Fainting

“ In fainting fits that proceed from fear, grief, or other violent passions or affections of the mind, the patient must be very cautiously managed. He should be suffered to remain at rest, and only made to smell to some vinegar. After he is come to himself he may drink freely of warm lemonade, or balm-tea, with some orange or lemon-peel in it. It will likewise be proper, if the fainting fits have been long and severe, to clean the bowels by throwing in an emollient clyster. ”

“ After a few weeks the disposition to fainting will altogether subside, and although a very alarming state to those who are inexperienced, yet the subject of it should never allow her mind to be depressed, or to anticipate an unfavorable result. ”

“ We know that when a person is in a faint he is insensible to ordinary stimuli, though very strong ones will rouse him; but what can we infer from this? Nothing; only we see it is so. Does it avail us any thing to be told that during the time of fainting the irritability is exhausted, and “in a short time the irritable principle will accumulate afresh;” in which case the patient will no doubt recover, unless he happens to be dead, which is the true meaning of an irreparable exhaustion of the irritability. ”

“ Those who fall into fainting fits owing to great heat, or insolation, or from remaining long in the bath, may be cured by being sprinkled with cold water, and exposed to the wind; by having their stomach rubbed, and getting wine and food. But if the swooning be occasioned by the greatness of the inflammation, or bad nature of the fever in the attacks, and if the patient is cold, we ought to rub his limbs strongly, chafe him, apply ligatures, force him to keep awake, and abstain from food. ”

“ The lips are pale and there may be cold sweat on the forehead. There is too little blood in the brain, and the heart is weak.
A fainting person should be laid flat on the floor or on a couch, and all doors and windows opened wide. Loosen all tight clothing and apply to the forehead a cloth wet with cold water. A faint usually lasts only a few minutes.
Sunstroke.—A person with sunstroke becomes giddy, sick at the stomach, and weak. He then gets drowsy and may seem as if asleep, but he cannot be aroused. The skin is hot and dry instead of being cold and pale, as in fainting. ”

“ Women certainly, whether as prisoners or witnesses, are often very uncomfortable in court, and if the discomfort is followed immediately by illness, dizziness, and great fear, fainting is natural. If only a little exaggeration, auto-suggestion, relaxation, and the attempt to dodge the unpleasant circumstance are added, then the fainting fit is ready to order, and the effect is generally in favor of the fainter. Although it is wrong to assume beforehand that fainting is a comedy, it is necessary to beware of deception. ”

“ To dream of fainting, signifies illness in your family and unpleasant news of the absent.
If a young woman dreams of fainting, it denotes that she will fall into ill health and experience disappointment from her careless way of living. ”

“ Eat when you are hungry. That cultivated "appetite" that craves for satisfaction at certain stated intervals of the day and brings on an "all-gone" fainting, nauseating sensation in the stomach is not real "hunger." In real hunger there is absolutely no sensation in the stomach but there is a rich and continuous flow of saliva in the mouth and that sort of thing makes you enjoy the plainest of fares. ”

“ Hence it is that fainting fits are so frequent in all crowded assemblies, especially in hot seasons. Such fits however must be considered as a kind of temporary death; and, to the weak and delicate, they sometimes prove fatal. They ought therefore with the utmost care to be guarded against. ”

“ But those who have faintings from dryness, should get for food two or three hours before the paroxysm either the juice of chondrus, or bread out of water, along with the kernels of the pomegranate, or apples, or pears. But if great danger be anticipated, we must also give wine. Those who have sudden attacks of fainting are to be thus treated. And in all cases we are to find out the cause of the deliquium, and direct our attention to it. And sometimes the greatest care must be bestowed upon this symptom, which threatens danger, or death itself. ”

“ Those who have fainting fits from plethora, must abstain from wine, and food, and from baths too, if there be fever. And we must give them honied water having thyme, marjoram, pennyroyal, or hyssop boiled in it. Oxymel also is beneficial to them. But if the faintings proceed from depraved humours contained in the stomach, we must prescribe a vomit with water and oil—at the same time tickling the throat with the finger or a feather. But if vomiting cannot be thereby procured, we must give pure oil, which will often evacuate downwards. And wormwood is applicable in such cases. ”

“ Seeing them well dressed, laughing and talking lightly with the acquaintances they meet on the street, one little suspects that the gnawing pain of hunger may be busy with their stomachs—that a woman's fainting "because of the extreme heat, you know," was really caused by want of food. That the fresh handkerchiefs are of their own washing. ”

“ It is important Page 141 that this habit of fainting should be combated not only by general means to improve the tone of the body and circulation, but also by taking care that the child understands the nature of the fainting fit, and the part which association of ideas plays in producing it. ”

“ The first fainting attack is a considerable misfortune, because the fear of a recurrence is a potent cause of a repetition. Standing upright with the body at rest and the mind vacant, the circulation stagnates, the boy's mind is attracted by the suggestion, he fears that he will faint as he has done before, and he faints. Schoolmasters are well aware that if one or two boys faint in chapel and are carried out, the trouble may grow to the proportion of a veritable epidemic. ”

“ Not only is the stomach largely influenced by mental states, but we all know that joy, sorrow, anger and other emotions cause that extremely rapid and violent action of the heart that we call palpitation, while fright stops its action, through the pneumogastric, so that fainting occurs, or even death. ”

“ Poor Ella! Her life had been one round of fashionable folly, and now that the world was fading from her view, her fainting soul cried out for light to guide her through the shadowy valley her feet were soon to tread. ”

“ Digestion now commences: the labour of the stomach reacts upon the brain, the gloomy ideas of the fasting man disappear, calmness resumes her sway, he no longer wishes to die. He speaks, converses tranquilly, asks for Paris news; and inquires for the old gourmands still living. When digestion is finished, he becomes silent, and sleeps for some hours. On awaking, complaints recommence; he weeps, he sighs, he becomes angry, he wishes to die, he calls eagerly for death. The hour for dinner comes ”

“ The sense of hunger as well as of thirst is liable to acquire habits in respect to the times of its returning painfulness, as well as in respect to the quantity required to satiate its appetency, and hence may become diseased by indulgence, as well as by want of its appropriate stimulus. Those who have been accustomed to distend their stomach by large quantities of animal and vegetable food, and much potation, find a want of distention, when the stomach is empty, which occasions faintness, and is mistaken for hunger, but which does not appear to be the same sensation. ”

“ Hunger, in other words, is normally the signal that the stomach is contracted for action; the unpleasantness of hunger leads to eating; eating starts gastric digestion, and abolishes the sensation. Meanwhile the pancreatic and intestinal juices, as well as bile, have been prepared in the duodenum to receive the oncoming chyme. The periodic activity of the alimentary canal in fasting, therefore, is not solely the source of hunger pangs, but is at the same time an exhibition in the digestive organs of readiness for prompt attack on the food swallowed by the hungry animal. ”

“ And yet we continue to speak of, and think of, every craving for something to put into the stomach as Hunger, while many of these cravings are as much a symptom of Appetite as is the craving or desire for alcohol or narcotics.
The lower animal has a natural hunger until it is spoiled by contact with man (or woman) who tempts it with candies and similar articles, miscalled food. The young child has a natural hunger until it is spoiled in the same way. ”

“ This instinctive urge toward action arouses in the individual an organic response that is felt as a tension or craving and is mainly dependent upon its own chemical constitution at the moment. Hunger is the sensation caused by the little muscular contractions in the stomach when the body is low in its food supply. Sudden fright is felt as an all-gone sensation "at the pit of the stomach." What really happens is a tightening up of the circular muscles of the blood-vessels lying in the network of the solar plexus, and a spasm of the muscles of the digestive tract. ”

“ If sensations of hunger are neglected, appetite is lost; on the other hand, if the stomach's warning of "I have had enough" is unheeded, the nerves of that organ after a time get wearied, and no longer send their important message to the brain, so that a habit of over-eating is acquired. ”

“ If this appetite has sometimes subdued the sentiments of nature, and compelled the mother to feed upon the flesh of her offspring, it will not excite amazement that I did not turn from the yet warm blood and reeking fibres of a brute.
One evil was now removed, only to give place to another. The first sensations of fullness had scarcely been felt when my stomach was seized by pangs, whose acuteness exceeded all that I ever before experienced. I bitterly lamented my inordinate avidity. The excruciations of famine were better than the agonies which this abhorred meal had produced. ”

“ But the sensibility and irritability of the nerves of the tongue are also increased by hunger; for common aliments yield a very different taste, according as the person is satiated or hungry. And it is probable farther, that the nerves of the upper part of the bowels sympathize with those of the stomach in hunger; and increase the uneasy sensation, in violent degrees of it.
Let us now consider in what way food may be supposed to lessen this sensibility and irritability of the nerves of the tongue, stomach, and bowels; and how abstinence, bitters, wines, &c. ”

“ It is attended with languor of the stomach, nausea, and loathing of food, bringing on vomiting of bile or phlegm, anxiety, and pains in the stomach. All these symptoms arise, they say, from a sanguineous plethora, brought on by a suppression of the menstrual discharge. They, therefore, recommend a restricted diet, and moderate exercise when the woman was accustomed to it. When the humour which infests the stomach is of an acid, acrid, or saltish nature, they direct draughts of tepid water, to encourage vomiting; they forbid all sweet things; and recommend an old sub-astringent wine. ”

“ The willingness is all—the assent, the approval of the cerebral centres, and the consequent unlocking of the whole arrested mechanism of digestive secretions and movements. Such a case is only an extreme instance. But it is undoubtedly the fact that just as the sight of so small a thing as a drop of blood, or even the word "blood," will on occasion cause a strong, healthy man to faint, so quite a small excess or defect in the accustomed quality of food will at times arrest the appetite and digestive processes of a healthy man. ”

“ When patients have understood that they were suffering no injury from not taking food they have ceased to have hunger cravings. These hunger cravings usually come from fear or from disorder caused by fermenting food in an overloaded stomach.
We can, then, on undisputed and practical authority, treat craving for food or drink as a disease and therefore not rational, and starvation as merely drawing upon the stored fuel—fatty tissue—by the dynamo of the brain, restorable at will at any time before complete exhaustion, without injury— [Pg 248] with benefit, in fact—to the machinery of the body. ”

“ The organ of alimentiveness, located directly in front of the ear, indicates the functional conditions of the stomach, which, when aroused by excessive hunger, exerts a debasing influence upon this and all of the adjacent organs, and is demoralizing to both body and mind. In obedience to the instinct of hunger, children will slyly plunder gardens and orchards, displaying profligate, if not reckless tendencies in the gratification of the appetite. In this regional division we include the medulla, the posterior and middle portions of which give rise to the pneumogastric nerve. ”

“ I see thee to be a great eater and the cause of this is a disorder in thy stomach; wherefore unless thou take speedy measures for thy cure, thine affair will end in perdition." Quoth the merchant, "My body is sound and my stomach speedy of digestion, and though I be a hearty eater, yet is there no disease in my body, to Allah be the praise and the thanks!" Quoth the Robber, "It may appear thus unto thee; but I know thou hast a disease incubating in thy vitals and if thou hearken to me, thou wilt medicine thyself." ”

“ Exercise after Eating.—Severe mental and vigorous bodily exercise immediately after a meal retards gastric digestion. The entrance of food into the stomach excites the free flow of gastric juice, which, like all the secreting processes, is dependent upon a flux of blood to the secreting glands. Other parts of the body, notably the brain, suffer from temporary anemia, and hence the great tendency to drowsiness after eating a hearty meal. ”