Dr. Heidenhoff's Process

block. On announcing that he wanted to see the doctor, he was ushered into a waiting-room, whose walls were hung with charts of the brain and nervous system, and presently a tall, sc

s of the office. He took him into an inner office and showed his batteries, and explained that the peculiarity of his process consisted, not in any new general laws and facts of physiology which he had discovered, but entirely in peculiarities in his manner of applying his galvanic current, talking much about apodes, cathodes, catelectrotonus and anelectrotonus, resistance and rheostat, reactions, fluctuations, and other terms of galvano-therapeutics. The doctor frankly admitted that he was not in a way of making a great deal of mo

ed to an extent to bring about a morbid state of the brain fibres concerned. What might be conventionally or morally morbid or objectionable, was not, however, necessarily disease in the material sense, and nothin

, I deem it only a question of time when science shall have so accurately located the various departments of thought and mastered the laws of their processes, that, whether by galvanism or some better process, the mental physician will be able to extract a specific recollection from the memory as readily as a dentist pulls a tooth, and as finally, so far as t

cess at all

is a bubbling, murmurous sound in the ears, a warm sensation where the wires touch the cranium, and a feeling as of a motion through the brain, entering at one poi

ar, the sense of forgetting in spite of one's self, for I suppose the patient's mi

g preceding links in the train of thought, and in turning back to recall what went before, what came after is meanwhile forgotten, the clue is lost, and we yield to a pleasing bewilderment which is presently itself forgotten in sleep. The next morning we may or may not recall the matter. The on

omething, even if they do not know what it is. They must feel that there is something gone out

was. Of course, the patient subsequently finds shreds and fragments of ideas, as well as facts in his external relations, which, having been connected with the extirpated subject, are now unaccountable. About these the feeling is, I suppose, like that of a man who, whe

u will pardon me for saying that, as soon as you stop, the whole thing appears to be such

ctor s

llous and incomprehensible at bottom as the most uncommon and startling. You will pardon me if I say that it is only to the unscientific that it seems otherwise. But really, my dear sir, my process for the extirpation of thoughts was but the most obvious consequence of the discovery that different classes of sensations and ideas are localized in the brain, and a

ry, "is the odd intermingling of moral and physical conceptions i

"since it is the usual rule. Why is it more curious to cure remorse by a physical act th

his general overturning of his prejudices. "Yes, but the mind consents to the ac

My process, you see then, only completes physically what is already done morally. The ministers and moralists preach forgiveness and absolution on repentance, but the perennial fountain of the penitent's tears testifies how empty and vain such assurances are. I fulfil what they promise. They tell the penitent he is forgiven. I free him from his sin. Remorse

ind had been in a state of bewilderment and constant fluctuation during the entire interview, at one moment carried away by the contagious confidence of the doctor's tone, and impressed by his calm, clear, scientific explanations and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, and the next moment reacting into utter scepticism and contemptuous impati

tment, and to make such a report as should induce her to dismiss the subject. But he found it was quite impossible to main

ke it in the foren

a difference of a fe

s is anything to me?" she cried

ee you so when you are so likely to be disappointed. Even the docto

ng very calm. "When I've just one chance for life, do you think

on hysteria. She was constantly changing her attitude, rising and seating herself, and walking excitedly about. She would talk rapidly one moment, and

tly sh

ber any reason why I shouldn't marry you, you will still re

ny way, and just the same whatever ha

ued, thoughtfully. "I don't know, but I ought to make you promise now that you won't as

n't prom

arry me, and leave you to do as you choose tomorrow after I've forgotten. I would make you promise not to let me marry you then, if I did not feel that utte

ely terrified him and momentarily seduced him to share the same fool's paradise of fancy. And it is needless to say that the thought of receivin

me oddly, and ask her what she is thinking of, and she will put me off. Why, Henry, I feel as dying persons do about having people look at their faces after th

hose soul is in heaven, who looks at his dead face? It wil

le, and then said

y of anything from you. I don't believe a woman ever trusted a man as I do you. I'm sure none ever had reason to. I should be sorry if you didn't know all my faults. If there's a record to be kept of them anywhere in the universe

room with compressed lips and pale cheeks, while Henry was nervously striding to and fro across t

e door of his office and again disappearing. Madeline i

ed her head without replying, and they went into the office. Madeline, trembling and deadly pale, sat down in the o

troyed; the electric current more readily follows the fibres which are being excited by the pr

e battery began. She, clasped Henry's hand a little firmer, but made no other sign. The noise

'm so

wn and take a nap

e laid her head on the pillow than she fell asleep. The doctor and Henry remained in the operating