The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

myxoedema, which occurs mainly in women and is also due to a

deficiency in the thyroid secretion. As a result the patient, who

may have been a bright, capable, energetic person, full of the

eager purposes and emotions of life, gradually becomes dull,

stupid, apathetic, without fear, anger, love, joy or sorrow, and

without purpose or striving. In addition the body changes, the

hair becomes coarse and scanty, the skin thick and swollen (hence

the name of the disease) and various changes take place in the

sweat secretion, the heart action, etc.

Then, having made the diagnosis, work the great miracle! Obtain

the dried thyroid glands of the sheep, prepared by the great drug

houses as a by-product of the butcher business, and feed this

poor, transformed creature with these glands! No fairy waving a

magical wand ever worked a greater enchantment, for with the

first dose the patient improves and in a relatively short time is

restored to normal in skin, hair, sweat, etc., and MIND and

character! To every physician who has seen this happen under his

own eyes and by his direction there comes a conviction that mind

and character have their seat in the organic activities of the

body,—and nowhere else.

An interesting confirmation of this is that when the thyroid is

overactive, a condition called hyperthyroidism, the patient

becomes very restless and thin, shows excessive emotionality,

sleeplessness, has a rapid heart action, tremor and many other

signs not necessary to detail here. The thyroid in these cases is

usually swollen. One of the methods used to treat the disease is

to remove some of the gland surgically. In the early days an

operator would occasionally remove too, much gland and then the

symptoms, of myxoedema would occur. This necessitated the

artificial feeding of thyroid the rest of the patient’s life!

With the proper dosage of the gland substance the patient remains

normal; with too little she becomes dull and stupid; with too

much she becomes unstable and emotional!

There are plenty of other examples of the influence of the

endocrines on mind, character and personality. I here briefly

mention a few of these.

In the disease called acromegaly, which is due to a change in the

pituitary gland, amongst other things are noted “melancholic

tendencies, loss of memory and mental and physical torpor.”

A very profound effect on character and personality, exclusive of

intelligence, is that of the sex glands. One need not accept the

Freudian extravagances regarding the way in which the sex

feelings and impulses enter into our thoughts, emotions, purposes

and acts. No unbiased observer of himself or his fellows but

knows that the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of the sex

feeling, its excitation or its suppression are of great

importance in the destinies of character. Further, man as

herdsman and man as tyrant have carried on huge experiments to

show how necessary to normal character the sex glands are.

As herdsman he has castrated his male Bos and obtained the ox.

And the ox is the symbol of patience, docility, steady labor,

without lust or passion,—and the very opposite of his

non-castrated brother, the bull. The bull is the symbol of

irritability and unteachableness, who will not be easily yoked or

led and who is the incarnation of lust and passion. One is the

male transformed into neuter gender; and the other is rampant

with the fierceness of his sex.

Compare the eunuch and the normal man. If the eunuch state be

imposed in infancy, the shape of the body, its hairiness, the

quality of the voice and the character are altered in

characteristic manner. The eunuch essentially is neither man nor

woman, but a repelling Something intermediate.

Enough has been said to show that mind and character are

dependent upon the health of the brain and the glands of the

body; that somewhere in the interaction of tissues, in the

chemistry of life, arises thought, purpose, emotion, conduct and

deed. But we need not go so far afield as pathology to show this,

for common experience demonstrates it as well.

If character is control of emotions, firmness of purpose,

cheerfulness of outlook and vigor of thought and memory, then the

tired man, worn out by work or a long vigil, is changed in

character. Such a person in the majority of cases is irritable,

showing lack of control and emotion; he slackens in his life’s

purposes, loses cheerfulness and outlook and finds it difficult

to concentrate his thoughts or to recall his memories. Though

this change is temporary and disappears with rest, the essential

fact is not altered, namely, fatigue alters character. It is also

true that not all persons show this vulnerability to fatigue in

equal measure. For that matter, neither do they show an equal

liability to infectious diseases, equal reaction to alcohol or

injury. The feeling of vigor which rest gives changes the

expression of personality to a marked degree. It is true that we

are not apt to think of the tired man as changed in character;

yet we must admit on reflection that he has undergone

transformation.

Even a loaded bowel may, as is well known, alter the reaction to

life. Among men who are coarse in their language there is a

salutation more pertinent than elegant that inquires into the

state of the bowels.[1] The famous story of Voltaire and the

Englishman, in which the sage agreed to suicide because life was

not worth living when his digestion was disordered and who broke

his agreement when he purged himself, illustrates how closely

mood is related to the intestinal tract. And mood is the

background of the psychic life, upon which depends the direction

of our thoughts, cheerful or otherwise, the vigor of our will and

purpose. Mood itself arises in part from the influences that

stream into the muscles, joints, heart, lungs, liver, spleen,

kidneys, digestive tract and all the organs and tissues by way of

the afferent nerves (sympathetic and cerebro-spinal). Mood is

thus in part a reflection of the health and proper working of the

organism; it is the most important aspect of the

subconsciousness, and upon it rests the structure of character

and personality.

[1] What is called coarse is frequently crudely true. Thus, in

the streets, in the workshops, and where men untrammeled by

niceties engage in personalities the one who believes the other

to be a “crank” informs him in crude language that he has

intestinal stasis (to put the diagnosis in medical language) and

advises him accordingly to “take a pill.”

This does not mean that only the healthy are cheerful, or that

the sick are discouraged. To affirm the dependence of mind upon

body is not to deny that one may build up faith, hope, courage,

through example and precept, or that one may not inherit a

cheerfulness and courage (or the reverse). “There are men,” says

James, “who are born under a cloud.” But exceptional individuals

aside, the mass of mankind generates its mood either in the

tissues of the body or in the circumstances of life.

Children, because they have not built up standards of thought,

mood and act, demonstrate in a remarkable manner the dependence

of their character upon health.

A child shows the onset of an illness by a complete change in

character. I remember one sociable, amiable lad of two, rich in

the curiosity and expanding friendliness of that time of life,

who became sick with diphtheria. All his basic moods became

altered, and all his wholesome reactions to life disappeared. He

was cross and contrary, he had no interest in people or in

things, he acted very much as do those patients in an insane

hospital who suffer from Dementia Praecox. What is character if

it is not interest and curiosity, friendliness and love,

obedience and trust, cheerfulness and courage? Yet a sick child,

especially if very young, loses all these and takes on the

reverse characters. The little lad spoken of became “himself”

again when the fever and the pain lifted. Yet for a long time

afterward he showed a greater liability to fear than before, and

it was not until six months or more had repaired the more subtle

damage to his organism that he became the hardy little adventurer

in life that he had been before the illness.

There is plenty of chemical proof of this thesis as here set

forth. Men have from time immemorial put things “in their bellies

to steal their brains away.” The chemical substance known as

ethyl alcohol has been an artificial basis of good fellowship the

world over, as well as furnishing a very fair share of the

tragedy, the misery and the humor of the world. This is because,

when ingested in any amount, its absorption produces changes in

the flow of thought, in the attitude toward life, in the mood,

the emotions, the purposes, the conduct,—in a word, in

character. One sees the austere man, when drunk, become ribald;

the repressed, close-fisted become open-mouthed and

open-hearted; the kindly, perhaps brutal; the controlled,

uncontrolled. In the change of character it effects is the regret

over its passing and the greatest reason for prohibition.

Alcohol causes several well-defined mental diseases as well as

mere drunkenness. In Delirium Tremens there is an acute delirium,

with confusion, excitement and auditory and visual hallucinations

of all kinds. The latter symptom is so prominent as to give the

reason for the popular name of the “snakes.” In alcoholic

hallucinosis the patient has delusions of persecution and hears

voices accusing him of all kinds of wrong-doing. Very

frequently, as all the medical writers note, these voices are

“conscience exteriorized”; that is, the voices say of him just

what he has been saying of himself in the struggle against drink.

Then there is Alcoholic Paranoia, a disease in which the main

change is a delusion of jealousy directed against the mate, who

is accused of infidelity. It is interesting that in the last two

diseases the patient is “clear-headed”; memory and orientation

are good; the patient speaks well and gives no gross signs of his

trouble. As the effects of the alcohol wear away, the patient

recovers,—i.e., his character returns to its normal.

It becomes necessary at this point to take up a reverse side of

our study, namely, what is often called the influence of “mind

over matter.” Such cures of disease as seem to follow prayer and

faith are cited; such incidents as the great strength of men

under emotion or the disturbances of the body by ideas are listed

as examples. This is not the place to discuss cures by faith. It

suffices to say this: that in the first place most of such cures

relate to hysteria, a disease we shall discuss later but which is

characterized by symptoms that appear and disappear like magic. I

have seen “cured” (and have “cured”) such patients, affected with

paralysis, deafness, dumbness, blindness, etc., with reasoning,

electricity, bitter tonics, fake electrodes, hypnotism, and in

one case by a forcible slap upon a prominent and naked part of

the body. Hysteria has been the basis of many a saint’s

reputation and likewise has aided many a physician into

affluence.

Nor is the effect of coincidence taken into account in estimating

cures, whether by faith or by drugs. Many a physician has owed

his start to the fact that he was called in on some obscure case

just when the patient was on the turn towards recovery. He then

receives the credit that belonged to Nature. Medical men

understand this,—that many diseases are “self-limited” and pass

through a cycle influenced but little by treatment. But faith

curists do not so understand, and neither does the mass of

people, so that neither one nor the other separates “post hoc”

from “propter hoc.” If the truth were told, most of the miracle