mpulse transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting
centre, which arrests the cardiac movements.

"What is like to be the further history of the case?

"The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty years
old. The chain of nervous actions has become firmly established.
It might have been hoped that the changes of adolescence would have
effected a transformation of the perverted instinct. On the contrary,
the whole force of this instinct throws itself on the centre of
inhibition, instead of quickening the heart-beats, and sending the
rush of youthful blood with fresh life through the entire system to the
throbbing finger-tips.

"Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of
nervous interactions so long established? We are disposed to think that
there is a chance of its being broken up. And we are not afraid to say
that we suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such hold of
the patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the 'spell,'
as she called it, is to be dissolved. She must, in all probability,
have had a hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth before her was a
victim, and its cause, and if so, her guess as to the probable mode in
which the young man would obtain relief from his unfortunate condition
was the one which would naturally suggest itself.

"If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of inhibition
can be made to change its course, so as to follow its natural channel,
it will probably keep to that channel ever afterwards. And this will, it
is most likely, be effected by some sudden, unexpected impression. If
he were drowning, and a young woman should rescue him, it is by no means
impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to
might be brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the
poles in a magnet, which is effected in an instant. But he cannot be
expected to throw himself into the water just at the right moment
when the 'fair lady' of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore.
Accident may effect the cure which art seems incompetent to perform. It
would not be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back
to consciousness. But it is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that
a happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous polarity
may be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and his past
terrible experiences be to him like a scarce-remembered dream.