Bodily agony long borne produces death by exhaustion. More frequently,
arresting the action of the heart for a time, it causes that temporary
death we call fainting. On other occasions vomiting is a consequence.
And where such manifest derangements do not result, we still, in the
pallor and trembling, trace the general prostration. Beyond the actual
loss of life caused by subjection to intense cold there are depressions
of vitality less marked caused by cold less extreme--temporary
enfeeblement following too long an immersion in icy water; enervation
and pining away consequent on inadequate clothing. Similarly is it with
submission to great heat: we have lassitude reaching occasionally to
exhaustion; we have, in weak persons, fainting, succeeded by temporary
debilitation; and in steaming tropical jungles Europeans contract
fevers which, when not fatal, often entail life-long incapacities.
Consider, again, the evils that follow violent exertion continued in
spite of painful feelings--now a fatigue which destroys appetite or
arrests digestion if food is taken, implying failure of the reparative
processes when they are most needed; and now a prostration of the
heart, here lasting for a time and there, where the transgression has
been repeated day after day, made permanent: reducing the rest of life
to a lower level.
No less conspicuous are the depressing effects of emotional pains.
There are occasional cases of death from grief; and in other cases
the mental suffering which a calamity causes, like bodily suffering,
shows its effects by syncope. Often a piece of bad news is succeeded
by sickness; and continued anxiety will produce loss of appetite,
perpetual indigestion and diminished strength. Excessive fear, whether
aroused by physical or moral danger, will, in like manner, arrest for
a time the processes of nutrition; and, not unfrequently, in pregnant
women brings on miscarriage; while, in less extreme cases, the cold
perspiration and unsteady hands indicate a general lowering of the
vital activities, entailing partial incapacity of body or mind or both.
How greatly emotional pain deranges the visceral actions is shown us by
the fact that incessant worry is not unfrequently followed by jaundice.
And here, indeed, the relation between cause and effect happens to
have been proved by direct experiment. Making such arrangements that
the bile-duct of a dog delivered its product outside the body, Claude
Bernard observed that so long as he petted the dog and kept him in good
spirits, secretion went on at its normal rate; but on speaking angrily,
and for a time so treating him as to produce depression, the flow of
bile was arrested.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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