimens of man, under the same or corresponding circumstances, 
as a food which contains the assimilable substances in better propor- 
tions. But my object is to show that there is something back of the 
food in the condition of the system which makes it possible for per- 
fect men to be developed under such unfavorable conditions, or for 
so poor specimens to be so common in civilized communities, with all 
the advantages which the latter have over the barbarous in selecting 
food. These indisputable facts cannot be reconciled except by sup- 
posing that the greatest factor of all in modifying bodily develop- 
ment lies in that which most distinguishes the civilized from the 
savage,—the mind. It is here that wo must look for most of the 
modifying influences on the bodily powers, and it is here where our 
remedies must be applied if we would sec an average of bodily per- 
fection in civilized society. PROTRUSION OP THE LOWER JAW. 
371 
If I have succeeded, in any measure at all commensurate with the 
magnitude of the subject, in impressing your minds with its impor- 
tance, I shall be well paid for the trouble.