Kames.
4. (Physiol.) (a) The reciprocal influence exercised by the various
organs or parts of the body on one another, as manifested in the
transmission of a disease by unknown means from one organ to another
quite remote, or in the influence exerted by a diseased condition of
one part on another part or organ, as in the vomiting produced by a
tumor of the brain. (b) That relation which exists between different
persons by which one of them produces in the others a state or
condition like that of himself. This is shown in the tendency to yawn
which a person often feels on seeing another yawn, or the strong
inclination to become hysteric experienced by many women on seeing
another person suffering with hysteria.
5. A tendency of inanimate things to unite, or to act on each other;
as, the sympathy between the loadstone and iron. [R.]