MIND AND BODY.

Evening Star, Issue 11725, 7 April 1902, Page 5

MIND AND BODY.

Tlic following is related by a medical iournal as an instance of the effect ot imagination on bodily feeling:-A man. connected! with a travelling menagerie was sleeping on some blankets on the floor oi a tent when something crawling over his breast roused ldm. Springing up he threw off the creature, which |.roved to be a huge rattlesnake. As he struck it, he felt the prick of its in his arm, and, with a howl of rain and terror, bounded from tho tent and shouted for help, whisky, a doctor, or some medicine. There chanced to be nothing available within reach, and his fellows stood around, with scared faces, waiting for h:m to die, which lie appeared likely to do in a very short time. The arm began to swell, and the poor victim was soon gasping -for breath and groaning with intolerable pan> At last, just as the breath seemed about to leave' his body, someone among the waggons shouted out that one of the pet snakes had escaped. It was an enormous rattler, but harmless, as the fangs had been removed. The reptile was found dead under one side of the tent, where the man had flung it. The bite proved to be the prick from a sharp tack in the canvas of the tent, in an hour the man was as well as ever, save for weakness caused by the nervous excitement. It was the opinion of all who witnessed the incident that but for the timely disabuse of the man's mind he would have been dead within a few minutes, the victim of nervous dread and terror.