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

Amariah Brigham

Date:: 1836

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

143/160 (page 125)

$of the causes that weaken attention and debilitate all the faculties of the mind. Thus, we often see that disease which wastes the body, enfeebles the mind also, though this is not always the case; for some- times the brain does not diminish as the other parts of the body do.101 But to return to the causes of dyspepsia. We do not find this disease prevalent in countries where the people eat most enormously. Travellers in Siberia say that the people there often eat forty pounds of food in one day. Admiral Saritchaff saw a Siberian eat immediately after breakfast, twenty-five pounds of boiled rice, with three pounds of butter. But dys- pepsia is not a common disease in Siberia. We do not learn from Captain Parry or Captain Lyon, that their friends, the Esquimaux, are very nervous and dyspeptic, though they individually eat ten or twelve pounds of solid food in a day, washing it down with a gallon or so of train oil. Captain Lyon was, to be sure, a little concerned for a delicate young lady Esquimaux, who ate his candles, wicks and all, yet he does not allude to her inability to digest them. The influence of the mind in producing disease 101 V\ e often see persons in consumption exhibit clear and power- ful intellects; but, according to the researches of M. Desmoulins, the brain does not decrease in bulk or weight in this and many other chronic diseases.—AndraVs Pathological Anatomy [[The constitu- tional irritation which exists in consumption, may communicate itself to the brain, and stimulate that organ so as to enable it to act powerfully, notwithstanding the general wasting of the system. In inanition, where no disease exists to stimulate the brain, the mental powers are always impaired R. M.] L 2$