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THOUGHTS SUSPENDED

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 31, No. 18.

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THOUGHTS SUSPENDED.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

I find the following interesting and important statement in “Man all Immortal,” page 396, by D. W. Clarke. It shows the important fact that thoughts are the result of the action of the brain. Suspend the action of the brain, and you suspend thought, you destroy the mind. However long the brain may be inactive and the mind suspended, whenever the brain is again allowed to act, the mind begins to operate right where it left off, whether it be months or years in the past. It shows that thoughts cease where the action of the brain ceases, and that when the brain again begins to act, then thoughts are again produced. Thus Dr. Clarke says:
“Dr. Pritchard mentions a man who had been employed with a beetle and wedge, splitting wood. At night he put those implements in the hollow of an old tree, and desired his son to accompany him next morning in making the fence. In the night, however, he became insane. After several years his reason suddenly returned, and the first question he asked was whether his sons had brought home the beetle and wedges. They, being afraid to enter into an explanation, said that they could not find them; on which he arose, went to the field where he had worked so many years before, and found, in the place where he had left them, the wedges and the iron rings of the beetle, the wooden part having mouldered away.”
Another instance of a still more striking character is thus given:
“A British captain, at the battle of the Nile, was giving an order from the quarter deck of his vessel, when a shot struck him in the head, depriving him instantaneously of sense and speech. Living, however, he was taken home, and remained in the Greenwich hospital fifteen months. At the end of that period, during which he had exhibited no signs of intelligence, an operation was performed upon him by a skillful surgeon that in a moment restored him to his faculties. He immediately rose in his bed and completed the order. Instances of a similar character might be multiplied to almost any extent. But these clearly show the astonishing power of reminiscence in the human soul.”
D. M. CANRIGHT.