Kiss Nothing But A Thrill

1916

Expert Says You Get the Same Sensation Stroking a Cat.

NEW YORK, Sept. 14.—Love is only a chemical reaction; you can get the same sensation by stroking a cat.

Dr. A. A. Lindsay, expert psycopathist, passes this tip out.

"There is nothing in this so-called love; that is, really nothing but the thrill of physical contact, as for instance, in kissing," Dr. Lindsay said.

"After you have kissed the same girl many times the thrill goes out."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.

A Strange Experience

1901

An Atlanta woman who is deeply interested in psychological research relates the following story about an experience her husband had in the realms of the occult:

"We were having a new home built and my husband went to it every day to see what progress was being made. One day as he stood in the front room upstairs his attention was attracted to the street. Looking out of the window, he saw a funeral procession passing from the door and out through the gate. The casket was small, white and covered with flowers. He recognized friends and neighbors in the crowd and through some indefinable impression he understood that the corpse was that of his son, though he had no son at that time. Surprised and startled at the thought, he saw the procession vanish, and he was entirely at a loss how to account for the experience. The hour was noon, and there was nothing in his mood or environment apparently that induced the subconscious.

"Within a few months a little son was born to us, and at the age of 3 years it was carried out of the gate in a flower covered, white casket and followed by the same friends my husband had seen that noontime long before. What explanation can be given of this circumstance and experiences like it that are constantly being related in societies of psychical culture?" — Atlanta Constitution.

Hysterical Women

1918

By The Medical Editor

A woman writes that a nerve specialist has pronounced her hysterical and she wants to know the nature of the malady. Professionally this is a much discussed subject. Not that there is any great disagreement about its nature and manifestations but regarding the real cause of it. There are many features about the disease that cannot be discussed frankly in a lay paper, but there are some generalizations which are perfectly proper to propound.

Those suffering from hysteria which is closely allied to other mental disorders, seem unable to properly adjust themselves to their environment. They seem to be lacking in the ability to exercise good judgment in ordinary matters of everyday life. They are likely to concentrate their energy on some emotional subject and go far astray in their deductions.

Hysterical people are those in whom the elements that go to make up personality are loosely bound together.

In mental organization the victims of hysteria are children.

This mental defect leads its victims into strange pathways. They become converts of peculiar creeds and sects. They aspire to be reformers and defenders and what not and they are invariably on the wrong side by virtue of their warped judgment.

—The Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, CT, March 18, 1918, p. 12.

Are Animals Ever "Bored?"

1893

Surely mankind has sufficient faults and failings of its own to answer for without being called upon to assume the responsibility of animal failings as well. An American author has discovered that domestic animals, such as cats or dogs, are not only subject to ennui, but also display their feelings under that infliction after very much the same fashion as their human friends, a fact which no one who has kept tame animals will be tempted to deny.

But from this fact our contemporary, The News, leaps to a perfectly unwarrantable conclusion and boldly asserts that ours is the fault, that mankind has inoculated the beast creation with its own particular disease and that it is civilization "which produces ennui, not only in man, women and children, but even in cats and dogs." "We may well blush," it continues, "when we think how man has demoralized the dog. We have taught the dog to be bored. We have corrupted him by our society." And again, "Ennui is one of man's many inventions, but he has taught the unprofitable vice to the domestic or at least to the household animals — pupils only too apt in evil."

Was ever so monstrous a charge leveled against our innocence! The next thing we shall be told is that we are the cause that dogs do bark and bite and that whatever may have been the morality of Dr. Watts his natural history is no better than his poetry. The News, if it is so assured of the demoralizing influence it has exercised upon dogs, is welcome to blush for itself. We prefer to maintain that dogs sorrow under boredom for the same simple reason that they delight to bark and bite, "for 'tis their nature to." — London Spectator.

Noise — "You Gotta a Problem With It?"

1893

The Philosophy of Noise

Aversion to Disturbance is a Symptom of Neurotic Degeneration

A woman suffering from neuralgia stations her son to keep boys from making noise in front of the house. A boy comes by whistling — a performance in which we must recognize a natural, wholesome and boylike act, whereupon there ensues a short, sharp fight between the pair, in which one is accidentally cut. The upshot is not important; the origin of it is.

It has long been usual to accord special privileges to invalids in relieving them against noise. Formerly straw would be strewn in the street, and thousands of persons who were not sick would be inconvenienced to ease the pains of one who was. In part, this custom was one of ostentation. It could be practiced only by the influential who were exalted by making themselves a nuisance. When death ensued, a hatchment was set up in the same spirit of vainglory. All the windows in the house were closed for a term, the duration of which was fixed by custom, but which bore a relation to the estate of the deceased and the consequent degree of exaltation descending upon his heirs.

All healthy animals delight in noise. The description includes barbarous folk and children. Dogs bark (curs only sneak off), birds scream, boys shout, girls clap hands to their ears in sweet confusion, horses paw, all animate nature responds to the exhilaration of noise. The sick do not. In every form of sickness the nervous function is deranged. As we have seen above mankind has shown its appreciation of this fact by its customs. Excessive sensibility to noise is thus one symptom of neurotic degeneration. It is the mark of one broad distinction between the state of civilization and its opposite. It testifies to one part of the price which that state exacts from man on his physical side.

Within civilization itself indifference to noise is one of the distinctions of a system rudely healthful, both in body and mind. The converse of this proposition is equally true. Whenever a person displays peculiar sensitiveness to noise we may know that the case is one of an unwholesome mind in an unwholesome body. From the fact that the disturbance is essentially a neurotic one it follows that it is controllable to a great extent by the will. Much of the disturbance that is experienced from noise can be put completely aside by exercise of the will. A barking dog may keep one person awake while his healthier or wiser neighbor sleeps the sleep of the just. Under the pinging of the cable car bells a valetudinarian subsides into frenzy while his younger clerk is lapped in dreams of the equally unconscious typewriter on the next floor. The contrast here need not be one of relative strength of mind merely; one of the two minds is sick.

In such a case the willpower is impaired. It would probably be found that the complaining person is also irritable, passionate, perhaps consumed by self contemplation. In many cases of this order relief could no doubt be gained through treatment by suggestion. But in vastly the greater number the patient is competent to minister to himself. He is still capable of exerting the will, and in this exercise lies complete and permanent cure. Furthermore, the cure does not apply alone to the particular noise that may have called for it. It will be found to have influenced the mind permanently. The injurious effects attributed to noise do not proceed from without, but from within. They do not inhere in the aerial vibrations, but in the mental response made to them.

Finally it ought to be observed that the disease is one that increases by being yielded to. The noise that is first noticed as an annoyance in some moment of irritation, anxiety or other nervous disturbance can be nursed into an object of horror. Time was when folks thought sensitiveness to noise to be evidence of high strung character. They were rather proud of it and trotted it forth in public. The world knows better now. It erects hospitals for the Mrs. Wittitterlys, whom it rather admired in Nicholas Nickleby's time. It no longer holds poor Tom of Bedlam for inspired, and since it has learned how much sickness is either a fruit or a phase of ignorance it is getting a little sick of those sick folks, at least of whom it has a right to look for something better. — New York Evening Sun.

Evangeline Weed — Making Personality to Order

1922

BOSTON — A medley of public officials, business men, manufacturers, debutantes and society matrons have worn a path to the studio of a modest and demure young woman in Beacon St.

They go to her filled with worldly knowledge and material experience of years but conquered by one of the greatest of man's weaknesses — self-consciousness.

She diagnoses their cases like a physician, cures them and endows them with man's greatest boon — personality.

She is Miss Evangeline Weed, proprietor of the Personality Institute, the first project of its kind.

Miss Weed numbers among her clients three mayors, two state senators, three representatives and many business men. These men, though successful, are handicapped by self-consciousness and unable to realize their full powers because of undeveloped personality.

—The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, Aug. 26, 1922, p. 1.

Post Office Workers Listen to Music for Morale, No Jazz

1921

Music for P.O. Night Workers Improves Morals[*]

Minneapolis Postmaster Informs Postmaster General Hays that Psychological Test Proved a Success but No "Jazz" was Allowed

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17. — Music to improve the morale of workers whose duties take them well into the wee small hours has been tried out in the Minneapolis postoffice and proved a success, E. A. Purdy, postmaster, today informed Postmaster General Hays. The idea was tried, Mr. Purdy said, after he had made a psychological study of conditions under which his night force worked. He found men working away from the general noises of the day as a rule showed a low morale, inclined to be morose and generally worried at being away from their families, which resulted in an absence of enthusiasm in their work.

As an experiment a phonograph was installed and records, which it was thought would rest the nerves and enliven the spirits of the employes were tried nightly with gratifying results, Mr. Purdy said, although he was careful to explain that no "jazz" was played, until the fag end of the night as he "did not want the men juggling and tossing about letters and parcels." Everybody was more alert, he said, and at quitting time went home less tired, less worried and with more efficient night's work done. The postmaster general approved the idea and said he would watch further experiments with interest. Mr. Purdy who was characterized by Mr. Hays as a "bird of a postmaster with a batting average of 1,000, although a Democrat," is in Washington to give the department some of the ideas which has made the Minneapolis office one of the most successful in the country, Mr. Hays said.

—Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, CT, Aug. 18, 1921, p. 1

[*] "Improves Morals" is the original erroneous headline, kind of funny. And, hey, it's not that jazz was entirely disallowed, but allowed at the "fag end of the night." That's kind of funny, too.

Note: Back then "post office" was one word, which looks weird, and "employes" generally ended with one "e" like that, also odd.