Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training of the mind, and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training of the mind, and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    751/810 (page 683)
    to call forth sensations in it, which seem to depend upon a change in its circulation (§ 129); and if this state be kept up automatically by the attraction of the attention, the change may become a source of modification, not only in the functional action, but in the Nutrition of the part. Thus, there can be no doubt that real disease often supervenes upon fancied ailment, especially through the indulgence of what is known as the hypochondriacal tendency to dwell-upon uneasy sensations ; these sensations being themselves, in many instances, purely “ subjective” (§ 143). In many individuals (especially females) whose sympathies are strong, a pain in any part of the body may be produced by witnessing in another, or even by hearing described, the sufferings occasioned by disease or injury of that pai-t; and if this pain be attended-to and believed-in as an indication of serious mischief, injurious consequences are very likely to follow. So, again, the self-tormenting hypochondriac will imagine himself the victim of any malady that he may “ fancyand if this fancy should be sufficiently persistent and engrossing, it is not unlikely to lead to real disease of the organ to which it relates. This persistent direction of the attention has a much greater potency, when com- bined with the expectation of a particular residt; and thus it happens that the spells of pretenders to occult powers, in all ages and nations, often produce the predicted maladies in the subjects who are credulous enough to believe in their efficacy. I Such was formerly the case among the Negroes of the British West Indies, to such a degree that it was found necessary to repress i what were known as “ Obeah practices” by penal legislation; a . slow pining-away, ending in death, being the not uncommon result ' of the fixed belief on the part of the victim, that “ Obi” had been put upon him by some old man or woman reputed to possess, the injurious power. So great, indeed, was the dread of these spells, that the mere threat of one party to a quarrel to “put Obi” upon the other, was often sufficient to terrify the latter into submission.