CHAPTER V.

_OBSERVATION._

We must bear in mind the fact that all observation is difficult, not only because of our lack of perception, but because impressions already received project themselves, so to speak, on to the objects to be observed, and prevent our seeing these as they really are. Here lies the true interpretation of the “fixed idea,” and the “subjective” order of mind. The mind must not only be large enough and elastic enough to receive new impressions, but must also combine them with the old, so as to modify the former idea; for that which can only receive a new impression at the cost of casting out former and equally truthful impressions is deficient in retentiveness, and must always be wanting in thoroughness. We see examples of this order of mind in persons who eagerly take up one subject after another, but who permanently assimilate nothing. Mental growth is manifestly of little advantage to us if, while gaining on the one side, we are continually losing on the other. Again, if we cut ourselves off from outer impressions we lose mental power, for it is only by use of a part that nutriment can be attracted to it; and if our impressions are too exclusively of one particular order, our minds become ill-balanced.

Before we can be of special use as observers, therefore, education must have meant for us “the harmonious development of all the faculties.” We need to have our sense perceptions in good order that we may perceive quickly and accurately; we need the retentive power to enable us to store the impressions received; and we need the faculty of combining these impressions in our minds--the lower manifestation of which process we call imagination, and the higher, reasoning faculty.

Probably, in the cases where we generally attribute erroneous observations to excess of imagination, the fault really lies in the defective perceptive power. Either the nervous structure lacks sufficient sensitiveness to respond readily to the stimulus, or it lacks the strength to retain the impression. In these respects we commonly note improvement with the amelioration of the general health. It is a question, however, whether, if the stimulus were to make an adequate impression, the impression would not be more effectually retained. Be that as it may, we find persons who observe isolated facts readily enough, and who remember them well, but who learn little thereby, because they lack combining power. Isolated facts are facts to them and nothing more. The notion of _law_ is a thing beyond them, and each fact has to be observed separately.

These are just the persons who are unfit to have the charge of nervous invalids, but for some mysterious reason they are just the persons into whose hands nervous invalids most often fall. Perhaps the explanation is, that ready combining power can exist only with a certain amount of sensitiveness of nervous structure, and that the sieves through which we pass our nurses may cast out those who would be of the greatest value in nervous illness, besides tending to lessen the sensitiveness of those that remain.[6] At all events, I have been disappointed to find that women from whom I hoped great things as nurses--women of good organisation, and certainly not of delicate constitution--have broken down completely in the course of their hospital training; whilst women whom I consider positively injurious to any kind of invalid have passed through it triumphantly. The question arises, Are we not unwise so to shape our sieves as to exclude the very people by whom we ourselves would most prefer to be tended in sickness? Will any mere knowledge atone for the loss of that keen intelligence which we recognise in persons of so-called sympathetic disposition?

On inquiring the reason why so many highly desirable persons have been cast out from the sieve of their hospital training, I have been told that the fact causes no concern to the authorities, so numerous are the women pressing in to take the place of the defeated strugglers for existence. If this is no answer to the inquiries, it is at least as good as most of the replies one gets when seeking for information on this unsatisfactory subject. Supposing it to be true, we may well ask further whether a too great narrowing of the spaces of the sieve in a particular direction, combined probably with an extreme elongation in another direction, does not tend to produce ill-shapen and one-sided nurses? I say _tend_, because the present system is still new, and though it may have immediate advantages, we should not blind ourselves to its possible disadvantages in the future. We need always to remember that a process of selection which ensures the survival of the toughest does not necessarily ensure the survival of the fittest. There is such a thing as evolving backwards, like the cave-fish who have lost their sight during their long residence in the dark. The best things in life are not machine-made.

But correct observation being such a complicated performance, we should be very indulgent to people who make mistakes; especially so if we have ever made a mistake ourselves. In our plentiful abuse of individuals, we merely display our inability to recognise the limitations and imperfections of “the thing called human nature.” We have reached a certain landing-place in our upward climb by means of paying attention to our sieves, but we have a long way still to go.

A few very simple experiments will suffice to show us how hard a thing it is to see even what lies right under our very noses. We may then perhaps realise how rash it is to form hasty opinions about the complicated and invisible nervous systems of our suffering fellow-creatures. Having got thus far, it may even dawn upon us that to make our fanciful and erroneous theories (fanciful because founded on insufficient knowledge, and erroneous because founded on the defective observations of others) the excuse for ill-treating other people’s nerves by showing a want of consideration for their sufferings, by tormenting them with painful and fantastic tricks, and by indulging our own tyranny and self-righteousness, is to manifest to the world an extremely primeval species of childishness.

I once drew a character called “Dr. Broadley,” who, excellent man though he was in some respects, put on a “stalk” when he came in contact with a nervous patient. Now, three different people thought they recognised Dr. Broadley, and informed me of the fact. They were all wrong. Not one of their three supposed models had sat to me for his portrait. I am forced, against my will, to the conclusion that there are in existence a superfluous number of persons who make the proximity of an invalid the excuse for displaying unnecessary airs. Surely it is not by such an influence, such an example, that the morals of our patients are to be improved.

I once put together two small prayer-books, so that the coloured edges of the leaves were divided only by the edge of the thin cover of each book. The leaves of one were of a bright golden colour; those of the other had been tinted a dull red. The books were momentarily held up for observation, with this interesting result. The leaves of the one book were seen correctly, so far, at least, as their colour was concerned; for they were unhesitatingly declared to be tinted with bright gold. The leaves of the other, however, were with equal readiness declared to be of a _golden_ red colour.

It is easy to understand how this mistake arose. The golden colour was the first perceived, and the impression made by the dull red was not strong enough in comparison to be correctly seen and retained in a brief moment. The bright gold of the one book had so powerfully affected the retina that the colour was cast, so to speak, on to the leaves of the other book. These therefore appeared to be golden red in tint, instead of the dull red they were in reality.

On another occasion a small smooth cake was placed in a dish together with several large almond-cakes. When attention was attracted to it, it was mistaken for a cocoanut cake.

Here a rapid inspection had sufficed to show that one cake was smaller than the others. It had not sufficed to show the great difference in its construction. The large cakes had been first perceived, and their roughness was erroneously seen to be shared by the small cake.

Some people go through life with their minds so completely lined by a series of crystallised impressions, that no aftercomers have the smallest chance of even combining with them to produce a half-truth, to say nothing of overcoming them to a sufficient extent to drive out the errors and replace approximate truths by others still truer.

It may be objected that the above failures in perception of differences (a much more difficult thing than perception of similarities[7]) was occasioned solely by the speed with which the observations were made. I entertained a contrary belief, and my belief was confirmed by the following example of my own capacity for disgraceful blundering.

Shortly after the publication of “The Massage Case,” a friend asked me how I could have made such a mistake as to attribute to Elfie during her convalescence the strength to walk twenty miles in one day. I asked her to show me the passage wherein I had erred. She did so; and I read that Elfie really did walk twenty miles in the desert. I was amazed at my own stupidity, for, considering the length of time required for complete recovery from severe nervous exhaustion, it is evident that even the charm of Dr. Risedale’s society could not be expected to inspire her even temporarily with nerve-power for such a feat. I had looked steadily at the passage for a few seconds before the idea occurred to me that I might be seeing wrong. Then I scrutinised each word by the light of this suspicion, and having hit upon a correct theory, I found out the truth. It turned out that Elfie walked in the desert for twenty _minutes_, not _miles_. An erroneous impression had been conveyed to my brain through the ear; and by its disproportionate tenacity--disproportionate to my perceptive power at the moment--had prevented my receiving a new and truer impression through the eye.

I was overdone at the time, and took the warning; that is to say, I rested. But many of our doctors and nurses, whose observations are of the extremest importance, are supposed to do their work in a fatigued condition, and are considered fit objects of abuse if they do it badly. Why then do they overwork themselves? The answer to this question is that they are underpaid. The butcher and the baker must always receive the reward of their labours; the doctor and the nurse must often toil for nothing, though we are aware that, in order to obtain efficiency in any profession, it is essential that that profession should be well paid. The community may object that it cannot afford to pay more than it pays at present. Can it then afford to be kept ill or made ill by ignorant interference or by erroneous notions? It would surely be cheaper in the long-run to pay to get well or to learn how not to get ill.

To be dogmatic about that which is least known would appear to be an ineradicable characteristic of human nature in its present imperfect state. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” is still a true saying. In the treatment of nervous disease it is amply exemplified. Where we are most ignorant, there we are most uncompromising in our dealings. When we understood absolutely nothing of insanity, seeing little connection between madness and disease, we resorted to the whip and the chain. On waking to some conception of nervous disorder, we perceive similarities more readily than differences, and proceed to lump together all diseases of the nerves in the earlier stages under the name of “hysteria.” Having already some vague foolish fixed idea in our heads about “hysteria” being synonymous with idleness and general depravity, we drag our patients about, beat them with wet towels, give them frightful shocks, galvanic or otherwise, and then get rid of them as quickly as possible, so as not to have the burden of remote consequences.

But when more serious mischief is set up, what then? Why, then comes tardily a perception of differences, and we divide nervous disorders into hard and fast diseases, concluding that all had been different from the very first. The later perception of underlying similarity has as yet scarcely dawned. Some of these maladies are considered curable; others, without rhyme or reason, are considered incurable.

With regard to the curability of nervous disease, let us consider what happens when we travel by train from Eastbourne to London, and again from Eastbourne to Brighton. In each case we pass through Willingdon and Polegate, and stop at Lewes. We can get out at Lewes or at either of the previous stations and return to Eastbourne, but if we proceed as far as Lewes, our return journey will be longer than if we had got out at Polegate. In the same way nervous disease is more quickly cured in the early stages than in the later stages. Now, suppose that we are in a train which does not stop between Lewes and London. It is evident in this case that, if we have missed our chance of alighting at Lewes, we must go on to the final goal; no return being possible. Thus, there is a point in certain nervous diseases beyond which recovery is impossible. On the other hand, in travelling from Eastbourne to Brighton, we have several chances of retracing our steps even after leaving Lewes, where the ways diverge; and so we find that, in some cases of nervous disease, incurability is reached sooner than in others. And just as we must be content to take longer to return from Lewes than from Polegate, so we must be content with a slow cure in advanced nervous disorders, and remember that, in administering nerve-tonics, the weaker the patient, the weaker should be the dose; all attempts to hurry the cure being fatal to success. Moreover, just as, in journeying from Eastbourne to London, and from Eastbourne to Brighton, we travel along the same road as far as Lewes, so all nervous diseases have a common origin in nerve-deterioration which may be repaired.

Defective powers of observation bring with them this great evil,--we not only fail to reduce a terrible malady to a minimum, but we mete out unjust censure to those who seem to be responsible for the failure. Whereas the really responsible party is the community at large--in short, ourselves. We blame the doctor; but doctors are after all a small minority, and the minority can only expand and take shape in the direction in which the least pressure is put upon it by the majority. The grotesque modes of treatment resorted to in past times evidently gave satisfaction to all but the enlightened few, just as bad Governments have been tolerated in the countries fitted only to be governed badly.

But to be dissatisfied, to mete out blame, to expect a cure, are healthier symptoms than a passive acceptance of the evil and a lazy belief in incurability.

Medical science is unlimited. The law of our universe is progress.

_PART II._

The Causes of Neurasthenia.

“Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.” --WALT WHITMAN.