"If any one who may not just like an actual dissection, will look at
one of Quain's 'Plates of the Bones, Muscles, and Nerves of the Human
Body,' he will see that, growing as it were out of the walls of the
stomach, there are, in our wonderful human machine, great bunches of
nerves, called, by the medicals, the 'great ganglionic system,' and he
will observe that these nerves are in intimate and inseparable
connection with the spinal cord, and the brain. Then, if he recollects
that a perpetual series of conversations and signals goes on by those
agents between the stomach and the brain - that, in fact, the two are
talking together every moment (without even the delay of that
inappreciable interval for which the electric current lingers on the
wires in its wondrous progress of intelligence) - he will see that he
cannot abuse either great organ without a 'combination of parties'
against his administration.
"My unfortunate mistake, therefore, was this: I overworked my
brain. It rebelled. Stomach joined the outbreak. Heart beat to the
rescue; and all the other corporal powers sympathised in the attempt to
put me down. They would not stand ten days' work a week, and no
Sunday, - relieved though the labour might be by the amusement of
speeches and leading articles.
"The first explosion of the conspiracy laid me fainting at the desk. A
sort of truce followed this.
