It is surprising to what an extent the will may affect the body, even under circumstances where it would seem impossible that physical factors could any longer have any serious influence. We often hear it said that certain people are "living on their wills", and when they are of the kind who take comparatively little food and yet succeed in accomplishing {3} a great deal of work, the truth of the expression comes home to us rather strikingly. The expression is usually considered, however, to be scarcely more than a formula of words elaborated in order to explain certain of these exceptional cases that seem to need some special explanation. The possibility of the human will of itself actually prolonging existence beyond the time when, according to all reason founded on physical grounds, life should end, would seem to most people to be quite out of the question. And yet there are a number of striking cases on record in which the only explanation of the continuance of life would seem to be that the will to live has been so strongly aroused that life was prolonged beyond even expert expectation. That the will was the survival factor in the case is clear from the fact that as soon as this active willing process ceased, because the reason that had aroused it no longer existed, the individuals in question proceeded to reach the end of life rapidly from the physical factors already at work and which seemed to portend inevitably an earlier dissolution than that which happened. Probably a great many physicians know of striking examples of patients who have lived beyond the time when ordinarily death would {4} be expected, because they were awaiting the arrival of a friend from a distance who was known to be coming and whom the patient wanted very much to see. Dying mothers have lived on to get a last embrace of a son or daughter, and wives have survived to see their husbands for a last parting--though it seemed impossible that they should do so, so far as their physical condition was concerned--and then expired within a short time. Of course there are any number of examples in which this has not been true, but then that is only a proof of the fact that the great majority of mankind do not use their wills, or perhaps, having appealed to them for help during life never or but slightly, are not prepared to make a definite serious call on them toward the end. I am quite sure, however, that a great many country physicians particularly can tell stories of incidents that to them were proofs that the will can resist even the approach of death for some time, though just as soon as the patients give up, death comes to them.