erely setting up some trophic
change in the nerve-tissue, or by tearing loose inflammatory adhesions
which are binding down the nerve-trunk, the procedure gives excellent
results, nearly always temporary relief, and sometimes a permanent cure.

The patient was placed upon the table and anaesthetized, and the surgeon
made a free, sweeping incision down the back of the thigh, exposing the
sciatic nerve. He thrust his finger into the wound, loosened up the
adhesions about the nerve, hooked two fingers underneath it, and, to my
wide-eyed astonishment, heaved upward upon it, until he brought into
view through the gaping wound a flattened, bluish-gray cord about twice
the size of a clothesline, with which he proceeded to lift the hips of
the patient clear of the table. In my ignorant horror, I expected every
moment to see the thing snap and the patient go down with a bump,
paralyzed for life; but I never doubted after that that nerves were real
things. Though it has nothing to do with this discussion, for the
benefit of those of my readers who cannot bear to have a story left
unfinished, I will add that the operation was as successful as it was
dramatic, and the patient left the hospital completely relieved of her
sciatica.

When at last it was clearly recognized that the nerves were concerned in
the sending of messages from the centre to the brain, known as
_sensory_, or centripetal, and carrying back messages from the brain to
the muscles and surface, known as _motor_, or centrifugal,--in other
words that they were the organs of the mind,--still another source of
confusion sprang up, and that was the determination on the part of some
to regard them from a purely mental and, so to speak, spiritual point of
view, and on the part of others to regard them from a physical and
anatomical point of view. This confusion is of course in full riot at
the present time.

The term "nerves," and its adjective, "nervous," are used in two totally
distinct senses: one, that which is vague and unsubstantial, purely
mental or subjective, and, in the realm of disease at least, imaginary;
the other, purely anatomical, referring to certain strands of tissue
devoted to the purpose of transmitting impulses, and the condition
affecting these strands. I am not so rash as to raise the question
here,--still less to attempt to settle it,--which of these two views is
the right and rational one. Whether the brain secretes thought as the
liver does bile