There is, however, a power which is superior even to that of the
headache; and we must avow to the glory of France, that this power is
one of the most recent which has been won by Parisian genius. As in the
case with all the most useful discoveries of art and science, no one
knows to whose intellect it is due. Only, it is certain that it was
towards the middle of the last century that “Vapors” made their first
appearance in France. Thus while Papin was applying the force of
vaporized water in mechanical problems, a French woman, whose name
unhappily is unknown, had the glory of endowing her sex with the
faculty of vaporizing their fluids. Very soon the prodigious influence
obtained by vapors was extended to the nerves; it was thus in passing
from fibre to fibre that the science of neurology was born. This
admirable science has since then led such men as Philips and other
clever physiologists to the discovery of the nervous fluid in its
circulation; they are now perhaps on the eve of identifying its organs,
and the secret of its origin and of its evaporation. And thus, thanks
to certain quackeries of this kind, we may be enabled some day to
penetrate the mysteries of that unknown power which we have already
called more than once in the present book, the _Will_. But do not let
us trespass on the territory of medical philosophy. Let us consider the
nerves and the vapors solely in their connection with marriage.
Victims of Neurosis (a pathological term under which are comprised all
affections of the nervous system) suffer in two ways, as far as married
women are concerned; for our physiology has the loftiest disdain for
medical classifications. Thus we recognize only: