recollections in her case would depend, he said, on whether it had been
indulged to an extent to bring about a morbid state of the brain fibres
concerned. What might be conventionally or morally morbid or
objectionable, was not, however, necessarily disease in the material
sense, and nothing but experiment could absolutely determine whether the
two conditions coincided in any case. At any rate, he positively assured
Henry that no harm could ensue to the patient, whether the operation
succeeded or not.

"It is a pity, young man," he said, with a flash of enthusiasm, "that you
don't come to me twenty years later. Then I could guarantee your friend
the complete extirpation of any class of inconvenient recollections she
might desire removed, whether they were morbid or healthy; for since the
great fact of the physical basis of the intellect has been established, I
deem it only a question of time when science shall have so accurately
located the various departments of thought and mastered the laws of their
processes, that, whether by galvanism or some better process, the mental
physician will be able to extract a specific recollection from the memory
as readily as a dentist pulls a tooth, and as finally, so far as the
prevention of any future twinges in that quarter are concerned. Macbeth's
question, 'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; pluck from the
memory a rooted sorrow; raze out the written troubles of the brain?' was
a puzzler to the sixteenth century doctor, but he of the twentieth, yes,
perhaps of the nineteenth, will be able to answer it affirmatively."

"Is the process at all painful ?"

"In no degree, my dear sir. Patients have described to me their
sensations many times, and their testimony is quite in agreement. When
the circuit is closed there is a bubbling, murmurous sound in the ears, a