Keep Your Temper and Save Your Life.

Otago Witness, Issue 2856, 9 December 1908, Page 76

Keep Your Temper and Save Your Life.

Dr Maurice de Fleury, a distinguished Frenchman, has just written, a. short scientific treatise, in • which- Ike- advances the interesting theory that every time wo become angry our vitality shrinks so much in proportion to every outburst. After even the most artfully suppressed signs of bad temper our vitality becomes smaller and smaller, until finally nothing is left. Anger is a certain kind of cerebral excitement, explains Dr De Fleury. The hypersthenie subject is always on its verge, 1 while the neurasthenic, becomes: infuriated only by a sodden bound* of uea^tjcfe: .excited ,from without. Bat at Xfye vJnsme»t when they aTe let loose thettw<£ t|xe alike, aave that th^ strong man,.is a W(n,der .brute, while the weak:' toatar is of an actor and seems to a(m" r at -'effect. Professor ■ Lange, 'oft 4be»r>tJiiiveMity of Copenhagen^ has described ttheke symptoms 1 with precision in an important little book, which has been the starting poinJb *nd confirmation of almost all recent researches. He holds that "all the emotions are due to disorders of the circulation of the blood, and anger, in particular, to a'very intense dilation of the small arteries of the brain." Be describes redness and swelling of the face as a constant sign of anger, forgetting; the "white rage" which, is so' frequent and impressive. But he has brought into strong relief this capital fact—that , anger is a state of general hyperenervation.. The whole organism, the muscles anct the glands—for anger has its tears, sweats, and foaming at the month—manifestly set in action by a superabundance of nervous influx, begin to work to excess, a<>t for the sake of acting in disorder, without a-im, without utility, solely tcf -relieve their, overtension. . • rj,