Mental hygiene: or, an examination of the intellect and passions, designed to illustrate their influence on health and the duration of life / by William Sweetser.

William Sweetser

Date:: 1844

Credit: Mental hygiene: or, an examination of the intellect and passions, designed to illustrate their influence on health and the duration of life / by William Sweetser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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air, which ever mark the intensity of this class of passions. Hence the frequent sighing under severe grief, which act consists in a deep inspi¬ ration, succeeded hy a corresponding expiration, and so, by expanding freely the chest, and affording a larger supply of air, it alleviates, in some measure, the heart and lungs of their suffocative load. What human being, unless privileged beyond the rest of his species, but must be acquainted, too painfully acquainted, with that dreadful sense of tightness and weight at the chest, that panting and struggling of the breath, denoting sorrow in its graver forms ? As now an equable distribution of the blood to the various organs, and its free circulation through the capillary vessels of the surface, are, as stated under the pleasurable emotions, most salutary to the physical economy, an inequality, on the other hand, in the dispensation of this vital fluid, or partial determinations of it, are always most unfriendly to the health of the system. Whenever the blood is disproportion- ably accumulated upon the internal viscera,— as I have shown to happen under the influence of the painful and depressing passions,—their functions quickly become disturbed, and even their physical integrity may he endangered. The painful passions also act immediately on the nervous system, directly depressing, dis¬ ordering, expending, and sometimes even anni¬ hilating its energies. A morbid concentration of the nervous influence upon the internal organs, has also been supposed to take place under the operation of the painful passions, and to which have been referred those distressing internal sensations which they so commonly occasion. Although, however, the general effect of the painful emotions is to induce a contraction or concentration, and a depression of the actions of life, yet, in their exaggerated forms, they are sometimes followed by a transient excitement, reaction, or vital expansion, when their opera¬ tion becoming more diffused, is necessarily weakened in relation to any individual organ. Under such circumstances, the oppression of the heart and lungs is in a measure removed, and the circulation and respiration go on with more freedom. Hence it is that when anger and grief explode, or break forth into violent action and vociferation, and tears flow abundantly, tlieir consequences are much less to be dreaded than when they are deep, still, and speechless, since here their force is most concentrated. Thus Malcolm says to Macduff, when overwhelmed by the cruel tidings of the murder of his wife and children,— 4{ What, man ! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows ; Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak, Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.” Let me here once more repeat the general and important truth, that the pleasurable passions tend to expand or enlarge the sphere of vital action, and to equalize its distribution, and are therefore salutary in their physical effects; whilst those of a painful nature concentrate or contract, and disturb its just equilibrium, and are conse¬ quently deleterious. To be convinced of this, we need hut contrast the countenance of the happy and confident with that of the sad and despondent. In the former it is bright and dilated, and the blood plays freely in its extreme vessels. In the latter it is pale, sickly, contract¬ ed, and expressive of inward pain. As, therefore, when we use the familiar ex¬ pressions,—to he light or buoyant with joy— to expand with pleasure—to he inflated with pride—to be puffed up with vanity, we but ex¬ press physiological truths ; so do we also when we say, the heart is oppressed or breaking with grief, or that the body shrinks with fear, or withers under sorrow and despair. It is worthy of remark, too, that this same spare or contracted state of the body, and sallow¬ ness of the complexion, which result from the operation of the painful and depressing passions, are, when constitutional, or dependent on inci¬ dental causes acting primarily on the physical system, very commonly associated with an un¬ happy and unamiable disposition. Thus Caesar, while he trusted with confidence in the rosy and expanded face and full-fed sides of Marc Antony, looked with suspicion on the pale and contracted countenance, and meagre frame of Cassius. “ Would he were fatter !—But I fear him not: Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius.” Here, then, we have a farther illustration of the statement previously made—that the like bodily condition may he either the cause or the effect of particular passions ; that an interchange of influence is constantly and necessarily taking place between our moral and physical natures. I will now go on to exhibit, somewhat more in detail, the effects of the painful emotions on our bodily functions, under the general heads of anger, fear, grief, and shame. I select the three former of these, especially, as being by far the most comprehensive in their character. In truth they must enter, one or more, into all the nu¬ merous varieties of this division of passions : ac¬ cordingly the description of their phenomena will necessarily comprise* the principal ones of the whole class. Perhaps, indeed, all the pain¬ ful passions, could they he subjected to an accurate analysis, might be found but modifica¬ tions of, and consequently he reducible to, anger, grief, or fear. CHAPTER XIY. ANGER.-PHENOMENA OF THE ACUTE STATE OF THIS PASSION. Anger, being founded especially on the instinct of self-preservation, belongs essentially to the constitution of every animate creature. It is aroused by, and at the same time urges us hy an instinctive impulse to repel or destroy, all such causes as oppose or threaten our moral or physical ease and security ; or, in other words, which bring unhappiness to the mind, or pain, injury, or destruction to the body. Hence it is often directed against the irrational, and even inanimate objects of creation. • Modified and

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