But suddenly Fate comes passing by and knocks down all that has been built up with so much hard labour.
The ant struggles on with her heavy load deep in the trackless forest. The way is long, and there is still some time before the day's work is over and the dew falls.
But high overhead flies the dream on wings of sun-glitter and fairy-web.
HYPOCHONDRIA
The study of micro-organisms has directed medical science into new channels, and thrown open a hitherto undreamt-of world for eager investigators. The list of recent discoveries in bacteriology is already a long one. Koch's researches in cholera and tuberculosis, and Pasteur's method of vaccination against hydrophobia, are but links in the chain which one day shall fetter the hydra-headed dragon of disease. Less known, but hardly less important, are the very latest studies of hypochondria, which have led to the discovery that this evil also belongs to infectious diseases.
Struck by the constant disorder of thought and sensibility which characterise the hypochondriac, the doctors have up till now placed this malady amongst the nervous diseases, and it is in the central organs of the nervous system, more especially the brain, that its seat and origin have been determined. We finally know that hypochondria is an infectious disease, caused by a microbe which has been isolated, and named Bacillus niger (A. M.).
It is after all astonishing that this discovery has escaped so many investigators ever since Burton, whose Anatomy of Melancholy still remains unparalleled—it is astonishing when one considers the many analogies which connect this so-called nervous disease with some of the best-known bacterial diseases, such as hydrophobia, tuberculosis, and cholera. As in hydrophobia, so in hypochondria the virus spreads over the nervous system, produces constant and well-known disorders in the brain, and ends here also by paralysis, paralysis of the affected individual's intellectual and moral functions, and, at last, mental death. As in hydrophobia, one also notices by the bacillus niger infection cramp in certain groups of muscles—that of the muscles of laughter being, for instance, very common. This cramp, risus sardonicus, is excessively painful, and its prognostic signification is a bad one, for it is a characteristic of absolutely incurable cases (Heine).
The tendency to bite, which characterises hydrophobia, is also encountered in certain forms of hypochondria (Schopenhauer). As a rule the affected individual is, however, inoffensive and resigned (Leopardi).
The cholera characteristic, Stadium algidum, is also to be found in bacillus niger infection—a Stadium algidum when the soul slowly grows cold, and at last reaches the zero of insensibility (Tiberius).
The curious, and, up till now, unexplained immunity which protects certain individuals from cholera, appears again in hypochondria—so, for instance, have idiots shown themselves absolutely refractory, i.e. not receptive of the bacillus niger infection. The explanation of the relative rarity of hypochondria is probably to be found in this fact. . . .