The Red Cloud chief., 1880-09-30
NRRY AND

EORRY AND DISEASE.
THE mind makes tie body it in
kaits. using for that purpose the mate
tials 1t collects from the outer world, SO
Its influence over the tenements it con-
structs is potent in the extreme. Every
emotion it experiences exerts a direct
influence upon some one or more of its
corporeal organs. Fear injuriously af-
fects the heart and the skin; anger. the
liver; sorrow and anxiety, the digestive
organs and the a%limentary canal; and
passion, the ~blood-vessels; extreme de-
preston will induce ~dysentery and
scurvy; and Bichat, the great French
anatomist, maintains that cancer of the
stomach frequently owes its origin to
powerful emotions. There is a duly
authenticated case of a man aged
twenty-seven, who for two wears was
exposed to perpetual worry and anxiety
OF mind, and from whom his hair fell
of literally i'm masses, so that he became
completely bald, his very eyebrows and
eyelashes having disappeared. Medical
treatment proved unavailing; but when
his business troubles passed away. his
hair came back again. An eminent
physician says that he has "known the
teeth to decay in an extraordinary man.
ner In a few weeks, as the effect of
powerful emotion, more allied TO fear
thar any other" Another states that
ga young man in Paris had a muskot
pointed at his breast; he became sud-
denly deeply jaundiced, for which he
was taken TO a hospital, and died" Sir
Samuel Baker tells us that when he was
at Obbo. in Central Africa, "any severe
action OF the mind, such as grief or
anger, was almost certain to be sue
ceeded by fever in that country" And
1T is a fact familiar, / suppose, to every
medical man that numbers of infants
lose their lives owing to the deplorable
Ignorance on the part of their mothers
of the influence of mental emotion upon
the secretion of milk.
The fear of smallpox, cholera, the
yellow fever, or the plague, has repeat
edly induced one of these maladies in
persons oppressed with the apprehen-
sion of it. Even dropsy has been oc-
casioned by terror. One of the most
remarkable cases Of this kind is that
reported by a hospital physician at
Narbonne, in France. A boy, aged
eleven, a medical pupil, had los. his
father, and imagined in n dream that
he returned and embraced him. which
gave the lad a great fright. Next morn
ing his abdomen was found TO be dis
tended like a balloon" and very pain
full and tender. Medicines having
failed to remove the ~effusion, the
surgeon drew off ten pints of clear
fluid, the cure being completed by
local friction and diuretics."
could quote scores of similar Illus
tratiOns of the power of mental emo
ton to produce physical disorder or
disease; but enough have been cited,
perhaps, to sustain my position. But
there is another side to the subject, viz,
the curative power of the emotions, for
this is Just as remarkable as their
morbid influences. Many persons will,
no doubt. remember what Voltaire said
about medical science. that lit is the
art of amusing the patients, while ma
ture performs the cure" But this is
n of those half truths which pass cur
rent as whole truths, because they are
wrapped up in IN epigram, and are
favored with wit. The polite ply
stefan will do his best to amuse the
mere mdtade imdginaire, and will throw
in a few bread pills and harmless tinct-
ures in Difference to her-for such
patients are usually wOmen-in defer
ence to her superstitious belief in the
efficacy of physic; but the philosophical
= practitioner who has real invalids to
deal with will do something more than
amuse them, or thar administer medi-
cine. He will endeavor to restore their
health OF mind, to encourage hope, to
inspire confidence, to d:spel anxiety, to
promote cheerfulneSs, TO belittle the
malady in the estimation of the suffer-
er, and to enlist on his side as medical
and curative agepts the mental faculties
of his patients. And he will succeed
in proportion as he does this. / have
n such practitioner in my minds
eye at this moment friend of two-
and-twenty years standing, to whom
the obligations of my family and my
self for this rational and beneficial
= kind of treatment are such as cannot
be cancelled by a mere money pay
ment; and | am sure that his profess
sional experience has beer full of signal
illustrations of the power of the mind
over the body in the psychopathic di-
rections 1 have indicated. Many such
illustrations are to be found in the
medical books: and they serve to ex-
plain the astonishing cures which have
often been effected by apparently the
most preposterous remedies. So wisea
man as Bacon believed in spells and
amulets. Cato the Censor seriously re-
corded an incarnation for setting dis
located bones; and numbers of persons
are reported to have been healed of
scorbutic affections by the imposition
of royal hands, from the time of Edward
the Confessor down to the DAYS of
Queen Anne. The grease of a roasted
hedgehog was formerly regarded as
e~ficacious for the removal of deaf
ness. Apickled herring, applied to the
soles of the feet, was said to Danish
ague. A mouse, skinned, dried in an
oven, reduced to powder, and then
mixed with ale, was prescribed as a
remedy for the whooping-cough. "A
wine of earth-worms, with a little
scraped ivory and English saffron" wa
reputed to be a marvellous specific
for the yellow jaundice; and a small
bone taken from the knee-joint of
the hind-leg of q hare was the nos
49, -o1.o.loJ - ~,,co,c e,,Fa~.--