The crystallization of stress: How climate and feasting strain the body and cause kidney stones

“ Exhausting work, excesses of heat or cold, and other unusual conditions also bring about reaction of the inner bodily consciousness to adjust the body to its surroundings. The body makes the best of a bad matter and does its utmost to bring itself into harmony with its outer conditions. ”

“ Under a variety of adverse conditions the human body can still hold its own and secure for a time a certain degree of health, thanks to the adaptability to circumstances of its component cells. Thus, by the nice control of its ceaseless chemical processes, the body can maintain a nearly uniform degree of heat, no matter what the latitude or season. ”

“ The climates are as various as the physiological characteristics of the landscape. On the shores of the bays and on the islands the difference is slight between the mean temperatures of the cold and the warm seasons; but in the interior, in the closed valleys, the winters are severe and the summers hot. With such varieties of land with its hundred faces, and the sky with its hundred caprices, body and mind are kept under perpetual strain to adapt themselves to the complex and mobile conditions of media that are modified with a rapidity that discounts all forecasts. ”

“ The monotonous heat of the tropics and the continued cold of the polar zones are both depressing. Their tendency is to operate against man's highest development. The seasonal changes of the temperate zones stimulate man to activity. They develop him physically and mentally. They encourage higher civilization. A cold, stormy winter necessitates forethought in the preparation of clothing, food and shelter during the summer. Carefully planned, steady, hard labor is the price of living in these zones. Development must result from such conditions. In the warm, moist tropics, life is too easy. ”

“ There is no more beautiful mechanism in nature than that which keeps man's internal heat always about 98° day and night, summer and winter, in the Arctic regions or in the tropics; but even that most wonderful of all self-adapting pieces of mechanism, if it be taxed too much, as by extremes of day and night temperature, will get out of gear ”

“ I must, however, observe, as some alleviation, that there is something in the climate which strongly inclines both the body and mind, but rather the latter, to indolence: the heat of the summer, though pleasing, enervates the very soul, and gives a certain lassitude unfavorable to industry; and the winter, at its extreme, binds up and chills all the active faculties of the soul. ”

“ Who brings us good cheer and good liquor so brown;
To pass the cold winter away with delight,
We feast it all day, and we frolic all night;
Both hunger and cold we keep out with relief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced-pies, and roast-beef.
Then let all curmudgeons who dote on their wealth,
And value their treasure much more than their health,
Go hang themselves up, if they will be so kind;
Old Christmas with them but small welcome shall find;
They will not afford to themselves without grief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced-pies, and roast-beef. ”

“ Giving the strength of our muscles, our sweat, and our sons and wives;
With less food than your horses, and homes less warm than your hives.
We have ploughed and dug and sowed and reaped the seasons through and through,
We have gathered in your grain and raised the 'Harvest Home' for you,
Who gave starvation pay to us and kept from us our due.
We asked for land and freedom, the right to till our own;
To harvest and to garner for ourselves, what we had sown;
We sought the fruit of our labour; you granted us a stone.
Who gave our lives to your children? Who pledged our souls to thine? ”

“ Yet consider, dearest brother, how all that we suffer in this mortal flesh is of infirmity of nature, ordained after guilt by the fitting judgment of God. For to hunger and to thirst, to be hot, to be cold, to be weary, is of infirmity of nature. And to seek food against hunger, and drink against thirst, and cool air against heat, and clothing against cold, and rest against weariness, what is it but to search out certain healing appliances against sicknesses? For in females also the menstruous flow of their blood is a sickness. ”

“ Some of the most distressing symptoms to which gouty persons are especially liable are those connected with the passage of gravel from the kidney to the bladder. Where gravel alone passes, it may cause little uneasiness, and the fact is only recognized through the discovery of blood in the urine in connection with uric acid or calcium oxalate crystals. When, however, the sand forms concretions in the pelvis of the kidney, their dislodgment and passage through the ureter are accompanied by the well-known agonies of renal colic. ”

“ The possession of typically healthy kidneys is a rare circumstance in this climate. The excessive micturition so universal in infancy, occasioned by excess in diet, is the beginning of renal disease.
Dr. Bright immortalized his name by discovering the fact that, when a man’s last sickness is attended with a certain class of symptoms, as albumen in the urine, final suppression of the urine, and uremic poisoning, they are occasioned by a peculiar disease or degeneration of the kidney. ”

“ The heat of the climate may be so excessive as to deprive the body of all vigor and strength. Then the faintness is communicated to the mind; there is no curiosity, no noble enterprize, no generous sentiment; the inclinations are all passive; indolence constitutes the utmost happiness ”

“ Ingleby's shoulders bled daily and troubled him seriously in the frost at night, a seam of his boot had fretted a raw place across his foot, and in the bitter mornings the cold struck deep and keen. Twelve pounds more count for a good deal when the burden is already all that its bearer is fit to carry, and the effort drained the store of heat in his worn-out body and left nothing for the up-keep of its vitality. That heat is the source of energy everybody knows, but only those who have taxed every muscle in the cold of the Northwest [Pg 290] realize the fact's full significance. ”

“ The chest circulation is forced to its limits, and the heart beats are increased and strengthened. The organs of circulation and respiration, which do ninety per cent. of the work of the body, are taxed with a new burden that must be counted in estimating one's day's task. This loss of power in breathing extreme frost is certain to reduce working time and bodily force.
The land whose coast we were following to the shores of the Polar sea is part of the American hemisphere, and one of the largest islands of the world, spreading 30° longitude and rising 7° of latitude. ”

“ Diseases were regarded as defects in the composition of the humors, to be counteracted by appropriate applications of heat and cold, or of dry and moist, to restore a favorable equilibrium. Winter was held to be the dangerous season for a temperament lacking in fire; the body must not be too full of humors nor yet be too dry and sapless. ”

“ The fourfold elements of the body are the humors or fluids: the blood, the (yellow) bile, the phlegm, and the black bile. (3) Subjected to the play of analogy and correspondence in the speculative manner then employed, blood becomes related to air, has the quality of being warm and moist; the season which it typifies is Spring, and its temperament is the sanguine. Its direct opposite is earth, which is cold and dry, finds its bodily correspondent in the black bile and its season in the Fall of the year; its temperament is the melancholic. ”

“ But the hot hours are often dangerous and the atmosphere may be poisoned by our own neglect of decaying vegetables or animal matter. We must aim to keep clean and keep all things about us clean; food should be lighter than in winter (less heat-producing) ; exercise should avoid the hours of fervent heat; the occupations should take a more leisurely pace; the scene of life should, if possible, be shifted for some week or weeks so as to diversify our mental interests and break the dreary monotony of long days spent in one environment of body and soul. ”

“ I have always thought, that the whitloes, kibes, chilblains, and other inflammations of the extremities, which are so common among the peasants in the cold season, were chiefly occasioned by their sudden transitions from cold to heat. After they have been exposed to an extreme degree of cold, 618they immediately apply their hands and feet to the fire, or, if they have occasion, plunge them into warm water, by which means, if a mortification does not happen, an inflammation seldom fails to ensue. ”

“ O, how many have been slain by the burning heat of summer; how many have been slain by the frost and cold of winter; how many have been slain by lightning and by hail; how many have been drowned in the sea by the fury of winds; how many have died of pestilence, of famine, or because they have been devoured of wild beasts, bitten of serpents, choked by food! ”

“ For when, the winter being southerly and the body hot, the blood and veins are not properly constringed; a spring that is northerly, dry, and cold, having come on, the brain when it should have been expanded and purged, by the coryza and hoarseness is then constringed and contracted, so that the summer and the heat occurring suddenly, and a change supervening, these diseases fall out. And such cities as lie well to the sun and winds, and use good waters, feel these changes less, but such as use marshy and pooly waters, and lie well both as regards the winds and the sun, these all feel it more. ”

“ The consumption in hay or other fodder of acrid or irritant plants, including fungi, the absorption of cantharidine from a surface blistered by Spanish flies, the reckless administration of diuretics, the presence of stones in the kidney, exposure of the surface to cold and wet, and the infliction of blows or sprains on the loins, may contribute to its production. ”

“ The kidneys may be irritated by feeding green vegetables covered with hoar frost or by furnishing an excess of feed rich in phosphates (wheat bran, beans, peas, vetches, lentils, rape cake, cottonseed cake) or by a privation of water, which entails a concentrated condition and high density of the urine. Exposure in cold rain or snow storms, cold drafts of air, and damp beds are liable to further disorder an already overworked or irritable kidney. Finally, sprains of the back and loins may cause bleeding from the kidneys or inflammation. ”

“ In winter and in cold climates, in which the cutaneous organ contracted, and having as it were the horny hardness from the impression of the surrounding air, has but a feeble action, all the internal functions more active, require more energy in the forces that preside over them ”

“ Where cake, bread, and cheese are brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.
When Christmas's tide comes in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away. ”

“ Now enter Christmas like a man, Armed with spit and dripping-pan, Attended with pasty, plum-pie, Puddings, plum-porridge, furmity; With beef, pork, mutton of each sort More than my pen can make report; Pig, swan, goose, rabbits, partridge, teal, With legs and loins and breasts of veal: But above all the minced pies Must mention'd be in any wise, Or else my Muse were much to blame, Since they from Christmas take their name. With these, or any one of these, A man may dine well if he please ”

“ The buyers surged against the barricade of counters, shouting their orders, contesting the ground inch by inch as they fought for the value of a penny. And they emerged staggering under the weight of their plunder, laden like ants with food for hungry mouths—the insatiable maw of the people. ”

“ As a man eats and drinks, so is his body: if he is a gross feeder, his body will be gross and sensual; if his food lacks nourishment, he will pine and fade. So it is with our minds and our morals. With whatever original “spiritual body” we may start, it needs spiritual sustenance, spiritual discipline, spiritual sufficiency and spiritual abstinence. Too often we ill-use it, as bodies are ill-used, goading its weakness with fiery excitement, or gorging its greed with sickly sentiment, or emasculating it by empty frivolity. ”

“ When alcoholic fluids are taken, together with an excess of meat or kindred animal foods, the kidneys at once excrete increased amounts of uric acid, in harmony with the increased content in the blood. It is a well-known fact that alcohol interferes with the oxidative processes in the liver. It is equally well known to-day that the liver and other organs contain an enzyme, or more specifically an oxidase, which has the power of oxidizing uric acid to urea and other products. ”

“ Old men, he says, are most subject to renal calculi; for in them the watery part of the urine passes down to the bladder, while the grosser part or sediment is detained in the kidneys, and is converted into stones. Children are said to be most liable to calculi in the bladder, owing to their eating much gross food, and taking exercise after meals, by which means the system is loaded with gross impurities. With regard to the treatment, he enjoins restricted diet, abstinence from gross food, and the use of medicines of an incisive and attenuant nature. ”

“ For all those things which a man feeds upon, and daily drinks, do in process of time stop up the passages of the internal bowels and conveyances in the body of man, and so despoil the vital Fire of its nutriment. Therefore by how much the more this nutriment of the Life is withdrawn, so much the sooner is the light or vital Fire extinguished, and the cold and darksome death approacheth the nearer, and becomes superiour. ”

“ A person may pass an enormous number of calculi. Dr. Osler speaks of having had a patient who had passed several hundred kidney stones (calculi) with repeated attacks of kidney colic. His collection filled an ounce bottle. A patient may pass a single stone and may never be troubled again. A stone remaining in the kidney may cause dull aching pain in the affected kidney, or the pain may be referred to the other side and sometimes there may be blood or pus in the urine, with chill and fever due to pyelitis. Kidney (renal) colic comes on when a stone enters the ureter, if it is at all large. ”

“ Renal Calculus.—The urine is usually somewhat concentrated, with high color and strongly acid reaction. Small amounts of albumin and a few casts may be present as a result of kidney irritation. Blood is frequently present, especially in the daytime and after severe exercise. Crystals of the substance composing the calculus—uric [p. 136] acid, calcium oxalate, cystin—may often be found. The presence of a calculus generally produces pyelitis, and variable amounts of pus then appear, the urine remaining acid in reaction. ”

“ Diseases of the nervous system, and notably of the base of the brain and of the spinal cord, induce various urinary disorders, prominent among which are diabetes, chylous urine, and albuminuria. Certain affections, with imperfect nutrition or destructive waste of the bony tissues, tend to charge the urine with phosphates of lime and magnesia and endanger the formation of stone and gravel. ”

“ Persons in the decline of life, and those who have been much afflicted with the gout or rheumatism, are most liable to it.
SYMPTOMS.——Small stones or gravel in the kidneys occasion pain in the loins; sickness; vomiting; and sometimes bloody urine. When the stone descends into the ureter, and is too large to pass along with ease, all the above symptoms are increased; the pain extends towards the bladder; the thigh and leg of the affected side are benumbed; the testicles are drawn upwards, and the urine is obstructed. ”

“ If the patient has been accustomed to generous liquors, he may drink small gin-punch.
Gentle exercise is proper; but violent motion is apt to occasion bloody urine. We would therefore advise that it should be taken in moderation. Persons afflicted with gravel often pass a great number of stones after riding on horseback, or in a carriage; 326but those who have a stone in the bladder are seldom able to bear these kinds of exercise. Where there is a hereditary tendency to this disease, a sedentary life ought never to be indulged. ”

“ Nature has a record of all men's deeds, keeping her accounts on fleshly tablets. The mind may forget, the body never. The brain sees to it that the thoughts within do immediately dispose of facial tissue without. Mental brightness gives facial illumination. The right act or true thought sets its stamp of beauty in the features; the wrong act or foul thought sets its seal of distortion. Moral purity and sweetness refine and beautify the countenance. The body is a show window, advertising and exhibiting the soul's stock of goods. Nature condenses bough, bud and shrub into black coal ”

“ "Mind is the wielder of muscles. The force of a hammer blow depends on the energy applied; the power expressed by a man's bodily instrument depends on his aggressive will and courage. The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind. Through pressure of instincts from past lives, strengths or weaknesses percolate gradually into human consciousness. They express as habits, which in turn ossify into a desirable or an undesirable body. Outward frailty has mental origin; in a vicious circle, the habit-bound body thwarts the mind. ”

“ With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
⁠Not till the hours of light return,
⁠All we have built do we discern. ”