Hypocaust

“ There was a great consultation of doctors upon her case, and after it had taken place, the doctors came to the Bishop and said, 'The case of Madame de Salis is an extraordinary one; it is a most peculiar, but still a known form of hypochondria. She cannot rest because she always sees before her—not the horrible phantom which made her married life so miserable, but the room which was the scene of her suffering. And she never will rest; the image is, as it were, branded into her brain, and cannot be eradicated. There is only one remedy, and it is a very desperate one. ”

“ Nor are any further steps taken till the patient sinks into hypochondriasis; till the overstretched mind threatens imbecility; or till the moral shock recoiling upon the corporeal frame, gives rise to symptoms of acute disease, that bring the unfortunate man to the margin of the grave, from which nothing but a long residence in his native country can rescue him. ”

“ As in hysteria, too, the tenderness is a phenomenon so greatly affected by the mind, that, if we can divert the patient's attention for a moment, he will let us touch him anywhere, without noticing it at all.
It is a marked peculiarity of hypochondriasis that it is far more common in men than in women; a relation which is precisely the opposite to that which rules in neuralgia. Hypochondriasis is also pre-eminently a disease of adult middle life; it is scarcely ever seen in youth, except as the result of excessive masturbation acting on a temperament hereditarily predisposed to insanity. ”

“ Hypocrates will have Crysis to be an acute or swift reportation in Diseases, either to recovery or death: But, say some, in regard there are more Diseases to terminate in health then in death (except pestilentiall Diseases) where the matter and cause is so malignant and poysonous, that nature many times doth not attend a fight or combat with the Disease, whereby it cannot properly be called a Crysis; the definition of the Hypocrates will not well hold, unlesse it be in such Diseases as doe determine in a recovery of the sick party: So some say. ”

“ The advantages which may arise from this system will appear in a still more striking point of view, when we reflect that those cases which without proper care in the early stages of the disease ultimately become the worst and the most dangerous, are precisely those which are fatally neglected, in the first instance, and which are scarcely ever placed under any medical treatment or moral discipline until the evil is past all remedy. Cases of suspension and cases of gradual decay of mind, as well as cases of Hypochondria, are of this description. ”

“ A fine description of one aspect of hysteria and hypochondria may here be given as an example of his power in the delineation of disease: “The patients believe that they have to suffer all the evils that can befall humanity, all the troubles that the world can supply. They have melancholy forebodings, they brood over trifles, cherishing them in their anxious and unquiet bosoms. Fear, anger, jealousy, suspicion, and the worst passions of the mind arise without cause. ”

“ I observe, therefore, that I have not found the mode of treatment by eschar to succeed in large ulcers of the legs. But in small ulcers, and especially in those irritable and painful little ulcers which are so apt to form about the ankle and occasionally occur near, the tendo achillis, and in which Mr. Baynton's plan is inadmissible, the caustic is invaluable; [84] in these cases the cold poultice and lotion should precede the application of the caustic, for a few days, that the irritability and inflammation of the sore and surrounding skin may be first subdued ”

“ Hypochondria is a species of torment which not only makes us unreasonably cross with the things of the present; not only fills us with groundless anxiety on the score of future misfortunes entirely of our own manufacture, but also leads to unmerited self-reproach for what we have done in the past. ”

“ It is never to be forgotten in the chamber of sickness, that the mind not only is not by itself, alone and independent, but that it is not connected with sound nerves, but acts upon a deranged body, and is acted upon by it, through the multitude of nervous filaments, which, scattered everywhere, are receiving impressions at every point, and transmitting them to the mind. If, therefore, the mind, thus disturbed by disease, be at the same time troubled by causes applied directly to it, the result must be a reaction from the mind through the nerves upon the disease itself. ”

“ In its most aggravated form hypochondriasis amounts to actual insanity, delusions arising as to the existence of living creatures in the intestines or brain, or to the effect that the body is materially changed; e.g. into glass, wood, &c. The symptoms of this condition may be remittent; they may even disappear for years, and only return on the advent of some exciting cause. Suicide is occasionally committed in order to escape from the constant misery. Recovery can only be looked for by placing the patient under such morally hygienic conditions as may help to turn his mind to other matters. ”

“ In the first four sections almost every statement is commonplace and requires no commentary (for example, Hill's opening remark: "To call the Hypochondriasis a fanciful malady, is ignorant and cruel. It is a real, and a sad disease: an obstruction of the spleen by thickened and distempered blood; extending itself often to the liver, and other parts; and unhappily is in England very frequent: physick scarce knows one more fertile in ill; or more difficult of cure.") ”

“ Hypochondria consists of a mild form of insanity in which there is a tendency to exaggerate the various sensations of the body and their importance, their exaggeration being at times so great as to amount to actual delusion. All sorts of symptoms are dwelt upon, and the doctor is pestered to the extreme by the morbid fears of the patient. ”

“ Impaired digestion with nervous symptoms—in which the morbid sensibility of the mind is apparently the greatest—is called hypochondria. This class of sufferers, whose bodily and mental ills and morbid fears are so chaotically interwoven, are deserving of much consideration. So numerous are their fears and so fertile are their reasons for the many changes they arbitrarily make in their efforts to get well or keep from getting worse, so obstinately sure are they of being always right—that we can but give them our sincerest pity. ”

“ Second, there is a special form of worry called by the old authors hypochondriacism, which essentially is fear about one's own health. The hypochondriac magnifies every flutter of his heart into heart disease, every stitch in his side into pleurisy, every cough into tuberculosis, every pain in the abdomen into cancer of the stomach, every headache into the possibility of brain tumor or insanity. He turns his gaze inward upon himself, and by so doing becomes aware of a host of sensations that otherwise stream along unnoticed. ”

“ But in hypochondriasis it is not often that we are left, for any long time, to these means of diagnosis only; the special character of the disease is that the morbid sensations shift from one place to another, in a manner that is quite unlike that of the true neuralgias. The patient who to-day complains of the most severe gastralgia, or liver-pain, will to-morrow place all his sufferings in the cardiac region, or in the rectum, or will complain of a deep fixed pain within his head; and these changes are often most rapid and frequent. ”

“ You are very ill indeed, and the disease is infectious."
"By my maidhood, and by your own, sweet lady, (the Douglas's I mean,) there shall no leech that ever drew lancet open a vein in my blessed and valuable member. No, not were it to humour a queen, or a lady Jane Howard."
"Now, may all the plagues that prey on the heart of woman seize and torment thee if thou hast not guessed the cause of my uneasiness. There's a latent devil within thee that whispers to thy imagination the thoughts that are passing in my heart. ”

“ At a later period after the accident, when the caustic has been neglected, some degree of inflammation is usually present, the orifice is nearly closed with the swelling, and a little pus or fluid is formed within. A slight pressure will evacuate this fluid, the caustic may then be applied within the puncture, and over the surrounding skin, beyond the inflammation, and must be allowed to dry. In this manner we frequently succeed in forming an adherent eschar, and [26] all inflammation subsides. ”

“ The conditions are all the same, but they reason that the dread of darkness or dirt or mice or height cannot possibly bring death or seriously affect the health or happiness, while sickness and the dread of it, means—so they imagine—pain and maybe death. Medically, nosophobia has no such significance. The condition exists only in the mind and the same effort at self-discipline will cure the dread of disease as well as the dread of any other possible condition. ”

“ It is improper to employ the caustic when the ulcer is too large to admit of the formation of a complete [20] eschar; or when it is so situated as to render it impossible that the eschar should remain undisturbed, as between the toes, unless, indeed, the patient be confined to his bed;—or in cases attended by much inflammation, or by much œdema. ”

“ The confidence of the few believers in this delusion will never survive the loss of friends who may die of any acute disease, under a treatment such as that prescribed by Homoeopathy. It is doubtful how far cases of this kind will be trusted to its tender mercies, but wherever it acquires any considerable foothold, such cases must come, and with them the ruin of those who practise it, should any highly valued life be thus sacrificed. ”

“ When these unfortunate onanists are questioned on all the circumstances of the act of which they accuse themselves, we generally arrive at the following results:
We recognize that we have to deal with psychopathic or neurotic subjects more or less tainted by heredity, timid and shunning their fellows, easily impressed by imagination, possessed of unhealthy sentiments and ideas; in fact, hypochondriacs, predisposed to look upon every sensation or slight indisposition as a grave disorder threatening their health or life. They thus live in perpetual anxiety. ”

“ Indeed, as every medical man knows, the name of Hoefer is synonymous with all that is occult in the science of toxicology, and the antidotes he has given to the world, from time to time, are as curious as they are drastic in effect.
“Have you experienced any strange sensation?” was my first question of him.
“No, none,” he answered. “Ach! it is all very curious—very curious indeed! I have never before seen similar cases. There is actual rigor mortis. The symptoms so closely resemble death that one might so easily mistake. We must investigate further. ”

“ To those who are the victims of misadvised friends; the victims of the glaring advertisements of Quacks, that fill our daily papers, even polluting our religious journals, preying upon the minds and souls of our young men and women, with their endless list of symptoms, until the average youth and maiden are well nigh hypochondriacs, believing as they do (though they know not why) that they are the victims of some disease (though they know not what) which makes them unfit for marriage. ”

“ Practicing the art of duplicity in simulating physical ailments will, if persisted in, establish nosophobia. The patient will come to believe that she is not exactly well. She will establish the habit of feeling sick. This will render her mind diseased and the diseased mind will in turn suggest new and additional aches and pains, and she will soon not know whether she is sick or well. The dread of disease will effect its retribution and soon she will be, in fact, an unhappy and an unsuccessful young wife. ”

“ They are devoured with a burning internal heat; and generally have a voracious appetite, and are afflicted with pain in some organ or part, especially the head, the chest, or the abdomen, which the unhappy sufferers are ready to attribute to the malevolence of their enemies.
In deciding upon that species of insanity which is termed Melancholia, we must be cautious in not confounding its symptoms with those of Hypochondriasis, which is to be regarded as strictly a bodily malady ”

“ Instead of the well-sustained blood-pressure of the early stages with the stimulant gout-poison irritating the cerebral cells into activity, we have the stimulant quality of the blood together with an impaired and insufficient supply. The resultant product is a blended compound of irritability and suspicion, bad temper and anxiety, the latter all the more aggravating from a consciousness that it is not mere illusion, but an emotional hallucination.
Such individuals are the terror of their dependents and the bêtes noires of their domestics. ”

“ Left alone this worry stage develops into an acute state and brings with it nervous prostration, and sometimes a complete collapse of the will power.
Before the acute stage of neurasthenia is reached there is noticed "brain fag," [Pg 39] and brain fag is nature's warning signal calling upon you to take notice and change your mental habits.
Worry sometimes develops into hysteria; again it takes the form of hypochondria or chronic blues. The hypochondriac has a chronic, morbid anxiety about personal health and personal welfare. ”