possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or
raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest
be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall
find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless,
doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to
them, O deceitful headache! O magic headache!


2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.

There is, however, a power which is superior even to that of the
headache; and we must avow to the glory of France, that this power is
one of the most recent which has been won by Parisian genius. As in
the case with all the most useful discoveries of art and science, no
one knows to whose intellect it is due. Only, it is certain that it
was towards the middle of the last century that "Vapors" made their
first appearance in France. Thus while Papin was applying the force of
vaporized water in mechanical problems, a French woman, whose name
unhappily is unknown, had the glory of endowing her sex with the
faculty of vaporizing their fluids. Very soon the prodigious influence
obtained by vapors was extended to the nerves; it was thus in passing
from fibre to fibre that the science of neurology was born. This
admirable science has since then led such men as Philips and other
clever physiologists to the discovery of the nervous fluid in its
circulation; they are now perhaps on the eve of identifying its
organs, and the secret of its origin and of its evaporation. And thus,
thanks to certain quackeries of this kind, we may be enabled some day
to penetrate the mysteries of that unknown power which we have already
called more than once in the present book, the _Will_. But do not let
us trespass on the territory of medical philosophy. Let us consider