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if the doctor or the nurse so much as touched them through necessity, it took all the bravery the man could muster to keep from showing what he suffered.

After several weeks the pain grew less. After still other weeks there came what the man called "the happiest moment" of his life. "Look!" he called to his nurse; "look, I can move my toe!"

There was steady gain after that. Toes, feet, legs he could move them all at last, and in the course of months he learned to walk again; but always throughout life one foot will continue to drag a trifle when he walks, for a bit of crushed bone still presses on the part of the spinal cord which controls that foot.

As this man recovered, he met another man in worse condition than himself. He, too, had had a broken back. But in his case not only were his legs motionless but he could feel nothing in them. He only knew he was touched or pinched, pricked or scratched when he fastened his eyes on the spot and saw that something was being done there.

This lack of feeling reached as far up as his waist. And it was so complete that when, at one time, the doctors needed to cut through his skin below the waist, and then needed to sew the cut up again, they gave him neither cocaine to deaden pain, nor ether to put him to sleep. They did their work thoroughly, and he might have watched them even as they did it, for from first

to last not a twinge of pain reached him. He could not walk but he was very comfortable in his wheel chair.

Cases of this sort are so rare that most of us know nothing about them. There are examples enough on record, however, to fill many pages of medical books, and each separate case shows that whenever the body fails to move or to feel

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or to do its own work

in its own way, nerves are at fault somewhere

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nerves that

bind muscles and

mind so closely together that when one suffers the other suffers too.

At this point I glance up from my writing and see our great yellow cat with

NERVES CONTROL THE POWER OF EACH

soft fur and quiet eyes sitting on the window sill watching a fly. Queerly enough, he does not even lift a paw to strike it. Instead, as the fly runs along on the edge of the window frame, the watching cat cocks his head. to one side and seems to be studying his small neighbor as if he himself were a scientist, as if he were anxious to know what the secret of the machinery is

that makes the slim legs move so fast and pulls the wings of gauze up and down.

I am wiser than the cat, and I know that all the power of cat and fly and man lies hidden in the nervous system which controls the life of each. I know that nerve fibers carry messages to and fro; that these fibers look like slender white threads; that they run from head to spinal cord, from cord to muscle, then from muscle up again to cord and head; that, just under the skin, they cover the body in a close network, and that it is through their aid that living beings think and feel and move.

I have also learned that human nerves and cat nerves are very much alike, and that men and women, boys and girls, and animals of every size and shape are protected and actually kept alive by the pleasant and the unpleasant messages and commands which travel up and down and crosswise on these sensitive telegraph wires.

If a cat felt no unpleasant sensation when he needed food, he would never bestir himself from a comfortable nap for the sake of eating. If a mouse felt no unpleasant sensation when the claws of a hungry cat were hooked into his skin to seize him, he might allow himself to be caught and eaten without a struggle. If human beings felt no discomfort in the coldest weather, they might carelessly let themselves be frozen to death.

So it is on every side. All along the way we go, our sensations are our best protectors. Indeed, during each

day of our lives, our animal kindred and we ourselves travel through life over a road that is guarded on either side by what might seem to be a hedge of nerve warnings called sensations. The sensations themselves are of many kinds-hunger and thirst, cold and heat, headache, toothache, stomach ache-ills of a thousand different sorts. But through each separate one we learn at last that by giving heed to our sensations—to those that disagreeable as well as to those that are agreeable -we preserve our health and find the pathway of life very pleasant.

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CHAPTER II

SERVICE FROM THE CEREBRUM

In a battle on the river Nile a certain British captain was hit on the head by a bullet at the moment when he was shouting a command to his soldiers.

He became unconscious at once, and for fifteen months afterwards stayed in bed in a hospital, unable to speak, apparently asleep.

There seemed to be no hope for him until a skilled surgeon determined to cut through the skull and see what was interfering with the work of the brain. And there he found it! Jagged edges of bone were pressing into the soft substance underneath.

He smoothed off the edges, cut away bits of bone, lightened the pressure, and no sooner was the rough weight lifted than the wounded man came to his senses, rose from his bed, and finished giving the command which he had begun to give fifteen months before. He himself had no idea that anything had interrupted him, and he was astonished enough to find himself indoors with doctors instead of out of doors on the battleship, with soldiers about him.

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