May I
speak as an unfledged doctor, but still as one burdened with unused
knowledge?"
"You can say what you like."
"Very well, then. You may or may not be aware that what you are
pleased to call the blues, or moods, are, in your case, nothing more
or less than melancholia. When they are at their worst they are the
form known as melancholia attonita. In other words, you are not only
steeped in melancholy, but your brain is in, a state of stupor:
you are all but comatose. These attacks are not frequent, and are
generally the result of a powerful mental shock or strain. I
remember you had one once after you had crammed for two months for an
examination and couldn't pull through. You scared the life out of
the tutors and the boys, and it was not until I threatened to put
you under the pump that you came to. Your ordinary attacks are not so
alarming to your friends, but when indulged in too frequently, they
are a good deal more dangerous."
He paused a moment, but Dartmouth made no reply, and he went on.
"Any man who yields habitually to melancholia may expect his brain,
sooner or later, to degenerate from its original strength, and relax
the toughness and compactness of its fibre.
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