Psychotherapy Part 72

The subjective images of which we are speaking have sometimes, however, both color and light; different particles of the retina, of the optic nerve, and of its prolongations to the brain, being conceived as existing in special states of action. This happens rarely in the state of health, but frequently in disease. These are the true phantasms which may occur to the sense of hearing and other senses as well as to that of vision. The process by which "phantasms" are produced, is the reverse of that to which the vision of actual external objects is due. In the latter case particles of the retina thrown into an active state by external impressions, are conceived in that condition by the sensorium; in the former case, the idea of the sensorium excites the active state of corresponding particles of the retina or optic nerve. The action of the material organ of vision, which has extension in s.p.a.ce, upon the mind, so as to produce the idea of an object having extension, form and relation of parts, and the action of such an idea upon the organ of vision so as to produce a corresponding sensation, are both equally wonderful; and hence the spectral phenomena or visions are not more extraordinary than the ordinary function of sight. (Vol. II, p.

1393, Eng. transl., 1842.)

Apparitions and their Explanation.--In spite of suggested explanations on physical grounds, some of these apparitions that appear to people seriously disturb them. They cannot get them out of their minds. They are sure that they portend evil. Hence worries, and the more nervous the people are and the more worried already, the more likely is such a thing to recur and then to be made much of. Only through their minds can these people be treated, and it must be made clear to them not only how common are hallucinations, but that there is an easy psychic explanation of most of them. Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l, K. C. B., in his book "About Dreaming, Laughing and Blushing," [Footnote 47] tells a story and then gives his explanation of it in such a way as to illuminate many of these occurrences:

[Footnote 47: Longmans, London, 1900, page 21.]

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Perhaps I should ill.u.s.trate how I think that apparitions may be nothing more than dream hallucinations. A. B., a gentleman of culture and strong character, called one hot day, after a hearty lunch, on an ecclesiastic in a high position, who happened to be engaged in his library at the time of the call. A. B. was shown into a room opening off the library, and requested to wait. He sat down beside a table, and with his elbow resting on it, he leant his head on his hand. While in this position he saw a man in clerical costume come through the door communicating with the library, without any opening of the door. A. B. was absolutely certain that he had seen an apparition, and was surprised and hurt when I expressed a doubt.

He called on me to explain, and I said that it was at least possible that he had been asleep for some moments, that if he had slept at all, however short the dream of the sleep, he must have had a dream, if I am right in thinking that there is no dreamless sleep, and that thus what he regarded as an apparition might be nothing more than a dream hallucination. He a.s.sured me persistently that he was continuously wide-awake, but I a.s.sured him that these moments of sleep often occurred without any consciousness that they had occurred. He refused to be deprived of his ghost, and I refused to believe in the supernormal when the normal was sufficient.

Such wraith-like appearances are supposed to occur especially in connection with the deaths of persons at a distance. Startling stories are told, particularly of those who are very near relatives, husbands and wives, mothers and sons, and, above all, twins, who have been very closely a.s.sociated with one another during life. There are a large number of stories of this kind, however, that have been collected by the Psychic Research Society and other agents with strong evidence in their favor, in which the appearances have had no ulterior significance at all and have evidently been mere figments of the imagination, the externation of images from memory so vividly that they seem to be the reseen. Rea.s.surances in this matter are the best possible source of relief from the sense of impending ill for many patients. The physician who wishes to relieve such symptoms must familiarize himself with some of the many stories that have been investigated and that serve to prove that these and like appearances must not be taken as significant of anything more than a definite tendency, that exists in human nature at moments of day dreaming or when one's attention is suddenly turned from a book in which one has been absorbed, to see externally what is really pa.s.sing through the imaginative memory.

A Disappearance.--A very interesting commentary on some of these appearances is to be found in Mark Twain's story of a disappearance, which could probably be duplicated many times if experiences in this line were collected and collated. Mr. Clemens, sitting on the porch of his residence one day, saw a stranger of rather peculiar appearance come up the walk toward the front door and he expected to hear him ring the bell and have the servant come to the door and usher him in, and then perhaps be called to see him. About the middle of the walk, however, the stranger disappeared and Mr. Clemens was quite surprised to come to himself, rub his eyes and conclude that he had had one of these curious visions or hallucinations, in which the Psychic Research Society would surely be interested. He had plainly seen the stranger enter the gate, come up the walk, and then disappear. He was so impressed by the disappearance that he roused himself to go into the house to get his notebook, so as to make notes of what had happened before the details escaped him. To his surprise he found the stranger in conversation {609} with the servant in the house. There had simply been a lapse in Mr. Clemen's vision of him. He had had a disappearance phenomenon instead of an appearance. The story will be found to amuse patients who complain of appearances disturbing them, though Mr.

Clemens always told his disappearance story very seriously, and it is as interesting a psychic phenomenon as any told of the wraith-like appearances.

Treatment.--Considering how frequent are such phenomena, the physician must be prepared to treat those who are disquieted by them. A wraith-like appearance, for instance, will disturb many people very seriously and often for days, sometimes for weeks, make them nervous, excitable, and impair their appet.i.te, disturb their digestion and sleep and often such unfortunate occurrences are p.r.o.ne to come just when they are run down in weight and when they need the help of every factor that makes for improvement of health. Simply to dismiss such an appearance as if it were quite imaginary, that is, non-existent in some form of reality, or quite baseless and trivial, serves no good purpose, for, as a rule, the persons concerned are deeply impressed with what they have seen. The only way to remove the unfavorable impression produced by it is to discuss it straightforwardly on the basis of what we have come to know as the result of recent investigations and the collation of the literature which has been published by the various psychical research societies and authorities on the subject. We know now that while occasionally such wraith-like appearances seemed to have a definite significance, because of something that happened simultaneously or shortly afterwards, this is mere coincidence and there are literally thousands of such cases in which a well authenticated wraith-like appearance was followed by no serious consequence, was never shown to mean anything beyond a curious psychic phenomenon, and was evidently merely due to some personal subjective influence, some externation of an image in the memory, unusual, but not at all unique, or even very rare, and evidently due to a curious peculiar externalizing power with which certain intellects are gifted.

Auditory Hallucinations.--Hallucinations of hearing are more common than those of vision. Many people have had the experience of waking up thinking that someone was calling them. A great many people are sure that they have, at some time or other, heard a voice when no one was near enough to them to have said anything. They have even recognized the voice. Some people, when thinking deeply about a person, have the voice of that person occur to them so clearly that they cannot quite make out whether they have actually heard it or whether it has only been very vividly reproduced in their memory. Such experiences are so common as to be well known, though many people hesitate to tell the stories of them, for hearing voices is rightly looked upon as a frequent preliminary symptom of insanity.

Hallucinations of hearing are the most common early symptom of insanity. The hearing of voices must always arouse suspicion at once.

It must not be forgotten, however, that a great many recognizedly sane people who have remained so for life, have thought that they heard voices. Of course, we have no definition for insanity, and it is difficult to draw the line. We have no definition for health either, yet we have a practical working standard for the recognition of it, as also for insanity. These hallucinations then, both of vision and hearing, deserve to be discussed seriously, and in {610} nearly every case, even though there is some mental disturbance, the physician can in this way benefit his patients and keep them from being overmuch distressed by their hallucinations.

There is an expression in such common use that it is evidently the result of an almost universal experience, according to which men sometimes explain, after having acted in a particular way, that "something told them to." What they mean, of course, is that a conclusion formed in their minds the reasons for which they could not understand, but which yet had force enough to cause them to follow it to a practical application. When we hear of Socrates being advised in life by a demon, a so-called familiar spirit, we are apt to wonder whether by this term is meant anything more than just this curious feeling of aloofness from ourselves that we sometimes have when we are trying to make up our minds, or, indeed, not infrequently when we are deeply engaged in any intellectual occupation. As discussed in the chapter on Unconscious Cerebration, our minds seem in a certain way to act independently of us. Occasionally they draw us to conclusions quite different from those which we previously expected to reach.

There seems to be a something within us that works quite of itself and beyond our will. Whether under these circ.u.mstances there may not occasionally come so vivid a feeling of this power within us impressing itself upon us, that it seems to come from without, must always be taken into account in the effort to get at the real significance of these curious hallucinations. Only thus are we able to come to the relief of patients who are bothered by them.

_Explanation by Sound Reproduction_.--Auditory hallucinations are probably not more than reproductions of sounds heard before recalled vividly and apparently heard again at moments when attention is not attracted to actual auditory sensations and we are in receptive mood.

Some of them are very startling because they are apparently warnings of future events, as is proved by their fulfillment. These, however, do not seem to be more than coincidences noted with regard to similar events connected with Premonitions, Dreads and Dreams (see chapters on these subjects). There is, for instance, a well authenticated story published by the English Psychic Research Society of a woman who was about to take a dose of what she thought was some ordinary home remedy, when she distinctly heard a voice telling her to taste it. The dose to be taken was a tablespoonful, and when she tasted it she found that by mistake she had placed her hands on a bottle containing a rather strong poison and a tablespoonful of it would almost inevitably have killed her. Unfortunately, such occurrences are so rare and the reason for them is so hard to find that their consideration as anything more than coincidences seems out of the question. Every medical journal almost brings the story of someone who has taken a dose of medicine that proves fatal, and there is no warning. If such warnings came with definite frequency, it would be easier to appreciate their significance.

There are similar stories with regard to other warnings. There is the story of the young man who in a storm drove under a shed for protection. Just as he did so he heard his mother's voice--she had been long dead--distinctly say "Drive out!" Ho drove out at once in the teeth of the storm, so deeply impressed was he, and was scarcely beyond the entrance when the shed fell, crushing everything within it.

Similar warnings of impending {611} accidents are rather frequent in certain people's minds, yet it is hard to think of them as anything else than premonitions. These somehow take on the character of auditory hallucinations in certain sensitive minds. Compared to the whole number of accidents, however, such incidents are extremely rare and follow no law, and while there are those who like to think that perhaps such phenomena are due to the solicitude of some being in the other world, this is extremely doubtful. In that case, as St.

Augustine suggested, they would be much more frequent and have a clearer significance than is at present the rule. St. Augustine, discussing the possibility, was sure that he would have had communications from his mother. Most men would re-echo his feeling.

Coincidences.--Most of these stories as they have been a.n.a.lyzed by careful investigators are indeed such trivial unmeaning things that it would be too bad to let people be bothered by them. They have occurred, however, from time immemorial. Veridical warnings are a commonplace in the literature of all countries. Undoubtedly some may suggest the action of a Higher Power, but the more one knows of the conditions in which they happened, the people to whom they came and their ultimate effects, the less will they seem providential. It is evident that under certain conditions they may be produced even at moments when men are not particularly excited and when they think that they are perfectly calm and self-possessed. Each story must be discussed in its own merits. The only thing to do, then, is not to make too light of them and, above all, not to treat them as merely imaginary or as utterly illusory; for they are often natural phenomena, the reasons for which and the conditions of their production we do not as yet fully understand. If patients can be brought to this viewpoint, they may even become interested in searching out just what it was that caused each particular hallucination. Over and over again it has been found that a moonbeam or a peculiar unexpected reflection of the sun, or the light shining through an unnoted aperture, or any or several of these in connection with a mirror has been the main cause of the wraith-like appearance.

When they happen during the day it is sometimes at the moment of pa.s.sing from very bright light to a darker hall that the occurrence takes place and evidently there is some physical occasion for the appearances in the eye itself. Unusual noises of various kinds are responsible for the auditory hallucinations.

Dangers of Serious Considerations.--There is one serious aspect of these hallucinations and supposed warnings--they tend to paralyze action. If a person allows himself to become firmly persuaded that doubts and premonitory possibilities must be weighed and solved before he may dare to act with a.s.surance, then action becomes almost impossible. Premonitions may serve to bring people into danger, or at least keep people from having such presence of mind as will enable them to get out of it, as they otherwise would. Doubts lead to inaction and make a state of mind that is eminently miserable. The patient's one hope is to put aside resolutely such hallucinations if they rise to the level of a disturbing doubt or a paralyzing premonition and to discipline himself against being influenced by them. In many persons this is a difficult matter, but it represents the only efficient path to the regaining of mental health and strength.

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CHAPTER III

DREADS

In any discussion of the influence of mind over body, favorable and unfavorable, too much emphasis cannot be placed on the hold that dreads have over a great many people and how much they mean, not alone for the mental state, but also for the physical sense of well-being or of ill-feeling in the individual. The expression attributed to the old hermit who had lived to the age of one hundred and had spent some sixty years of existence in the solitude of the desert, with all the opportunities for introspection that this afforded, is the best ill.u.s.tration even in our day of what dreads signify in life: "I am an old man," he said to the young solitary who came to him for advice, "and I have had many troubles, but most of them never happened." We are nearly all of us, or at least those of us who spend most of our time in sedentary mental occupations, p.r.o.ne to fear that something untoward is preparing for us and in many cases to dread lest some serious ailment or other is just ahead of us. We are afraid that certain feelings, though we like to call them symptoms, due to some trivial cause or other as a rule that deserves no notice, may mean the insidious inroads of a const.i.tutional disease destined to shorten existence. A little fatigue, over-tiredness of particular muscles, the straining of joints, the discomforts due to overeating and undersleeping, that are meant as pa.s.sing warnings of nature for the necessity of a little more care in life, are exaggerated into symptoms that have a more or less serious significance.

DEFINITE DREADS

Besides these rather vague dreads, however, there are certain special disquietudes peculiar to individuals, even more groundless, if possible, than the generic apprehension just spoken of and that have been dignified in recent years by the name of phobias. Phobia means only "fear" in Greek, but the term is much more satisfying to nervous people than the shorter but too definite English term, dread, or fear.

There is acrophobia, or the fear of looking down from a height; claustrophobia, or the fear of narrow places, as the dread of walking through a narrow street because of the sense of oppression that comes with the shut-inness of it. Then there is agoraphobia, market-place dread, or the fear to cross an open s.p.a.ce because one has, as it were, grown accustomed to be near buildings and misses their presence. There are many others, indeed as many as there are dislikes in human nature, for any dislike apparently may be exaggerated into a dread. I mention a few at the beginning of the alphabet and some of special significance. There is aerophobia, dread of the air, a symptom sometimes mentioned in connection with hydrophobia; aichmophobia, the dread of pointed tools; ailurophobia, the dread of cats; anthrophobia or the dread of men; pathophobia or the fear of disease, microbophobia or bacillophobia; kenophobia or the dread of emptiness; phthisiophobia or the dread of consumption; zoophobia or the dread of animals; sitophobia or the dread of food, and even phobophobia, the dread of {613} dreading. Neuropsychologists seem to take a special pleasure in inventing some new phobia or at least giving us a fine long Greek name for a set of symptoms by no means new and that might well be explained in simpler terms. The most familiar examples are: the fear of lightning, which is more frequently brontophobia, the fear of thunder.

These learned words are all formed on the same etymological principle as hydrophobia, but they are entirely psychic in origin, while hydrophobia, as it is well to explain to patients who think of the word phobia in connection with their symptoms, is, of course, a misnomer for an infectious disease--rabies--which develops as the consequence of a bite of a rabid animal, and the princ.i.p.al symptom of which is not fear of water, but the impossibility of swallowing any liquid because of spasm of the esophageal muscles.

Almost any function of the body may become the subject of a dread or phobia that may interfere even seriously with it. Any disturbance of any function is likely to be emphasized by such dreads. The French have described the basophobia, which makes the patients suffering from beginning tabes dread so much walking that it becomes a much greater effort than it would otherwise be and often interferes with walking rather seriously. Then there is the fear of tremor which exaggerates a tremor due to some organic cause, but yet not necessarily of grave import, nor likely to increase rapidly. Many of the hysterical palsies are really due to dreads, consequent upon some incident, motor or sensory, which produced a profound effect upon the patient's mind. A patient who has been surprised by a digestive vertigo while descending a stairs, even though nothing more happened than the dizziness which required him to grasp the bal.u.s.trade, will sometimes develop a fear of vertigo that will actually make it difficult for him to go down stairs without such an effort of will as is very exhausting. Even the slightest functions may be thus disturbed. Pitres and Regis described some ten years ago what they called the obsession of blushing, or erythrophobia, the fear of turning red. Patients make themselves extremely miserable in this way. Only training and self-control will help them.

These names are long and mouth-filling and consequently satisfying, and most people who are suffering from a particular phobia are almost sure to think that they have a very special affliction. When the word dread is used instead of the word phobia they are less likely to misunderstand the character of their affection and to realize that it is not a disease but only an unfortunate mental peculiarity that needs control and discipline, and not fostering care. Neurasthenia only means nervous weakness, as we have pointed out, but most people are rather rejoiced when informed that they have so high-sounding a disease as neurasthenia, while to be told that they are nervously weak or suffer from nervous weakness seems quite a come-down from their interesting Greek-designated affection. Most psychiatrists feel that it is better not to give the long Greek term, but to state in simple short Saxon words just what is the matter with the patient. They are suffering from the dread of a height, or the dread of a narrow street, or the dread of open s.p.a.ces, or the dread of dirt, or of cats, or of whatever else it may be. This makes it easier for them to begin to discipline themselves against the state of mind into which they allow themselves to fall with regard to these various objects, and mental discipline is the only therapeutic adjuvant that is of any avail in {614} lessening these conditions. With reasonable perseverance most people can, if not cure themselves of these affections, at least greatly lessen the discomfort due to them. A consideration of particular dreads brings out the specific suggestions that may be made with regard to each and the directions that may be helpful to the patients. Probably the commonest is acrophobia, so that the detailed consideration of it shows the indications for other dreads.

Dread of Heights.--Almost without exception men have a sort of instinctive dread of looking down from a height. In most people this can be conquered to such a degree that almost anyone, if compelled by necessity, can learn to work on a skysc.r.a.per and continue to do good work without much bother about the height, though he may have to go up ten to twenty stories, or even more. When he takes up the work at first every workman finds it difficult. It gives most of us a trembly feeling even to sit in our chair and think of looking down from such a height. To see pictures of men standing on the iron frames of skysc.r.a.pers twenty or thirty stories up in the air looking down 300 to 500 feet below them gives one a series of little chilly feelings in the back and in many people a goneness or sense of constriction around the abdomen that is almost a girdle feeling. To sit at a window opposite where a skysc.r.a.per is going up and to see the men lean over the edge of a beam calling directions of various kinds to workmen below will give most people, even those who are not nervous or especially sensitive, creepy feelings with sometimes a little catch in the breath and an iciness in the hypochondria. It would seem absolutely impossible that we should ever be able to perform these feats of looking from a height, yet experience shows that most of us, after a little training, learn to do it without difficulty.

Even the men who work most confidently have some creepy feelings return to them whenever they stop and think about this and let their eyes wander to the distance below them. It is not difficult for us to walk across a plank raised a foot or two from the ground, though to walk across the same plank at a height of ten feet may be quite a trial and at thirty feet may become quite impossible. This is all due to lack of confidence on our part and there is no reason in the world why, if the plank is amply wide for us at two feet from the ground, it should not be just as wide and safe at 30 or 60 or even 100 feet. This is what the men who have learned to work on skysc.r.a.pers have disciplined themselves to. They have learned to disregard the wide vacant s.p.a.ce around them and the yawning chasm beneath their feet; they keep their eyes fixed on something in the immediate vicinity, excluding thoughts of all that might happen if they should lose their balance.

_Physical Basis_.--There is a physical basis in many of these cases that const.i.tutes the underlying occasion, at least, for the development of the psychic dread. Our eyes have grown accustomed to being fixed on near objects. Whenever they are not so fixed we get a feeling of trepidation. Even those who have done a little day-dreaming know that sometimes when they have been looking into s.p.a.ce, objects around them have suddenly seemed to be transferred to a long distance and at the same time a curious sense of insecurity came over them.

Anyone can get this feeling experimentally by making two large dots on a piece of paper about two inches apart and then gazing between the dots into vacancy beyond the paper as it were, until the dots have a tendency to become four because of the fact that each eye sees {615} each of the dots on a part of the retina not corresponding to that on which the other eye sees it (see Fig. 25).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 25. (Two solid black dots about 1/2 inch diameter and 4 inches apart.)]

When the experiment is successfully performed the dots begin to float before the eyes, then they may coalesce into one or become three, but any number up to four may readily be seen. This will give the sense of insecurity that comes from the eyes not having any fixed object to look at and ill.u.s.trates the discipline of the eyes that must be learned in order that looking down from a height may not be productive of the usual dread.

_Dread of Small Heights_.--It is often thought that acrophobia, or the fear of a height, concerns only great heights and that ordinary elevations produce no discomfort. I have had patients, however, who, when compelled by circ.u.mstances over which they had no control or at least by social obligations that were hard to break, to sit on the front row of even a low balcony, have been extremely uncomfortable.

There was a sense of tightness and oppression about the chest that made it difficult for them to breathe, that disturbed their heart action and gave them a general sense of ill-feeling. I have had a curiously interesting series of cases in clergymen who found it trying to say Ma.s.s or conduct services or to preach from the step of a high altar. One would be inclined at first to make little of their description of their utter discomfort. There is no doubt at all, however, of their real torture of mind and of the extreme effort required to enable them to support themselves in the trying ordeal.

They are often so exhausted because of the effort required that only with difficulty can they do anything else during the day.

To most people such a state of mind is inexplicable. There are deeply intellectual men who, in my experience, are quite disturbed by apparently so simple a thing as having to say Ma.s.s on an altar that has three or four steps to it and is elevated five or six feet above the surrounding floor. As for higher altars, like the main altar of a cathedral, they usually find it quite impossible to conduct services unless they are in company with others, when their feelings are much relieved. This same thing is true of agoraphobia in some people. To go alone across an open place or square is agony, but even the company of a little child is sufficient to relieve them to a great degree. I told a distinguished American prelate of this curious dread in priests so often called to the physician's attention, and he said that he had never heard of it. To his surprise some of his clergymen present at the table told him that there were two examples of it in brothers in his own diocese.

_Mental Discipline_.--The lesson of the many men who, by discipline, have succeeded in conquering the aversion and the dread of heights that everyone has to some extent at least, shows the possibility there is for even those who are extremely sensitive in this matter to so lessen their timidity and the uncomfortable oppression that comes over them, as to make it possible to accomplish whatever is in their line of duty. It is no more difficult for the sensitive clergyman to learn by practice and discipline to walk with confidence on a reasonably high altar or platform, than it is for the workman to learn to {616} walk a beam on the top of a twenty-story building without a thought of the dangers of his position, or at least putting the thought away from him so that it does not interfere with his work. At the beginning he cannot do it, but he disciplines himself to form a habit that makes it easy. Yielding to his feelings makes it difficult to withstand the discomforts that come to him. After an accident on a high building, as a rule, men have to be sent home for the day to get their nerves settled by the night's sleep before they can work with sufficient confidence, and yet accomplish their usual amount of work.

So-called Misophobia--Dread of Dirt.--Misophobia, or the fear of dirt, has grown much more common in recent years, and the spread of the knowledge of the wide diffusion of bacteria has added to the unreasoning dread that possesses these people. Some of them wash their hands forty to fifty times a day, and one young man who was brought to me with the worst looking hands, because of irritation from soap and water, that I have ever seen, seemed to be always either just plunging his hands into water or wiping them dry. These people make themselves supremely miserable. They do not care to shake hands with friends and, above all, with physicians, and they invent all sorts of excuses so as to wait outside of doors till someone else opens them so as to avoid touching the k.n.o.b or door pull, "which" with a poignant expression of repugnance they tell you "is handled by so many people." When the patients are women, getting on and off cars becomes a nightmare to them, because they do not want to touch the handle bars and unless they do they find it difficult to ascend and descend. The curious excuses they offer for their peculiar actions in avoiding the touch of objects around them are interesting.

Claustrophobia.--This sort of dread seems quite irrational to most people and many would probably conclude that individuals thus affected could not possibly be quite in their right minds, or must surely be rather weak-minded. On the contrary, many of the people who are affected by these curious dreads are above the average in intelligence and sometimes also in their power to do intellectual work. A typical example, for instance, of claustrophobia, or the fear of closed s.p.a.ces, is found in the life of Philip Gilbert Hamerton. He was a distinguished painter and essayist, editor and novelist. Few men of his generation were able to do better intellectual work than he. His book on "The Intellectual Life" was more read perhaps than any work of its kind in the last generation. He was not a profound thinker, but he was a very talented practical man. The fact that besides being a writer whose books sold he was a painter whose works were in demand, shows a breadth of artistic quality that is quite unusual. His was not the sort of genius, however, that is so often supposed to be allied to insanity, for he was rather a worker who obtained his effects by plodding, than a brilliant genius that got his thoughts by intuition.

In a word, in spite of the fact that he was just the sort of man that one would not think likely to be affected by a phobia, he had a series of attacks of claustrophobia, some of which were intensely annoying to him and seriously disturbing to his friends. His wife has described some of them in his "Life and Letters." Once after crossing the English Channel, he had a severe attack in the railroad carriage on the way up to London. He had not been nervous {617} on the voyage and had not been seasick. He was returning from a vacation and was in the best of health and spirits, yet suddenly the feeling of inordinate dread that he was shut in came over him and he could scarcely control himself or keep from plunging out of the window in order to get into the open. His wife says that "His hands became cold, his eyes took on a far-reaching look, his expression became hard and set and his face flushed." He seemed "as if ready to overthrow any obstacle in his way; and indeed it was the case, for, unable to control himself any longer, he got up and told me hoa.r.s.ely that he was going to jump out of the train. I took hold of his hand and said I would follow him, only I entreated him to wait a short time, as we were near the station. I placed myself quite close to the door of the railway carriage and stood between him and it. Happily the railway station was soon reached, when he rushed from the train and into the fields." His wife followed him like one dazed, and almost heart-broken. After half an hour he lessened his pace, turning to her and said, "I think it is going." For two hours they continued to walk, at the end of which Gilbert said tenderly in his usual voice, "You must be terribly tired, poor darling. I think I could bear to rest now. We may try to sit down."