Notes on health : showing how to preserve or regain it, by diet, regimen, &c, with a familiar explanation of the chief functions of the human body, and their relation to the mind / by W.T. Coleman.

  • Coleman, W. T.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on health : showing how to preserve or regain it, by diet, regimen, &c, with a familiar explanation of the chief functions of the human body, and their relation to the mind / by W.T. Coleman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    assured on the strength of stethoseopic examination that his lungs and his heart are sound; and the doctor who delights in liver theories may be unable to make a liver case of our patient who still complains of weakness. Where then is the defect, and what is it ? Now, if it be remembered that all organs of the body- whatsoever are dependent for their supply of material and power on the one vital fluid, the blood, it is easy enough to see that if this blood be either defective or materially altered from the healthy standard, general debility must ensue. And this defective or altered condition of the blood is in fact the immediate cause of general debility, in the great majority of such cases—not in all, certainly, and this will at once appear if we reflect that any hindrance to the free supply of blood to any organ or part of the human body must in the same degree render its functions defective. The deficiency of supply producing the same, or a more decisive result, than thev defective quality of the blood. For instance, we may see even a strong man, whose blood is in excellent condition, suddenly lose conscious- ness and fall to the ground, on witnessing some horrible scene, or on hearing suddenly some fearful intelligence. The explanation of this is, that the emotion acting on the nerves which control the heart, induces a temporary disturbance or suspension of its action,—the blood is no longer supplied to the brain with its usual regularity; the function of the brain is suspended. This is the way a faint or fainting-fit, as it is called, occurs. But habitual debility, in most cases, depends rather on