Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish.

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1836
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    disease most frequently affects those whose nervous systems are delicate and easily excited ; and I have often known it produced by grief or great mental anxiety; and it is seldom relieved without rest or long abstinence. Fourth. Examination of the bodies of those who have died, after long continued dyspeptic symptoms, confirms the opinion I have advanced, that dyspepsia is often a disease of the head, and not of the stomach. 91 Dr. Abercrombie, On Organic Diseases of the Brain, [91 The relief which many dyspeptic people obtain by going to watering places is a sufficient proof that their complaints are often intimately connected, with the state of the brain. Oppressed at home with the care9 of business, or rendered nervously irritable by dissipation, vapid pleasures or want of occupation, Tor this is as pernicious to the brain as too much employment,) a state of hypo- chondria, accompanied by impaired digestion, ensues. In this state, they fly to such resorts as Bath, Leamington, or Cheltenham, place themselves in the hands of some fashionable empiric, who very gene- rally tells them to drink the waters, restrict themselves to a particu- lar diet, and take some trifling medicine which he prescribes for them. They do this, coupling it with exercise in the open air, and with the light amusements which generally abound in these quar- ters. The consequence is that the brain gets into a healthier state of action. If its morbid condition was produced by too much thinking, this is relieved; if by too little, this is obviated also, materials for employing it sufficiently existing in the change of scene and in the prevailing gossip of the place. Restored to com- parative health by this change of scene, the patient returns home in raptures at the virtue of the waters, and the wonderful 3kill of the doctor under whom he was placed. Professional quackery and humbug are nowhere carried to such excess as in fashionable watering places. There they tell with powerful effect, seeing that they have chiefly to deal with those whose minds are previously weakened by hyphochondria: there at present they seem to be in- dispensable for success, and will continue so'till people get more enlightened.—R. M.]