The mental aspects of ordinary disease / by J. Milner Fothergill.

  • Fothergill, J. Milner (John Milner), 1841-1888.
Date:
[1874]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mental aspects of ordinary disease / by J. Milner Fothergill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bability, nay, even impossibility of any such survival as he is calculating upon. It is a curious condition, yet, nevertheless, a familiar state. It suggests some effect upon the emotional centres, for it is apparently a state of too high hopefulness, depending upon an exalted condition of the emotional centres, an escape from the control of the intellectual centres indeed. Hope seems to rise above the intelligence; just as in certain abdominal diseases there is a depression which successfully defies the corrections of the intelligence. The intellect does not seem equal to finding the true bearings, or of correcting the exalted emotional centres. In curious relation to these conditions stands the well known difference of the pulse in thoracic and abdominal disease. In thoracic disease the pulse is usually full and sometimes bounding; in abdominal disease it is small, and not rarely thready. The pulse of pneumonia and the pulse of peritonitis are distinctly dissimilar, and contrast with each other. It is well-known that there is much more tendency to collapse in abdominal than in thoracic disease. Dr. Lauder Brunton assures me that even under chloroform, and deeply under too, collapse is common in animals when the stomach is opened. Taking the question of the relation of the pulse to abdominal and thoracic disease, together with the emotional attitudes of these different affections, the synthesis is unavoidable that some effect is produced by the tubercular disease in the lungs upon the emotional centres, as opposite to the effect of abdominal disease as are the varied effects upon the pulse; and, further, that the result is probably produced through the circulation. The explanation which seems shadowed out, for it does not really amount to more, is that abdominal disease induces an ansemic state of the emotional centres— for depression is the outward indication of anaemia of the brain—while phthisis leads to an hyperaemic state, associated with exalted emotional conditions. In either case the in¬ tellectual and volitional centres appear unequal to the task of correcting the emotional disturbance, of maintaining that balance which normally exists. That our emotions are closely intertwined with our systemic conditions is evidenced by our everyday experience. The world and all in it looks bright or dark, rosy or gray, hopeful or gloomy, very much according to the functional activity of our organic processes, the state of onr assimilation, of our secretions and excretions. As a matter of fact, there are certain mental attitudes found in some diseases which are so regularly present, so