Convalescence

“ Convalescence is, however, generally slow, and recovery may be imperfect—the disease continuing in a chronic form, which may exist for a variable length of time, giving rise to much suffering, and not unfrequently leading to an ultimately fatal result. ”

“ The rule of the marble box was this—that it never was to be opened except when the children were sick,—or, rather, when they were convalescent. When children are attacked with sickness, they do not generally, for a time, wish for any playthings. But, then, when the disease is once subdued, and the pain, or the unpleasant feelings, whatever they may be, have disappeared,—then there is a period, while the patient is recovering his health and strength, which is called the period of convalescence. ”

“ The management of the convalescence is one of the most difficult parts of the treatment and one of the most unsuccessful, not because there is any thing which requires to be done, nor because there is any disease which prevents recovery, but because the patient is considered as well when he is only convalescent. Of the great tendency there is to relapse during the whole of this period few medical men are sufficiently aware, and the unprofessional attendants on the sick are totally ignorant of it. ”

“ Debility is the last, the ultimate result of the disturbance of the functions of a certain series of organs, but part of this very disturbance of function, and a most important part, a part which exerts the greatest influence over the progress of the disease and the life or death of the patient, consists not in the weakened, but in the augmented strength and the increased activity of the vascular system. ”

“ XIII. Even as there may be, with respect to the body, a disease, a sickness, and a defect, so it is with the mind. They call that a disease where the whole body is corrupted; they call that sickness where a disease is attended with a weakness, and that a defect where the parts of the body are not well compacted together ”

“ There is nothing like occupation, active occupation, to cure slight pains—“constant occupation physics pain”—to drive away little ailments, and the dread of sickness. “The dread of sickness,” says Dr. Grosvenor, “is a distemper of itself, and the next disposition to a many more. What a bondage does this keep some people in! ’Tis an easy transition from the fear and fancy of being sick to sickness indeed. ”

“ We have shown that there are constantly individual deviations, quite consistent with health, from any given standard. They only become significant of disease when they depart decidedly from the average, either in the frequency of the illness, its duration, the amount of the discharge, or the character. More or less pain, more or less prostration and general disturbances at these epochs, are universal and inevitable. ”

“ Medical men have not appreciated the importance of equality, or proportion, of circulation in the different parts. The absence of this uni­formity in the circulation, is one of the main causes of disease; and restoring it, will cure most diseases. A moment's reflection and a little observation, will convince everyone of the importance of this principle, and also show how wofully it is violated by tight-lacing. ”

“ We shall generally find a vague recognition of the fact that there is a continuous series of integrating and disintegrating processes; that some charges imply a normal development of the social or individual organism leading to increased health and strength, whilst others are significant of disease and ultimate obliteration or decay of structure. ”

“ But the principal causes of disease are physical, for the human body is composed of numerous elements, but in the measure of an especial equilibrium. As long as this equilibrium is maintained, man is preserved from disease; but if this essential balance, which is the pivot of the constitution, is disturbed, the constitution is disordered, and disease will supervene. ”

“ It is high time to leave that tale alone, and to cease to class under the title of religious suggestion two orders of facts completely distinct—superficial and momentary modifications, and constitutional modifications so profound that science cannot explain them. I repeat: to make of an hysterical patient one whose equilibrium is perfect ... is a thing more difficult than the cure of a wound. ”

“ Recovery, invalidism, and death depend upon the degree of success with which the attacking or invading enemies are met. Questions regarding disease become, therefore, questions in adaptation, and it is possible that, when studied in the light of this conception, the key to many hitherto unsolved physical problems may be found. ”

“ When one watches for symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pellets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer. ”

“ But it is none the less true that always some disorder results from excess or defect, that it influences every function, bodily and mental, and that it constitutes a lowering of the life for the time being. ”

“ The operation of any other power, substituted in place of the natural one, even upon a body perfectly organized, produces a state very different from health;76 commonly attended with some uneasy sensations, and which is called DISEASE. I say it is commonly attended with uneasiness, but not always; for many persons within a few hours, nay, a few minutes, of their death, have imagined themselves quite recovered and well. ”

“ Long suffering, through years of unmitigated tribulation, had already introduced disease into her delicate frame; and increased persecution gave it strength and root. As it continued to press upon her, she gradually grew feebler and more feeble ”

“ When the same objects are seen by him from day to day, and he has the same subjects of thought and conversation, these all act as so many fastenings, or points of attachment, tending to hold the disease in the same unvarying condition. ”

“ But in doing it they are dealing daily—and ought to deal, and must deal—with the exceptional, and not with the normal; with cases of palpable and shocking disease, and not with cases of at least seeming health. ”

“ Defect and disorder arise the moment the head seeks power or aggrandizement for itself, the hands work for their good alone, or the feet strive to bear the body alone the paths they only wish to tread. Disease follows, if the evil is not remedied ”

“ These have given place in the present century to a rational pathology, which knows no school and swears to the words of no master, but is slowly and surely unraveling, bit by bit, the many separate tangled knots of disease. ”

“ In the cases which were quoted in Lecture IV, of the mind-cure form of healthy-mindedness, we found abundant examples of regenerative process. The severity of the crisis in this process is a matter of degree. How long one shall continue to drink the consciousness of evil, and when one shall begin to short-circuit and get rid of it, are also matters of amount and degree, so that in many instances it is quite arbitrary whether we class the individual as a once-born or a twice-born subject. ”

“ But on the appearance of an illness or disorder, either in the body as a whole or in many of its parts, a contrary course should be taken, and every means used to nurse the body, or the part of it which is affected, and to spare it any effort; for what is ailing and debilitated cannot be hardened. ”

“ Where no such relation exists, there is a great probability that other counteracting qualities of character and hereditary influences may modify and even remove weaknesses, while, with such a relation existing, there is every probability that weaknesses or tendencies toward disease, both physical and mental, whether inherited or acquired, will become greatly increased. ”

“ When local action has been long continued, however, the highly morbid condition of a limited portion of tissue may in time find sympathy in adjoining parts, and so by degrees the whole system become involved in a chronic disorder. ”

“ That the normal ego-complex does not entirely perish, but is prevented from reproduction by the disease-complex, seems to me to be shown by the fact that during severe physical diseases or any other deep-going changes, the patients suddenly begin to react in a tolerably normal manner. ”

“ Is there any disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would have the effect of perceptibly contracting the stature, and the whole frame—causing the man to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact resemblance to himself in every particular—with the one exception, his height and bulk ”

“ Where natural expression of a need is checked, it breaks out in a disordered form, just as arrested perspiration and circulation of the blood produce fever. If all recognition of supersensible existence be denied, the assertion that it does, has its place, and makes its demands on us, will call forth, if not a wholesome, then a diseased expression. ”

“ Also there will be several Invasions at one time, as Plague, and War, amongst neighbouring and adjoining Creatures or Parts. But this is to be observed, That the sensitive corporeal motions make all diseases, and not the Rational, although the Rational are many times the occasion, that the sensitive do move into such or such a disease; for all those that are sick by conceit, their sicknesses are caused by the rational corporeal motions. ”

“ I hope to show later that the all-or-none principle tends to reappear in disease, when the process of regression reduces mental activity to a state comparable with that which it possessed at an early stage of its development. ”

“ Again, disease comes through association, even as thoughts appear. For instance, your mental condition is a fixed belief, that, exposed to severe cold or dampness, you take cold; hence, the circumstance being this, you suffer the effects of a belief through association. ”

“ Great numbers are, however, swept off by the disease itself, or by the obstructions it generally creates. Those obstructions are ever to be dreaded, even though a perfect cure should apparently have taken place. ”

“ The opposite change to greater liveliness of disposition is not unknown, but is more infrequent. Sometimes there are marked excesses, high living, luxurious habits, and the like, before the existence of disease is recognised. ”

“ Again, when there is an excess of the cold element, paralyses, agues, apoplexies, and an infinite number of other maladies are generated. And every form of disease is the effect of an excess of these elements; when either of them overpassing its own bounds, acts the part of a tyrant against the rest, and mars the symmetry of the whole. ”

“ Only those who have known the situation can fully appreciate the restraint and constraint involved in such chronic invalidism, not only for the one who bears, but perhaps still more for the one who must watch, and sympathize, and shield, and protect, and as far as possible keep off the pressure and strain of the crowding, noisy, bustling, indifferent world. ”

“ I believe the present age has produced many such. Some time hence, it will be a curious inquiry to ascertain the causes of that acute and sensitive morbidity of mind, which has been, and still is, so epidemic a disease. ”

“ Disease occurs when the sum of vital force which tends to neutralize all causes of disturbance, (in other words, when the resistance offered by the vital force) is weaker than the acting cause of the disturbance. ”

“ Even strength itself has its disadvantages; for whilst robust and vigorous young men devote themselves to study with unbridled ardour, the power of the soul, being rous’d and strongly stimulating the whole system, so increases the action of the solids, that there arise diseases occasion’d by too violent a motion, such as inflammations and malignant fevers; and when these disorders are once begun, they return for some years, till the strength being entirely broken, chronical [98] disorders succeed, according to the common fate of mankind. ”

“ The study of the relations of temperaments to development and vitality is one of great interest. While we know tolerably well their reaction with disease, and the groups of diseases that are liable to cluster round them, we have but few facts bearing upon the normal relations of the temperaments to vital capacity. ”

“ By this mutual transfusion an equilibrium is preserved, like that which similar processes maintain in the natural world, and while a healthy, popular feeling circulates through the Aristocracy, a sense of their own station in the scale elevates the People. ”

“ All is reduced to its proper level; each trait is in its exact proportion, unless excruciating disease or accident have preceded death.” This is undoubtedly true from the point of view of the physiognomist, and it is his much desired vantage-ground, for his only object is to read the features laid bare. ”

“ A single touch, by introducing into the body some morbid matter, may set up an immensely involved set of functional disturbances and structural alterations. The whole tenor of a life may be changed by a word of advice; or a glance may determine an action which alters thoughts, feelings, and deeds throughout a long series of years. In those still more involved combinations of changes which societies exhibit, this truth is still more conspicuous. ”

“ The cases in which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are as rare as the cases of congenital disease or deformity; and for every such instance there may generally be assigned some grave, if not sufficient, cause. ”

“ But the fact that medical shortcomings, real or supposed, manifested themselves in the sensitive area of human suffering and death made all the more glaring every instance of ineptitude, inadequacy, inefficiency, or just plain indifference. ”

“ We may therefore broadly conclude that the only circumstance, within the range of those by which persons of similar conditions of life are affected, capable of producing a marked effect on the character of adults, is illness or some accident which causes physical infirmity. ”