ple specific malady, like the whooping-cough or the
measles, would be better for her. If you cannot break up her present
condition, and if she has any organic weakness of the heart, it may
stop beating one of these days. That is what is called dying of a
broken heart, my dear Madame Bernard. There is no medicine against
that like a broken leg!'

'Fie!' cried Madame Bernard. 'You have no human feeling at all!'

'I am sorry,' answered the physician, with a smile, 'but it is my
business to have a head instead. You asked my opinion and I have given
it, as I would to another doctor. The old-fashioned ones would laugh
at me, the younger ones would understand.'

'If you could only make the poor child sleep a little! Is there
nothing?'

'She is not neurasthenic,' the doctor objected. 'It would be of no use
to give her sleeping medicines, for after a few days they would have
no effect, except to excite her nerves unnaturally.'

'Or something to give her an appetite,' suggested Madame Bernard
vaguely.

'She has an excellent appetite if she only knew it. The reason why she
does not eat is that she does not know she is hungry, though she is
half starved. I served in the African campaign when I was a young
military surgeon. I have seen healthy men faint for want of food when
they had plenty at hand because they could not realise that they were
hungry in their intense preoccupation. Great emotions close the
entrance to the stomach, often for a considerable time. It is well
known, and it is easier than you think to form the habit of living on
next to nothing. It is the first step that counts.'

'As they said of Saint Denis when he carried his head three steps
after it was cut off,' said Madame Bernard thoughtfully, and without a
smile.

'Precisely,' the doctor assented. 'I myself have seen a man sit his
horse at a full gallop, without relaxing his hold, for fifty yards
after he had been shot through the head. The seat of the nerves that
direct automatic motion is not in the brain, but appears to be in the
body, near the spine. When it is not injured, what used to be called
unconscious cerebration may continue for several seconds after death.
Similarly, bodily habits, like feeling hunger or being insensible to
it, appear to have their origin in those ganglions and not in any sort
of thought. Consequently, thought alone, without a strong exercise of
the will, has little effect upon such habits of the body. When a man
does a t