[How the body may be influenced by the mind in sickness and health] / by Henry Simpson.

  • Simpson, Henry.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [How the body may be influenced by the mind in sickness and health] / by Henry Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    dition of the blood—some of them fatal, occurring upon a severe shock of the nervous system, that I have no doubt of the fact. Dr. Tuke mentions a case which occurred in the late war between France and Germany. He says, A lady informs me that at Tours many lost their health, and some died from fright. A young lady was standing with her father at the window when the Prussian soldiers came down the tranchee, and was seized with shivering. Her father, who could feel her trembling, said, 'You need not be frightened—they will not hurt you;' but she had received a shock from which she became quite blanched, and lost her sleep and flesh. Some rime afterwards she had not fully recovered her strength. The same writer quotes from a letter by Dr. Boggs to the Lancet, in 1871, as follows : The only hope of the Parisians, which they fondly cherished, and which, in a great measure, kept them alive during the siege, was most cruelly blighted, and you may imagine their disappointment when the capitulation of the city was announced—the mental shock to some was such that they almost lost their reason But the most remarkable effect of the siege was the aged appearance of some of the inhabitants ; men and women alike seem to have passed over at least ten years of their existence in at least half as many months. A friend of mine, a distinguished practirioner, . . . neariy fifty years of age, has become so grey and wrinkled and such other changes have taken place in his constitution, as to give him the appearance of a man of sixty. The influence of emotion on the hair is popularly known Byron refers to this when he says, in The Prisoner of ChiUon, Nor grew it white in a single night As men's have grown from sudden fears. Many well authenticated cases of this are on record Dr Tuke iays that he knew of a captain of a vessel, under forty years of ige, who suffered shipwreck twice. On the first occasion (in vhich he lost all hope) his hair quickly turned grey ; and on the 't^t^^Zl^^l^^'^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ''''^ The influence of the emotions on the appetite and on the ugestive organs is known more or less to almost every one Most nw/'^^Tl^^^.^^^ ^'^^^ °^ anxiety will take away the Stn ' ^^^^ j^^^^^ sometimes dusea in the same way. The effect of passion or violent anger on the quality and oro- 'erties of human milk is such that-instead of itsleing the bland