ich rend the heart of the hearer. She
goes gracefully through a series of gesticulations so cleverly
executed that you might think her a professional contortionist. Now
what man is there so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a suffering
woman about desires which, in him, prove the most perfect health?
Politeness alone demands of him perfect silence. A woman knows under
these circumstances that by means of this all-powerful headache, she
can at her will paste on her bed the placard which sends back home the
amateurs who have been allured by the announcement of the Comedie
Francaise, when they read the words: "Closed through the sudden
indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars."

O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler
against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be
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 unkno