AS TO MENTAL SHOCK. Showing How Lifelong a Sudden Impression Can Become.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 400, 7 September 1889, Page 6

AS TO MENTAL SHOCK. Showing How Lifelong a Sudden Impression Can Become.

Tiik effects of mental shock on the mind in causing pormanent bad health of mind aro easily inflicted in the period of infancy, enrly life and school life, of which Jeb one illustration suflice. A gentleman who for many years was under observation as a confirmed mental invalid, a strong man in many respects, bub utterly irrosolube, and in the end of disordered mind altogether, acquiied his mental disease from sudden distrust. He had in his childhood an innate dread of deep water, and he had at the same timo a tutor for whom he held the warmest affection, coupled with the most absolute t"usb and coniidencc. In a thoughtless and unhappy moment this tutor became possessed with the idea that he would break hih pupil's dread of doep water by pitching him into a pool whore they wero accustomed to bathe together at the deepest part. There was no actual danger, ior the depth was 1 tally not frreat, the pool was calm, the boy could swim a little, and in an instant the tutor, a strong and skilful swimmer, wa3 in the water himsclt rendering &uccour and suppoit. The lad was hi outfit, to shore safely enough, but iho mischief to the mind «a> inflicted beyond lepair. The snifaceof trust was obliterated, and a fixed distrust in the mind of tho youth was&et up for *vor. If a skilful physiologist could have discovered the s>oat of trust in that youth, and could have destroyed it mechanically, ho could not ha\e inflicted a moro pcvero injury nor one more dcteiminately lifelong in its cfleet.