[How the body may be influenced by the mind in sickness and health] / by Henry Simpson.

  • Simpson, Henry.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [How the body may be influenced by the mind in sickness and health] / by Henry Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    15/22 (page 49)
    sent for from Preston. Before he arrived three more were seized; and during that night and the morning of the 19th eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these, twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age, and one was a man, ivho had been very much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of the number Hved about two miles from the place where the disorder first broke out, and three at another factory at Clitheroe, ibout five miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from report, not having seen the other patients, but, hke :hem and the rest of the country, strongly impressed with the idea :)f the plague being caught from the cotton. The symptoms -vere anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions; and hese were so violent as to last without any intermission Vom a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to etjuire four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing iheir hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. it Clare had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by i:lectric shocks the patients were universally relieved without ■xception. As soon as the patients and the country were assured hat the complaint was merely nervous, easily cured, and not lU!educed by the cotton, no fresh person was affected. The ccount which I have just quoted is given in Hecker's Epidemics )f the Middle Ages, and is taken from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1787. Here we see that there was no predisposing ause affecting the whole of those seized, except that they were robably in feeble health from confinement in a close unhealthy tmosphere, for we must remember that the condition of the otton operatives has greatly improved in many respects during le last ninety years. The hours of labour were, I believe, much Dnger then than now, and the old mills were worse ventilated and lore unhealthy than the modern ones. Where people lead Uves pposed to Nature's laws—as where women are strictly secluded 1 orphan asylums, hospitals, and convents, and debarred from ocial enjoyment and family affection—their imaginations are pt to become morbidly excitable, and their thoughts are Kned too much in upon themselves. In such cases, if ne becomes affected with a nervous disorder, it is apt to. in through the whole. Zimmermann, in his work on Solitude, ives a curious and amusing account of one of these mani- :stations of what is called the hysterical condition. He says : I have read in a good medical work that a nun, in a large onvent in France, began to mew like a cat ] shortly afterwards