rate
attempt of the gland to grow, and meet the needs of the organism. The
complex of appearances called migraine now becomes understandable.
There are a number of factors, such as fatigue, intense cold, or high
sugar food like chocolate, which will cause an engorgement of the
gland with blood and swelling of it. But they do not concern us now.
Intense mental occupation, concentration as the popular term has it,
acts as a patent excitor of the attack.

Brain work drives more blood into the brain and the gland. Besides,
mental activity is accompanied by increased function of the
ante-pituitary, if intellectual, or of the post-pituitary if
emotional. Brain work then causes a temporary enlargement of the
gland. If, now, the bone container of the endocrine is too small to
permit of much swelling, the bone will be pressed against or even worn
into. This means headache, severe, easily going on to the kind known
as sick-headache. The nerves which move the eyes in various directions
lie next to the pituitary. If, in its expansion, it moves sufficiently
outward, it may press upon, irritate them or paralyze, and so evolve
various eye disturbances in association with the headache. No one can
overrate this conception of migraine, for a number of men of genius
have suffered from sick-headache and eye symptoms.

As for epilepsy, the problem is more complex. One has to rule out
first those who have organic destructive disease of the brain. But
they are out of our field: genius predicates at least an intact brain.
Of the others a number may be interpreted upon an endocrine basis. At
least they will, in their physiognomy, physique, mentality, conduct
and character, document the glandular constellation under which they
live, and a proper understanding of which is necessary for them to be
helped. One frequently seen is the thymo-centric, with small enclosed
sella turcica. The latter fact explains the occurrence of the
epilepsy. Periodic variations in the secretory tides of the other
endocrines, the ovaries, the thyroid, and so on, may determine the
onset of the attack of "fits." The point is that when epilepsy plays a
constant part in the life history of a man of genius, we are justified
in assuming a disturbed balance among his hormones, and so a reasoned
picture perhaps of the foundations for the erratic in his behaviour or
his productions.

THE NEURASTHENIC GENIUS

The fin de siecle intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were qu