PAPERS ON SUBJECTS RELATING TO DISORDERS OF THE HEART



The American poetess, Lucretia Davidson, who died at 17, often fainted when listening to some of her favorite melodies from Moore, yet notwithstanding this, she would beg to have them repeated.

We often see examples where fear prevents fainting so long as it operates, and immediately it is withdrawn the system yields to the reaction and fainting takes place. A lady sitting up after the rest of the household had gone to bed saw a servant enter the door with a pistol in his hand. She immediately blew out the candle, pushed the bed from the wall, got behind it, and succeeded in evading him and getting out of the door and looking it behind her. She awoke the house and then fainted away.

The case of the doorkeeper of COngress, an aged man, who died suddenly on hearing the news of the capture of Lord Cornwallis’s’ army, is an instance of death from joy, and there can be no doubt that it was the result of cardiac and not cerebral lesion.

Sweetser reports a case of an Irishman, aged 36, of ungovernable passion. Having experienced various misfortunes during the Revolutionary war, at length on the affairs of France assuming a more favorable aspect, received a pension, but which was immediately taken away from him on the death of the patron by whom it had been procured. Immediately on hearing the news he felt a dreadful heavy weight in his chest. His respiration became fatiguing and the action of the heart assumed an irregularity which had no interruption during the two and a half years that he survived his misfortune.

On post-mortem the heart was found pale and flaccid; the parietes of the cavities fell together. There was an astonishing contrast between the flesh of the heart and that of the nest of the body, showing conclusively that it was the diseased organ.

It has been observed by African travellers, among whom are Livingston and Samuel Baker, that when the natives belonging to some of the interior tribes were taken from their homes by force or bribes, that their sufferings from homesickness were intense, and sometimes fatal. Their sufferings were not only mental but physical, for when asked to point out the seat of their evident suffering, they indicated correctly the region of the heart. These same authorities further assert that those who died showed all the evidences of death from cardiac disease.

It is well known that the Swiss soldiers some times die of homesickness, attended with all the symptoms of cardiac failure.

Dr. M. Ward reports a case of death, which is so remarkable I cannot resist the temptation to quote it in brief. Dr. Ward was called on February 17th, 1870, to a Miss H. He found she had been suffering for several days from fever; had been out the day before. She had recently returned from the funeral of a sister who died from typhoid fever. Her symptoms became rapidly worse, and she died before morning.

A Mr. Filby, a butcher, who lived next door to the above Miss H., who had come for the Doctor shortly before her death, appeared perfectly healthy but very much depressed. He told the Doctor he had never seen any one dead before, and hoped he never should again. He did not go to bed that night, but remained sitting in a chair, and apparently slept well. The next morning he was found slipping down in the chair, and, upon trying to arouse and get him up further in the chair, it was found that he was dead.

A post-mortem revealed a perfectly healthy man; no mark of disease could be found on any part of the body. Dr. Ward gave it as his opinion that it was a sort of gradual cardiac syncope.

A distinguished veterinary surgeon, of cool, well-balanced nerves, consented to having an operation of lithotomy performed. He had had a great aversion and dread of this operation. When the preparations were being made and the usual preliminary examinations, he showed no signs of fear, but when the catheter was being introduced he was observed to become pale and faint, and notwithstanding every effort was made to restore the patient, he died i about ten minutes.

Dr. Currie, of Edinburgh, engaged to perform paracentesis abdominalis in a case of ascites. On entering the room the lady fainted, and on attempting to restore her he found she was dying.

A station master on one of the Italian railways, 55 years of age, in robust health, was awakened on morning with the news that his station had been robbed. Although perfectly healthy the night before, he immediately became sick and died within twenty four hours. There was utter prostration, spasmodic action of the stomach, with obstinate vomiting, hollow voice, and failing pulse; consciousness continued to the last.

The case coming before the courts, it was decided, “that sudden mental emotion may induce death within a brief space of time, or even immediately, and even in persons of robust health, is a fact freely admitted in science.” And that the fact of his not dying for twenty-four hours was no proof that it was not caused solely by the mental emotion.

A BROKEN HEART

is no myth. Dr. Murray says such is the influence of emotions on the heart that a sudden shock has been known to arrest its action or to excite it to an action so turbulent as to injure its valves or their tendinous cords. Those who have read my Lectures on the Heart will remember the cases there reported of actual rupture of the heart and sudden death in cases of persons dying from some great and sudden calamity.

A singular book has been published in England treating of the diagnosis of the crucifixion of Christ, by the eminent London surgeons, William Stroud and Sir J. Y. Simpson. In this they claim that Christ died from a literally broken heart.

Walshe states that a case is on record and well authenticated in which a former rupture firmly filled by a fibrinous coagulum, adherent to the walls of the heart, was found.

It is probable, says Brown-Sequard, that in cases of death from sudden emotion an excitation is produced on the roots of the par vagum, which appear to have their true origin in the neighbourhood of the calamus scriptorius, and in consequence the bloodvessels of the heart contract and expel the blood they contained, and with it the natural excitant which causes the movements of the heart.

Dr. Carpenter takes the ground that the nerve-force is to be regarded as a polar force, analogous in its mode of transmission to electricity, and that death results from the reversal of the usual direction of this current.

Dr. Richardson says, in regard to cardiac paralysis, the balance between the heart and lungs is broken on the circulation side, and gives several cases to illustrate his idea.

I have brought forward but a small portion of the facts recorded in medical literature, illustrating the influence of the mind over the heart. But enough has been offered, I think, to convince the most skeptical of the actual existence of such influence.

It only remains to us to inquire into the practical value of such established facts. I believe them to be of the greatest importance to the physician, both in the study of the etiology of disease and in therapeutics.

Many cases of cardiac disorder are treated by remedies which only have an action on the blood and nutrition processes, when, if the mental origin was known, no medicine would be prescribed, and the treatment directed to the ministering to a mind diseased. The homoeopathic Materia Medica is rich in remedies which have a profound curative action upon a disordered mind. Such remedies, used alone or in conjunction with change of scene, diversion, or properly directed mental influences, will, in a majority of instances, remove cardiac disturbances of an apparently serious nature. But this portion of the subject must be deferred for consideration in another paper.

THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF DISEASES OF THE HEART, CAUSED BY EMOTIONAL INFLUENCES.

It will be remembered that I have read before this Society several papers relating to the effects of the will and the emotions on the heart. Without going over the same ground again, I will briefly allude to the manner in which the emotions do affect the heart.

HOW EMOTIONS AFFECT THE HEART.

The experiments of modern physiologists, Claude Bernard in particular, show that all sensations act primarily on the nerve- centres, through the nerves reaching from the periphery of the body to those centres. The excitation thus determined in the brain, or spinal cord, is then transferred to the nerve filaments which extend to the viscera and members, and hence the latter are affected only secondarily.

Of all the organs, the heart is the one which earliest and most profoundly experiences the influence of the sensitive excitations produced in the nerve-centres. So soon as any modification is produced in the central nerve substance, the nerves transmit this vibration to the heart, and at once the movements of the latter suffer a perturbation which is expressed in various ways.

If the ordinary bodily sensations experienced from physical influences thus affect the heart, through the brain and cord, how much more intensely do those mental sensations, caused by purely emotional influences affect that organ, for the emotions affect the brain in a much more direct and immediate manner than the physical sensations. Emotional influences do not always affect the heart in the same manner. In fact, their influence on the heart is as varied and diverse as their influence on the mind.

Edwin Hale
Edwin Moses Hale 1829 – 1899 was an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy graduated at the Cleveland Homoeopathic Medical College to become Professor Emeritus of Materia Medica and Therapeutics at Hahnemann Medical College, editor of the North American Journal of Homeopathy and The American Homeopathic Observer and a member of the American Institute of Homeopathy. Hale was also a member of The Chicago Literary Club.

Hale wrote Lectures On Diseases Of The Heart, Materia medica and special therapeutics of the new remedies Volume 1, Materia Medica And Special Therapeutics Of The New Remedies Volume 2, Saw Palmetto: (Sabal Serrulata. Serenoa Serrulata), The Medical, Surgical, and Hygienic Treatment of Diseases of Women, New Remedies: Their Pathogenetic Effects and Therapeutic Application, Ilex Cassine : the aboriginal North American tea, Repertory to the New Remedies with Charles Porter Hart, The Characteristics of the New Remedies, Materia Medica and Special Therapeutics of the New Remedies, The Practice of Medicine, Homoeopathic Materia Medica of the New Remedies: Their Botanical Description etc.