Star.
London, England, 1831-05-09 00:00:00

INFLUENCE OF THE PASSIONS AND IMAGINATION,
BY Foists WINSLOW, ESQ•

Read at the Westminster Medical Society, Feh. 19, 1831.
Some philosophers and poets of antiquity, among whom we find Ho.
mer. Plato, and Aristotle, have placed anger among the pleasurable
passions. Aristotle observes, that it is pleasant to be angry.' Joy
acts as a stimulant to the body. Sanctorius ascribed the effect of joy
to a portion of the nervous fluid being forced out along with the per.
spirable matter. Dr. Parsons, in his Physiology. ascribes the effects
of joy to the great determination of blood to the head, propelled by the
heart and arteries. Baron Haller suspects a kind of apoplexy produced
in the system by the sudden effects of joy; and Dr. Cullen ascribes the
effects to a loss of tone in the system, which it cannot recover. Joy,'
says Pritchard, ' is more likely to occasion sudden insanity than grief,
because the former cannot, like the latter, hind relief in tars, and
tears are the natural solution of cerebral excitement and congestion.
If intense grief do not find this natural vent for increased cerebral ex-
citement, mental derangement, with a propensity to suicide, is a fre-
quent consequence.
Hope is a modification of joy, or rather joy by anticipation. It is
encouragement given to desire. Hope is so pleasing, so invigorating an
affection, that it is emphatically styled the balm of life. It preserves
the mind from stagnating in its present possessions, corrects the uneasi-
ness of desire and animates it to strnggle with difficulties it may have to
encounter. Hope possessing the happy secret of anticipating the good
we desire, Sir Walter Scott has justly observed, the chief pleasure of
life consists in the anticipation of enjoyment. He who gave away all he
had, and reserved only hope, made not so ill a bargain as may be ima-
gintd : he took for himself that which is sweetest its life.
how often do we see sickness, which has resisted the ordinary meant
of cure, yield solely to tire influence of the mind, reposing confidence in
the pretending impostures of some, of the supposed sanctity and efficacy
of prayers and good works of others. All the wonderful cures attributed
to the prayers of Prince Hohenlohe, Perkins's metallic tractors, and
magnetism, may be accounted for on this principle. Unless the phy.
sician be able to inspire confidence in his patient, he will effect but
little towards a cure. " Hence," say. an eminent writer and acute
thinker, .4 the physician is often the poet and artist, the third son of
Apollo, and begotten only under the influence of mild contellations
He that depends on medicine alone, as such, seeks corn in dtraelted
sheaves. Medicine," he continues, "is but an instrument of cure ;
but the physician heals, not by medicine alone, but also by the glance
of the eye, and by the animating word."
Many pathologists have attempted to trace the origin of all diseases
to a disturbance in the nervous system. Thus, in fever, Dr. Smith
says, the primary disturbance is an affection of the nervous function.,
which is followed by increased vascular action, or disordered secretions.
Andral has stated ices his opinion, in his new work on Consumption,
' " that pulmonary tubercles are the product of morbid secretion, which
morbid secretion may be the consequence, and in the majority of in.
stances is. of a commotion in the centre of the nervous system. Send.
tion, no doubt, depends upon a healthy condition of the vascular system,
and the vascular system being under the control of the nervous system,
it may easily be conceived how a disturbance of that system, by an inor-
dinate indulgence in the passions, should give rise to consumption
Andrasl says, that he has frequently seen the disease brought on by deep
and long.continued mental affliction. Serous collections in different
cavities of the body are frequently attributable to a disturbance in the
nervous system, which disturbance may be produced by the working of
the passions. Local diseases in different parts of the body are very
much influenced by the state of the mind. I have seen a remarkable
case of ulceration in the leg of a woman, which resisted the ordinary
remedial agents, heal rapidly in consequence of her mind bang
tranquillised by the return of her husband trom sea.
The typhoid fevers of this country, which depend upon, and are
aggravated by, a deficient supply of nervous energy, frequently owe
their origin to the depressing effects of passion, caused by mental
anxiety—ungratified love--exceasive grief, &c. Every thing ought to
be done, under such circumstances, to rouse and excite the patient. I
insanity is the frequent consequence of disappointment in the gratifica-
tion of a predominant passion. On account of the marked effect which
some passions have upon the vascular system, many pathologist, have
attributed all diseases of the heart to commotion, of the mind. There
can be no doubt that many diseases of that organ are to be attributed
to an original derangement of the brain and nervous system, which
change may be the effect of mental emotion.
The effects of fear are to be accounted for, partly on the principle
of a powerful stimulus (hope) being removed, and partly by the spe-
cific action of the ideas representing the object of aversion, and
par ly from the re-action of the emotion and disorder of the mind.—
Romelli relates the case of a French gentleman, who was thrown
int) prison, and on whom fear operated so powerfully as to change
his hair completely grey during the night. Dr. Darwin ascribes this
phenomenon to the torpor of the vessels which circulate the fluids
destined to nourish the hair. Mr. Madden in his account of his travels
to the Levant, in the chapter on the plague, after relating a case
of infection produced by fear, observes, " This is one of the many
proofs I have had of the influence of the mind over disease. In no
other complaint is this influence so marked. The man who is appre•
hensive of contagion is always the first to take the disease ; fear is a
predisposing cause of the plague." The process of labour Is frequently '
interrupted by fear. Many authors consider terror a distinct passion
front fear: fear, they say, is :a depressing passion, and tenor exciting.
Sir A Crichton says there is no difference between the two passions ;
f.ar arises in consequence of an anticipated evil, terror from one
present. The will is not excited in the former, consequently the inns-
des of voluntary action partake of the torpor. Oreding, in his excel-
lent essay, relates several cases of epilepsy, complicated with insanity,
and with melancholia, which arose from slight causes of fear. Constant
Ras produces weakness in the judgment; the power of attention cannot
be excited. Fear of poverty among the opulent is frequently a cause
of insanity. I have proved, says Bosquillim, im my commentaries on
the Elements of Practical Medicine, by Cullen, that terror alone may
determine the symptoms of hydrophobia, or madness, in those who
have been bitten by animals suspected to be attacked with this disorder.
Numbers of persons have been seen to labour under symptoms of this
nature, and to recover on being informed that the dog that had bitten
them was not mad.

- °net, sorrow, love, I consider, in some degree, debilitating passion...
We have a remarkable instance of death being produced by grief in the
life of Hobert 111. of Scotland. The celebrated Verabus is said to
have died of grief for having opentd a man, whose bean was palpi.
tating. Le Brun observes, it is remarkable that admiration causes
I no alteration either in the heart or in the blood, as the other passions
do; the reason of this is, that not having either good or evil for its
object, but only a want of knowing the thing admired, it has no relation
either to the heart er the body, on which all the sensual pleasures
depend, When love Is unattended with any extraordinary degree of
joy, desire, or sadness, the pulse beats regular, and is much higher and
stronger than usual; it diffuses a genial warmth into the breast, and;
facilitates the digestion of the food in the stomach ; an that this passion;
"
Le Brun says, "is very good for the health." On the contrary, h%
observable in hatred the pulse is irregular, the breast feels a heat, inter-
mixed with a certain sharp and piercing tire, and the stomach ceases to
perform its functions. In joy the pulse is quicker than ordinary,
though not so quick se In love.
In our investigation into the phenomena of disease, and the aunts
of their departure front the healthy standard, the influence of the