NOTES OF A READER.

* * * * *


INFLUENCE OF THE MIND ON THE BODY.


"Should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature, for damages,
it would be found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous
tenant to its landlord."--_Plutarch_.

[We abridge these interesting facts from "An Inquiry into the Influence
of the Mind and Passions on the Body, in the production of Disease"--in
No. 11 of the _London Medical and Surgical Journal_.[1] The whole
paper is written in as clear, concise, and popular a style as the
subject will allow, and its importance demands the attention of the
reader; although we have not thought it to our purpose to follow the
writer to the main object--or how these causes operate in the
_production of disease_.]

Descartes observes, that the soul is so much influenced by the
constitution of our bodily organs, that if it were possible to find out
a method of increasing our penetration, it should certainly be sought
for in medicine, the connexion between the body and mind, is, in fact,
so strong, that it is difficult to conceive how one of them should act,
and the other not be sensible, in a greater or less degree, of that
action. The organs of sense, by which we acquire all our ideas of