_accumulative_ temperament in
patients. One will blaze up at once, under any shock or anxiety, and
sleep very comfortably after it; another will seem quite calm and even
torpid, under the same shock, and people say, "He hardly felt it at
all," yet you will find him some time after slowly sinking. The same
remark applies to the action of narcotics, of aperients, which, in the
one, take effect directly, in the other not perhaps for twenty-four
hours. A journey, a visit, an unwonted exertion, will affect the one
immediately, but he recovers after it; the other bears it very well at
the time, apparently, and dies or is prostrated for life by it. People
often say how difficult the excitable temperament is to manage. I say
how difficult is the _accumulative_ temperament. With the first you have
an out-break which you could anticipate, and it is all over. With the
second you never know where you are--you never know when the
consequences are over. And it requires your closest observation to know
what _are_ the consequences of what--for the consequent by no means
follows immediately upon the antecedent--and coarse observation is
utterly at fault.

[Sidenote: Superstition the fruit of bad observation.]

Almost all superstitions are owing to bad observation, to the _post hoc,
ergo propter hoc_; and bad observers are almost all superstitious.
Farmers used to attribute disease among cattle to witchcraft; weddings
have been attributed to seeing one magpie, deaths to seeing three; and I
have heard the most highly educated now-a-days draw consequences for the
sick closely resembling these.

[Sidenote: Physiognomy of disease little shewn by the face.]

Another remark: although there is unquestionably a physiognomy of
disease as well as of health; of all parts of the body, the face is
perhaps the one which tells the least to the common observer or the
casual visitor. Because, of all parts of the body, it is the one most
exposed to other influences, besides health. And people never, or
scarcely ever, observe enough to know how to distinguish between the
effect of exposure, of robust health, of a tender skin, of a tendency to
congestion, of suffusion, flushing, or many other things. Again, the
face is often the last to shew emaciation. I should say that the hand
was a much surer test than the face, both as to flesh, colour,
circulation, &c., &c. It is true that there are _some_ diseases which
are only betrayed at all by something i