THE EFFECT OF NEWS ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

Otago Witness, Issue 1374, 30 March 1878, Page 5

THE EFFECT OF NEWS ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

A merchant sita complacently in his easy chair, not knowing whether smoking, sleeping, newspaper reading, or the digestion of food occupies the largest portion of his personality. A servant enters the room with a telegram bearing the words, "Antwerp, &o Jonas and Co. have failed." "Tell James to harness the horses !" The servant flies. Up starts the merchant, wide awake ; makes a dozen paces through the room, descends to the counting-houae, dictates letters and forwards despatches. He jumps into his carriage, the horses snort, and their driver is immediately at the Bank, on the Bourse, and among his commercial friends. Before an hour has elapsed he is again at home, where he throws himself | once more into his easy chair with a deep-drawn sigh : " Thank God, lam protected against the worst, and now for further reflection." This complex mass of action, emotional, ' intellectual, and mechanical, iB evoked by the impact upon the. retina of the infinitesimal wave* of light coming from a few pencil-marks upon a bit of paper. We have, as Lange says, terror, hope, sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and victory compressed into a moment. What caused the merchant to spring out of his chair? The contraction of his muscles. What made his muscles contract 1 An impulse of the nerves, which lifted the proper latch and liberated the muscular power. Whence this impulse ? From the centre of the nervous system. But how did it originate there 1 This is the j critical question, to which some will reply that it had its origin in the human soul. The aim and effort of science is to explain the unknown in terms of the known. Explanation, therefore, is conditioned by knowledge. You have probably heard the story cf the German peasant who, in the early railway days, was taken to see the performance of a locomotive. He had never known carriages to be moved except by animal power. Every explanation outside of this conception lay beyond his experience, and could not be invoked. After long reflection, therefore, and seeing no possible escape from the conclusion, he exclaimed confidently to his companion, "Es mwssen doch Pferde darin sein " — there must be horses inside. Amusing as this locomotive theory may i seem, it illustrate a deep-lying truth.