This little book is the outgrowth of a conviction, strengthened by some years of experience with hundreds of supposedly normal young people in schools and colleges, confirmed by my years of training in a neurological hospital and months of work in a big city general hospital, that it is of little value to help some people back to physical health if they are to carry with them through a prolonged life the miseries of a sick attitude. As nurses I believe it is our privilege and our duty to work fo

Wise men study the sciences which deal with the origins and development of animal life, with the structure of the cells, with the effect of various diseases upon the tissues and fluids of the body; they study the causes of the reactions of the body cells to disease germs, and search for the origin and means of extermination of these enemies to health. They study the laws of physical well-being. They seek for the chemical principles governing the reactions of digestive fluids to the foods they mu

We took a glimpse at random into the mental life of an adult consciousness, and found it very complicated, constantly changing. We found it packed with shifting material, which, on the surface, seemed to bear very little relation. We found reason, feeling, and will all interacting. We found nothing to indicate that a consciousness as simple as mere awareness might exist. We believe there might be such in the newborn babe, perhaps even in the baby a month old; but can we prove it? Let us look wit

Nothing is known to us until it has been transmitted to the mind by the senses. The nerves of special sense, of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, the temperature sense (“hot or cold” sense), the muscular sense (sense of weight and position), these, and the nerves controlling voluntary motion, form the peripheral, or surface, nervous system. This acts as a connecting medium between the outside world and the central nervous system, which is composed of the brain and spinal cord. We might liken

We have found that mind is entirely dependent upon the bodily organs for its existence. Is the body in the same way dependent upon the mind? Can the mind die and the body go on? Given a perfect body with unblocked sense channels, and put the mind to sleep, paralyze the central nervous system with alcohol in sufficient quantity so that the undamaged peripheral nervous system —the senses—can obtain no response or recognition from it, and that perfect body is as useless for the time as if dead. But

Mind, we found, is born in the form of consciousness when the outside world impresses itself upon the brain-cells by way of the senses. This consciousness, observation and experiment prove, is first a feeling one, later a feeling-thinking-willing one. The mind, then, is really the activity of the brain as it feels, as it thinks, as it wills. We express this in descriptive terms when we speak of mind as the flow of consciousness , the sum of all mental associations, conscious and unconscious. For

We have found that the mind’s chief end is action, of itself, or of its body. But what are its incentives to action? We see the very young baby giving evidences of an emotional life, living in an affective, or feeling environment, leading a pleasure-pain existence, from the first. He acts as desire indicates. But from the very moment of his birth he performs actions with which he cannot as yet have a sense-memory connection, because he is doing them for the first time. How can he know how to res

In the use of its functions the mind manifests certain powers and certain modes of expression which can act as powerful allies or as damaging enemies of health. We speak of man as adaptable, but also as a being of habits. We speak of him as “feeling” when we wish to express the fact that his emotions influence his body. We expect of the average man a certain amount of suggestibility. We say that he is tremendously affected by his environment, which simply means that his attention, naturally cent

Life would be a very simple proposition if the mental machinery always worked right. But this is peculiarly subject to damage both from without and from within. From without it may be damaged by the toxins of food, as in the acute toxic psychoses; by the poison of drink, as in the alcohol-produced psychoses, such as acute alcoholic hallucinosis; by lack of muscular exercise, resulting in a deficient supply of oxygen to burn up the accumulated toxins from energy-producing foods; by the infections

Hyperesthesia is abnormal sensitiveness to stimulation. Anesthesia is loss, either temporary or permanent, of any of the senses. Perversion is morbid alteration of function which may occur in emotional, intellectual, or volitional fields. Example: The odor of a rose causing an acute sense of physical pain. An illusion is a false interpretation of a perception. The normal mind is quite subject to illusions, either due to a faulty sense organ, or to a preconceived state of mind which so strongly e

Attention naturally follows interest. It can, however, be held by will to the unappealing, with the usual result of transforming it into a thing of interest. One of the laws of the mind we have already stressed is that what we attend to largely determines what we are, or shall be. The interests which secure our consideration may be the passive result of emotional life, the things which naturally appeal, which give us sensations that the mind normally heeds; or they may be the active result of ou

The point of view of any individual depends upon temperament, present conditions—mental and physical—and the aim of the life. That is, it depends upon his inherited tendencies plus a unique personal something, plus all the facts of his environment and experience, plus what he lives for. Richard and Jim both live in Philadelphia, Richard on Walnut Street and Jim on Sansom Street. Richard’s father is of the best Quaker stock, with hundreds of years of gentle and aristocratic ancestry behind him. H

The mind can be as definitely developed and strengthened as the body. The man who has suffered for years an organic disease will never have the same force as he who has never been seriously ill; but his constitution can be built up and made as efficient as possible within its limitations. Many a man or woman who has an organic heart disorder, through treatment and the proper exercises gradually increased, can very often approximate through many years the output of a normally strong person. The i

Suppose that when you first enter the ward you are wishing with all your heart you had never decided to become a probationer. Perhaps the white screen and its possible meaning has so frightened you that your thoughts refuse to go beyond it. Suppose the very sight of so much sickness has agitated you instead of strengthening your determination to help nurse it. That is, suppose your emotions, your feelings, so fill your mind that perception is necessarily inaccurate and blurred. Then tomorrow you

The student of life and of the sciences which deal with the origin and development of the human race, and with the relations of man to man and nation to nation—such sciences as biology and anthropology, sociology and ethics and history—comes to the conclusion that life exists for the development of mind. And mind is not merely intellect, but the only gateway we know to character, to soul. The deepest students of human science see no reason for life except as it “evolves” a perfect mind—man’s goa

By Lavinia L. Dock, R.N. Secretary, International Council of Nurses In Collaboration with Isabel Maitland Stewart, A.M., R.N. Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing and Health, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York 12 o . Price, $3.00 This New Volume Has Been Prepared Especially for the Use of Student Nurses It is, in effect, a condensation of the four volumes of the larger History of Nursing , prepared by Miss Dock in collaboration with Miss Nutting, a work which has been consider

Price $2.50. Approximate price $1.50. Price $2.25. Price $2.40. 600 pages. Price $2.90. 485 pages. Price $2.50. In four volumes. Illustrated volumes 1 and 2, price $7.50. Volumes 3 and 4, price $7.50. One volume, 400 pages. Price $3.00. 450 pages. Price $2.50. Arthur W. Isca Medical and Nurse Books Besse Building Minneapolis, Minnesota Transcriber's List of Errors The inconsistent hyphenation of hypo-mania is as in the original....