The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, September 8, 1827 by Various
page 45 of 48 (93%)
page 45 of 48 (93%)
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and which is characterized by a preposterous anxiety and solicitude with
regard to the patient's own health, which in these cases is often little if at all disturbed, with the exception of occasional uneasiness at the stomach, arising from flatulency and other effects of indigestion. This disorder in the state of the digestive function, is generally considered by the patient as the real and primary disease, though 99 times in 100 it is merely secondary, the result of torpor of the alimentary canal altogether. This torpor is the consequence of an oppressed condition of brain, proceeding, for the most part, from increased arterial action in this organ. Thus the effect is taken for the cause, and a treatment directed in conformity with this mistaken notion. Happily, the practice usually pursued on those occasions, and which is directed to the state of the stomach and intestinal canal, is, as far as it goes, beneficial to the primary disease; for occasional _purging_, whether with the _blue pill_ or _Plummer's pill_, and the use of a simple and abstemious mode of living, are as well calculated to relieve affections of the brain, as those of the stomach. But the fault of such a mistaken view of the subject is, that the treatment is confined too exclusively to one organ, and that the one not primarily affected; to the neglect of other means that may be as much or more required for the relief of the head. Where, for example, the patient complains of throbbing headach, with other marks of increased arterial action in and about the brain, it is dangerous to rely solely upon _cathartics_, and to neglect _bleeding_, a neglect, which, I have more than once seen reason to believe, has been the occasion of fatal apoplexy ensuing. The precise difference in the condition of the brain, in the three forms of _insanity_ now mentioned, is not at all known. Dissection hitherto has not thrown any light upon the subject; nor is it probable that it will do so hereafter. The derangement of intellect in all of them, and |
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