In all of the great theater fires examples of this kind are recorded. A woman who barely escaped with her life from a theater fire some years ago had an ear torn off, very probably by some one grasping it in the crowd. She knew nothing of this until it was called to her attention after she got out of the theater, and then she promptly fainted from the pain and shock. Under such circumstances men walk with broken legs or limp even with dislocations, utterly unconscious that anything serious has happened to them. Men have been known to be unaware of a broken bone or even more serious conditions, {86} ordinarily quite painful and disabling, while laboring to help others in an accident. Suppression of Reaction.--This side of the influence of the mind on the body is so interesting that its effects have often been noted and studied. While we do not quite understand the mechanism by which it accomplishes its marvels of anesthesia and even of motility under apparently impossible conditions, there is no doubt that severe pain may utterly fail to reach the consciousness, though the nervous system is uninterruptedly carrying the messages just as it did before. The lack of attention suppresses the ordinary effect upon the personality. Evidently the messages originate and are carried to the nerve centers, but find no attention available for them, and so pass unnoticed. The study of phases of this phenomenon of suppression of reaction forms a good basis for the use of mental influence, and shows its marvelous power to overcome disturbing physical factors. Amputation Stump Aches.--An interesting example of the influence of mind over body, when circumstances favor its exercise or emphasize it, and at the same time a striking illustration of the potency of suggestion in the cure of discomfort, is found in the stories that are so common of cases of pains in amputation stumps. Any number of weird tales are told of men who complain of feeling cramps in the toes of an amputated limb after this portion of their body had been buried. The discomfort is common enough. In the special stories, however, the limbs have been dug up, the toes straightened out--according to the story, they were always found cramped in some way--and then the patient is at once restored to ease. In the good old times they probably believed in some direct connection between the straightening out of the toes of the amputated member and subsequent relief of pain. For us it is but an example of the power of suggestion. It is not the sort of suggestion that one likes to think of employing, though it has a certain dramatic quality which adds efficiency to suggestion.