apoplexy.

There is very little doubt, in the mind of any physiologist, in regard
to the cause of apoplexy in this case; and that it might have been
prevented by the relief which is always afforded by groans and tears.

It is, I believe, very generally known, that in the profoundest grief,
people do not, and cannot shed tears; and that when the _latter_ begin
to flow, it affords immediate relief.

I do not undertake to argue from this, that crying is so important,
either to the young or the old, that it is ever worth while to excite or
continue it by artificial means; or that a habit of crying, so easily
and readily acquired by the young, is not to be guarded against as a
serious, evil. My object was first to show the folly of those who
denounce all crying, and secondly, to point out some of its
advantages--in the hope of preventing parents from going to that extreme
which borders upon stoicism.

One of the most intelligent men I ever knew, frequently made it his
boast that he neither laughed nor cried on any occasion; and on being
told that both laughing and crying were physiologically useful, he only
ridiculed the sentiment.

Crying is useful to very young infants, because it favors the passage of
blood in their lungs, where it had not before been accustomed to travel,
and where its motion is now indispensable. And it not only promotes the
circulation of the blood, but expands the air-cells of the lungs, and
thus helps forward that great change, by which the dark-colored impure
blood of the veins is changed at once into pure blood, and thus rendered
fit to nourish the system, and sustain life.

But this is not all. Crying strengthens the lungs themselves. It does
this by expanding the little air-cells of which I have just spoken, and
not only accustoms them to being stretched, at a period, of all others,
the most favorable for this purpose, but frees them at the same time
from mucus, and other injurious accumulations.

They, therefore, who oppose an infant's crying, know not what they do.
So far is it from being hurtful to the child, that its occasional
recurrence is, as we have already seen, positively useful. Some
practitioners of medicine, in some of the more trying situations in
which human nature can be placed, even encourage their patients to
suffer tears to flow, as a means of relief.

Infants, it should also be recollected, have no other language by which
to express their wants and feelings, than sigh