The family physician, the household companion : being a treatise, in plain language, on the art of preserving health and prolonging life; a description of all the diseases of men, women & children, with the most approved and latest curative treatment. Prepared for the use of families / by M. Lafayette Bryn.

  • Byrn, M. Lafayette (Marcus Lafayette), 1826-1903
Date:
1868, ©1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The family physician, the household companion : being a treatise, in plain language, on the art of preserving health and prolonging life; a description of all the diseases of men, women & children, with the most approved and latest curative treatment. Prepared for the use of families / by M. Lafayette Bryn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    Love is one of the strongest and most absorbing passions with which the mind is affected, and has at its commencement when happy, and properly guided by reason, a favorable influ ence on all the functions of the body; but being often in its progress attended with other passions, such as fear and jeal- ousy, it is liable to become the source of infinite disquietude. ]STo passion undermines the constitution so insidiously, as violent and unreasonable or misplaced love. While the whole soul is occupied with the thoughts of a pleasing attachment, both the mind and the body become languid from the contin- uance of vehement desire; and should there arise any prospect, real or imaginary, of being frustrated in its gratification, the person is agitated with all the horrors and pernicious effects of despair. Love, when violent and unsuccessful, frequently produces a wasting of the body, terminating sooner or later in death. Fear.—When intense or habitually indulged in, it destroys the energies of both mind and body, retards the motion of the blood, obstructs digestion, and prevents the proper nutrition of the body. Violent terror has been known, in an instant, to turn the hair perfectly white, and in other instances, to produce loss of mind, or even instantaneous death. By weakening the enei'gies of the system, this passion disposes greatly to disease during the prevalence of epidemics. Grief.—There is no passion more injurious to health than grief when it sinks deep into the mind. By enfeebling the whole nervous system, it depresses the motion of the heart, and retards the circulation of the blood ; it disorders the stomach and bowels, and ultimately every other organ of the body, producing indigestion, consumption, and other chronic diseases. Grief long continued, often gives a shock to the constitution that nothing can retrieve. Grief, like fear, predisposes to an attack of epidemical diseases. Anger is a passion suddenly excited, and which often no less suddenly subsides. The nerves are unduly excited ; the pulsation of the heart and arteries, and with them the motion of the blood, are sometimes so much increased, as to occasion the bursting of some of the minute vessels of the brain or lungs. The stomach, liver and bowels, are often violently affected by intense anger—digestion is always disordered, a violent colic is sometimes produced, and very often all the symptoms of jaundice. Thus it is often the immediate agent in the production of fevers, inflammations, spitting of blood, apoplexy, and other acute disorders. An essential means for their subjection, is a regular, active mode of life, a mild and moderate diet, and