A state of mind that disturbs many people seriously, sometimes even producing physical results, because of the burden of dread that hangs over them, is that in which attention is paid to premonitions of evil. There are two of these general conditions to be considered. In the one there is a definite feeling that some special evil, occasionally very particularly outlined in the mind, as a railroad accident, fire, or a street accident of some kind, is to occur. In another mental condition there is a generic premonition of evil, {635} as if the worst were sure to happen and the patients must be constantly preparing for it. Occasionally this takes on some such form as an assurance of early breakdown in health, or of death at an untimely age, or of some crippling infirmity. This represents, of course, only one form of lack of control over the mind, but it is surprising how much physical suffering it may occasion. Only those who have had much to do with patients who suffer from this state of mind realize it. Sympathetic knowledge of the conditions that bring it about and of the real significance of premonitions will do more to help patients than anything else.

Every now and then newspapers tell the story of someone who had an impending sense of danger, perhaps of a particular form of accident or misfortune, which he could not shake off and which finally came true. Sometimes it is a fire that was anticipated, though without any reason except the dread, and precautions that eventually proved life-saving to the patient were taken, or at least friends were told of it so that the person seemed actually to have had some warning beforehand of the danger that was to come. Sometimes it is the story of a railroad accident, which some particularly fortunate individual escaped, because of a premonition that made him take another train or make a happy change of cars. Nothing is said of the times when premonitions failed, nor of the disappointments of such dreads. Most people laugh at the stories, but a few individuals become seriously impressed with the possibility of such warnings and then make themselves miserable by having frequent premonitions.

Etiology.—As to the origin of these premonitions it is hard to say. They occur more frequently on dark days than in bright weather and are complained of much more in spring and fall than during the cold brisk winter or during the summer time. A succession of very hot days, however, brings a series of premonitions, especially with regard to accidents by heat, that is not surprising since the newspapers have many accounts of sunstrokes and there is every suggestion of the possibility of danger of this kind. How large a role suggestion plays in the matter can be realized from the fact that after some particularly serious railroad accident many people have premonitions that they may be hurt and occasionally they put themselves to considerable inconvenience in choosing the car in which they will sit, if the last serious preceding accident of which they have heard happens to have brought death mainly in a particular car of a train. It is always suggestible people who are likely to have premonitions. The thought comes very simply at first, they dwell on it a little unwillingly, then they find it impossible to banish it and finally it may become a positive obsession. The soil and the seed for suggestion are both needed to produce premonitions.

Royce suggests that many of the supposedly fulfilled premonitions are really only pseudo-presentiments and represent an instantaneous and irresistible hallucination of memory, which may give rise to the impression that there has been a previous dream or other warning presaging the facts, though no such phenomenon actually took place. In other words, there would be an auto-suggestion consequent upon the hearing of other fulfilled presentiments that sometime some such thing must also occur to us, and then when a happening that reminds us of something in the previous stories of {636} presentiments comes there is the sudden responsive feeling "why, this is what I saw or must have seen in my dream."

Podmore suggests an illusion of memory magnifying or rearranging the details of a recent dream or premonitory impression, so as to make it fit into the happenings. Dreams are so vague that unless they have been written down we are not quite sure of them an hour after they occurred and a day or two later we have only the merest hint of what they were. If this can be made to have any connection with a casualty of any kind that happens subsequently we may very readily recreate the dream with its details concordant to the event. Certainly no reliance can be placed on a story of a dream fulfilled unless the dream was told before the happening.

Premonitions of Death.—Certain premonitions are common and are frequently brought to the physician's notice. Among old people it is not unusual to find that a premonition of death will hang over them for days, seriously disturbing them and their friends, hampering often a healthy reaction against disease and always lowering resistive vitality. Many of them have heard stories which make them credit the belief that such premonitions are likely to come true and therefore they cannot shake them off. They have heard stories of people who have become convinced that they were going to die at a particular time on a particular day and whose conviction has been proven by the event. Like all the other premonitions, whatever truth there may appear to be in them, is due entirely to the fact that nearly everybody has premonitions and occasionally, therefore, one of them must come true. Those that are fulfilled create such an impression that they are remembered, while those that fail are forgotten, until, though it is not realized, it becomes true that fulfilled premonitions represent exactly that much misunderstood principle that the exception proves the rule. The rule is that premonitions fail. Exceptionally, however, a premonition comes true. Instead of proving that premonitions mean anything, the rarity of their fulfillment proves the rule of their non-significance and demonstrates that they are merely coincidences.

Persuasion of Short Life.—Much mental suffering occurs in nervous people as a consequence of a premonition or persuasion which comes to them in middle life that they are destined not to live very long. This is a commoner impression than is usually thought and comes to nearly everyone at some time in life. Especially is it likely to come to those who have suffered some severe illness and who know how weak they were during their convalescence and, in spite of their thorough recovery of strength, cannot quite persuade themselves but that an ailment which made them so weak must surely have sapped their vitality so as to make long life for them impossible. It is, of course, one of the vague dreads that men always seem to be harboring, but there are times that it becomes so prominent and so influential in the production of depressive feelings that it is worth while to have the means at hand to counteract it as far as possible. In the last ten years I have made it a practice to ask, not only all my patients but most of my acquaintances above 70 years of age whether they had ever experienced such a premonition. I have particularly asked what were their feelings with regard to the hope of long life for them when they were in their forties and fifties. Without exception I have been told by all those who had the education and leisure to {637} be at all introspective, that they had felt sure that they would not have long life.

Most of the men consulted took out life insurance in such a way as to benefit their families after their death rather than themselves during life. Indeed it seems not an unusual thing for men to have some experience with an ailment between 40 and 55 which makes them realize their mortality much more than the deaths of their friends around them had succeeded in doing. Premonitions and impressions, then, of this kind evidently mean nothing, so far as the prospect of long life is concerned. Practically everyone has them, and since, of course, the great majority of men do not live to die of old age, it would seem that their premonition of comparatively short life was fulfilled. Occasionally a man will be found at the age of fifty unwilling to take up further work or develop his business because of the dread that has come over him that he may not live long enough to make it worth the while. Where there is serious kidney or heart trouble such an abstention from business is commendable, but in many cases it leaves a man without occupation or with insufficient occupation and he becomes short-circuited on himself with more serious results from worry than would have come from work.

Publication of Fulfilled Premonitions.—The publication of fulfilled premonitions has always seemed to me to be an especially fertile source of premonitions for other people. Every now and then someone goes to bed in a hotel having communicated to friends the idea that he fears there may be fire before morning. I do not suppose that one out of ten people who sleep in a strange hotel fail to have some such thought, they do not consider it a premonition, however, but only a suggestion for the taking of proper precautions so as to know where exits and fire escapes and other means of escape are situated, so that in the excitement of the fire they may not have to do any thinking, but may have already made up their minds what they shall do. This sort of premonition, if we call it by that name, has a definite useful purpose. Occasionally it seems marvelously provident. The other makes its possessor toss sleepless a portion of the night, does no good and much harm. If, however, the premonition has been communicated to someone else and then a fire should occur, the reporting of the fulfilled premonition comes to a lot of weak-minded people as a confirmation of their worst fears. It is, of course, only a question of coincidence in a succession of events by no means connected in any causal relation, yet by the unthinking set down as showing the possibility of such premonitions being supremely significant. If we had all the stories of unfulfilled premonitions also published then the true significance of the others would be clear.

An Unfulfilled Premonition.—There is an excellent story of a strong but unfulfilled premonition told by Carl Schurz in his "Recollections," which seems to me such a good antidote to the influence of supposed premonitions, that every physician should know its details for their psychotherapeutic value with patients prone to be troubled in this way. The ease with which the depression consequent upon the premonition was relieved as soon as another forcible suggestion that the danger was past took possession of him, shows how such states of mind can be altered with no more real reason for the alteration than there was for the original depression.{638}

On the morning of the battle of Chancellorsville General Schurz awoke with the absolute persuasion that at last his time had come and he was to be killed that day. He had never had such a premonition before. He had heard of many cases in which such premonitions proved the forerunner of death. He realized how ridiculous was the idea that he should know anything about what the future held for him, even vaguely, and he tried to shake it off. He found it impossible to do so. He thought that after he took up the routine work of the day the force of the premonition would be lost. It was not, but, on the contrary, seemed to increase in power over him. Finally the idea became so imperative that he sat down and wrote letters of farewell to his wife and friends, telling them that he had been tempted to do so because of this premonition of danger. When he went into battle—and it may be recalled that the Eleventh Corps did some fighting at Chancellorsville that day—he was sure that now the end was not far off. It did not take away his courage, however, and though he was well in the zone of danger, he issued his orders and kept his troops well in hand as we know from the history of the battle.

Finally his aide-de-camp, riding toward the front of the line beside him, was killed by a cannon ball. All in an instant the thought came over him that this was the only danger that was likely to be near him for the day. The burden of premonition lifted from him as if the fact that a friend had been killed beside him gave him an assurance that he himself was not to be taken. There was absolutely no reason for his thinking so, but his feelings of solicitude with regard to himself and his fate faded completely and at once. He continued in the thick of the fight and of danger and was untouched. He himself called attention to the fact that if his premonition had come true, as well it might in the midst of the very serious danger which he faced, it would have seemed a strong confirmation of the impression that premonitions have a meaning other than that of coincidence. It was, however, a magnificent example of a failed premonition quite as striking as any of the stories that are told about premonitions that came true.

RÔle of Coincidence.—This must be remembered in many of our arguments in medical and other scientific matters. Most diseases are self-limited, therefore anything that is given as a remedy for them just about the time that nature has succeeded in conquering the virulence of the disease and bringing about the cure of the patient, seems to be curative. Such cures, often remedies of supposed wonderful potency, come and go in medicine by the hundred every ten years. Such curious doctrines as that of the influence of maternal impressions in producing deformities and defects in the unborn child are founded on nothing better than these coincidences. They are often very startling, but the rule by which they must be judged is the number of times in which in spite of similar conditions no premonition takes place. Literally thousands of people go to bed every night who are to be waked by the danger of fire before morning and yet have no premonition of it. Literally millions of people have gone to bed in recent years without any premonition of earthquake, yet have been wakened before morning with their houses tumbling around them. If a few people have premonitions in these cases it is easy to understand that it is coincidence and not anything else, for these are exceptions, and this again is a case of the exception proving the rule.{639}

Premonitions and Superstitions—Thirteen.—Occasionally premonitions are connected with certain events that are themselves, even though happening quite accidentally, supposed to be portentous. How many people, for instance, feel quite uncomfortable if they sit down thirteen at a table. The very fact of the gathering of thirteen is supposed to be a spontaneous or automatic premonition that is a forewarning of evil that has to come to some of them. Unfortunately, this superstition continues to have a vogue and an influence over people's minds because stories are told that are supposed to confirm it. Needless to say, when these stories are true, they are merely coincidences. Out of any baker's dozen of people who sit down to dinner it is not surprising if one should die or be killed during the year. Some of the stories, however, are merely sensational inventions worked up to be given to the public because a number of people are interested in this sort of thing. Probably one of the stories that has gone the rounds most and that has served to confirm many people in their uneasiness over the number 13 is that which is told as happening to Matthew Arnold and some friends, supposedly the year the great English litterateur died.

The story runs that just as Mr. Arnold and his friends were about to sit down to the table it was discovered that there were thirteen present. According to the old tradition in the matter it is the one who first gets up from table under these circumstances that is likely to be affected by the malignant influence. When the end of the dinner had arrived, by previous arrangement Mr. Arnold and two very healthy friends, brothers, arose simultaneously. According to the widely diffused newspaper account of years afterward, Mr. Arnold himself died within the year and one of the brothers was lost in the wreck of an English passenger vessel off the coast of Australia in six months, while the other brother committed suicide before the end of the year. Careful investigation of the details has shown, however, that the story was made out of whole cloth. Mr. Arnold himself, who was suffering from heart trouble towards the end of his life, was not likely to take part in any such arrangement because of the constant danger, well-known to himself, of sudden death in his case. This might happen at any time and might seem to confirm the superstition. The dates of the story, moreover, are all wrong. Matthew Arnold's death and the loss of the English passenger vessel in Australian waters, referred to, do not occur within five years of each other. The story has gone round the world. The correction will never reach so far. The story is startling; the explanation commonplace. Many people will continue to believe that here, at least, was one striking confirmation of their superstition.

It is curious how the force of this "13" superstition has continued in spite of education and enlightenment. Most passenger vessels now built have no staterooms numbered thirteen. On certain streets in large cities one finds the number 12-1/2 (until this year it was so on my own) substituted for thirteen. Sometimes one finds "twelve a" or something similar. In the large hotels, where they have immense banquet halls with the tables numbered so that guests may be able to find their places, I have often noted that there was no table number thirteen. It is said that in some of the new skyscraper buildings twenty stories and more in height there has been question of skipping the thirteenth floor as a designation, because while most {640} people would be quite undisturbed about it, some do not care to have an office on the thirteenth floor, giving as an excuse that clients or patrons do not care to come to the thirteenth floor. In automobile races men are willing to risk their lives by going a hundred miles an hour on roads never intended for such performances, but they refuse to race behind the fell number thirteen. This, after all, can be readily understood. The slightest thing that takes away a man's complete confidence in himself may be serious in an automobile going as fast as these. Men must not think of fear or they lose some of their power and control over themselves and their machine. They must simply forget everything except the task before them.

The belief in the thirteen superstition is one form of acceptance of premonitions. That of itself should be enough to enable sensible people to throw them off. Above all, it must be remembered that such supposed malignant influence, when allowed to affect people, impairs their presence of mind and may thus lead up to the accident or mishap which it is supposed to foreshadow. This is the serious feature of such premonitions and dreads. Unless people can be persuaded sensibly to be rid of them they handicap themselves whenever they are placed in danger that causes them to recur to the thought of the premonition or dread. While there is absolutely nothing but coincidence in even the supposed true stories, and many of the stories are merely sensational inventions, yet people need to be persuaded to rid themselves of the incubus that settles over them because of such ideas.

Premonitions and Telepathy.—There are many people who think that premonitions have something to do with telepathy. Somehow the future event is supposed to be able to send some message to specially susceptible minds. Either that, of course, or there is some being in another world whose interest is sufficient to convey some inkling of the future. A little consideration of this subject, however, shows the utter lack of rationality in any such opinion. Future events, having as yet no existence, cannot in any way influence intelligence. Such future events, when dependent on human free will, are quite impossible of being foretold and, as has been said, no being except the Creator Himself knows anything about them. It would be only from Him, then, that information might be supposed to come and it would be hard to think such information would be so vague and indefinite as to leave room for doubt and, besides, often defeat its purpose of protection by seriously disturbing patients and lessening their presence of mind. There is no reasonable explanation by which a human being can be supposed to obtain knowledge of a future event unless there is a complete overturning of the ordinary laws of nature and then it would be reasonably supposed that no doubt of the significance of the event would be left.

Nearly all of us have premonitions that fail. Only a few especially introspective people who are constantly afraid of what will happen to them, and who are sure that the worst is always preparing for them, have their premonitions come true more than once or twice in life. The striking fulfillments of a few premonitions could be paralleled by an endless number of just as striking failures, only that most people dismiss the idea completely from their minds as too foolish to be further talked about. It is quite the same with dreams. All the world dreams and there would be a serious violation of the theory of probabilities if some dreams did not come true. The great {641} majority of mankind, especially after the age of thirty, is fearful lest something ill is going to happen to them and their premonitions are rather frequent. If some of these did not come true then the mathematics of coincidences as based on the theory of probabilities would prove false.