Physical cause

“ Many terrible maladies, which take the shape of Internal Inflammation, Sores, etc., and appear in the form of Fevers, Aches, Swellings, Glandular Disturbances, Mental Derangement, and General Debility, also proceed from the same cause. ”

“ The inflammatory process—the chief seat of which, however it may first originate, is in the circulating blood—exerts a powerful influence over the nervous system, and may, by this influence, cause death. ”

“ Somewhere, in every one's system, there is a tender point, or an infirm organ, or a weakened nerve, or a fractured limb, or a heart not altogether sound, or a lingering cancer, or just the taint of corruption, which will cause a diseased lung, and in the end produce consumption. ”

“ Undoubtedly one of the most important steps which medicine has made in its development, is the recognition of the difference between disease itself and those symptoms which may be caused as the result of such disease. We shall find that in most, if not in all, of the older writers on medicine, the treatment of the physician was directed towards the alleviation of those prominent symptoms, which, then not so much looked upon as symptoms, were only recognized as the main cause of the attack. ”

“ Morbid variations of structure and function present three leading phases of action, the acute, chronic, and diathetic. The primary causes of each are the same, a faulty personal hygiene and an unfavorable environment, but a derivative cause very generally predominates in the heritage of a defect or taint in the blood. In acute variations the struggle between the tendency to death and the tendency to reversion is usually short and severe, but decisive. The contending forces are often so nearly equal that a very little will turn the scale one way or the other. ”

“ If in any human body we at any time see the hand inflicting injury upon the head, or any one member causing discomfort to another, we conclude, and with reason, that some disturbance of the natural condition has taken place—that there is physical disease in some bodily organism, or moral disease in the spirit that animates the body. ”

“ The blood becomes impoverished, the victim PALE. This pallor of the skin is often the outward mark of the trouble within. But to the sufferer there arise a host of symptoms, chiefest among which are loss of physical and nervous energy. ”

“ When one is attacked by certain maladies, all the springs of our physical being appear to be broken, all our energies destroyed, all our muscles relaxed, our bones to have become as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The possibility that heart conditions could be separated one from another, and that some of them could be proved to be comparatively harmless, some of them liable to cause lingering illness, while others were surely associated with the probability of sudden fatal termination, was scarcely dreamed of. ”

“ All diseases originate in the exuberance, deficiency, or retrograde action, of the faculties of the sensorium, as their proximate cause; and consist in the disordered motions of the fibres of the body, as the proximate effect of the exertions of those disordered faculties. ”

“ Tissue Changes From Nerves.—Until one recalls how many physical changes may be brought about by mental influences or emotional disturbances, it is not always clear just how mental influence can affect disease favorably or unfavorably. ”

“ Our best philosophers on diseases and causes have elaborately written and published their conclusions, and the world has carefully perused with deep interest, what they have said of all the diseases above named, also diseases of the lung, and to-day we are by them left in total darkness as to the cause of the above named diseases, also fits, insanity, loss of voice, brachial agitans, and many other diseases of the chest, neck and head. ”

“ Observe, first, how numerous are the effects which any marked change works upon an adult organism—a human being, for instance. An alarming sound or sight, besides the impressions on the organs of sense and the nerves, may produce a start, a scream, a distortion of the face, a trembling consequent upon a general muscular relaxation, a burst of perspiration, an excited action of the heart, a rush of blood to the brain, followed possibly by arrest of the heart's action and by syncope: and if the system be feeble, an indisposition with its long train of complicated symptoms may set in. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I have had, of course, ample opportunity of studying the nature of the disease, and its effects on the different organs of the body, and in the many examinations I have made, post mortem, I can testify that not a single organ in the whole body is exempt from the attacks and inroads of this dire and loathsome malady. It invades the brain, spinal nerves, the eyes, tongue and throat, the lungs, the liver, and other digestive organs. ”

“ The discovery that a diseased condition of the blood leads to certain bodily disturbances which we call disease, was soon followed by the realization of the fact that one of the main conditions which bring about such disturbances is predisposition, which in many cases is hereditary. ”

“ Hence the difficulty of determining, under what class of diseases parturition should be arranged, consists in there being two kinds of diseased actions comprehended under one word; which have each their different proximate cause.
In Sect. XXXIX. 8. 4. and in Class II. 1. 1. 1. we have endeavoured to give names to four links of animal causation, which conveniently apply to the classification of diseases; thus in common nictitation, or winking with the eyes without our attention to it, the increased irritation is the proximate cause; the stimulus of the air on the dry cornea is the remote cause ”

“ When the mind directs thought and volition toward any organ of the body the blood and nervous fluid tend to that organ. Thus, when the brain is used, or the eye, or the hand, the nervous fluid and blood tend to the organ to stimulate its action. If this stimulation is too frequent, or too long continued, or produced by unnatural methods, then debility or disease are the result. The capillaries of the misused organ become engorged, producing temporary or chronic inflammation or congestion. ”

“ This is not the place to describe the symptoms and the results of this dreadful disease. Suffice it to say that the skin thickens, is discoloured and ulcerates: that the limbs swell: that the fingers and toes drop off: that the voice sinks to a whisper: and that the sufferer's mind is weakened by his malady. ”

“ Most students of the condition believe that they arise from the field of operation, and may be caused by infection of the tissues, by injury to the tissues, or by the motion of the part of the body operated upon. ”

“ The very notion of Diagnosis in our modern sense of the word depends upon Morbid Anatomy. The older physicians seldom attempted to determine the seat of an ailment. [8] Disease was looked upon not as a condition depending upon disordered physiological functions, but as something external, attacking a previously healthy person, disturbing, and, if not expelled by art, finally destroying him; while any structural changes which were found after death were regarded rather as the effects than the causes of the symptoms during life. ”

“ What is observation worth, if we are ignorant of the seat of the disease? You may take notes, for twenty years, from morning to night at the bedside of the sick, upon the diseases of the heart, the lungs, the gastric viscera, &c. and all will be to you only a confusion of symptoms, which, not being united in one point, will necessarily present only a train of incoherent phenomena. ”

“ Chills are the effects of heat; ulcers, boils, etc., are heat coming to the surface; but mind, and not matter, creates this heat and forms all the identity disease has. The invalid may conclude a humor in the blood causes boils, and when this humor is brought to the surface the system is relieved; but mind, and not matter, has formed this conclusion and its results. You will have these forms of disease so long as you regard them channels for disease, or inevitable results of matter, Cherish any particular belief of disease and you are in danger of reproducing it on the body. ”

“ This is exemplified by the numerous cases in which a disease is extracted from the body by sucking or by other processes, in the belief that it may be thrown into people, or that it may be enclosed in wood in order to prevent its return. ”

“ A disease, in the pathological language, is when one or more of the various corporeal or mental functions, cannot be performed as in usual health. The symptoms of all diseases are indicated by few or many derangements of the corporeal functions, of the excretions, and of the sensible qualities: such are pain, disagreeable sensation, anxiety, irritation internal or external ”

“ It will easily be seen that the diseases which disturb the formerly evenly balanced organism tend toward what pathologists call destructive metamorphosis. Blood-changes, tissue-changes, and secretory changes, are subjecting us to constantly varying standards of health. ”

“ The same may be said of various cutaneous diseases, especially in their chronic forms—suppression of the natural or habitual evacuations—ulcers—disposition to gravel and stone—old and painful wounds, healed or open—diseases resulting from metallic fumes—swellings and engorgements of the liver, spleen, and other abdominal organs—hæmorrhoids—nervous asthma—chronic sickness—colics—hysteria—hypochondriasis—derangements peculiar to females—sterility—in short, three fourths of human affections, in their chronic or tedious conditions! ”

“ The remote causes are pneumony, catarrh, hæmoptysis, rheumatism, gout, asthma, scrophula, chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, and kidneys, nervous and intermitting fevers, measles, repelled humours from the surface of the body, the venereal disease, obstructed menses, sudden growth about the age of puberty, grief, and all other debilitating passions of the mind ”

“ On the other hand, the dissolution of certain organs essential to life is frequently almost painless. The brain may be cut and cauterised almost without suffering; a cavity may be formed in the lung, a cancer in the liver, without the slightest warning of danger. ”

“ The defects of distant organs, of the blood vessels, the blood, the lymph and all abnormal bodily conditions, are known to often have a deleterious effect upon the nervous system and improvement in the mental condition to be coincident with their removal. ”

“ For not only are many of the diseases which flesh is heir to, obscure in their causes, difficultly distinguishable by their symptoms, and altogether mysterious in their effect upon the system, but constitutions may be as different as tempers, and their varieties may be as many and as great as those of the human countenance. ”

“ As there are many diseases produced by the quantity of the sensation of pain or pleasure being too great or too little; so are there diseases produced by the susceptibility of the constitution to motions causable by these sensations being too dull or too vivid. ”

“ It has been judiciously remarked that pathological facts, or, to speak in common language, diseases in their different forms and degrees afford in the case of physiological investigation the most valuable equivalent to experimentation properly so called; inasmuch as they often exhibit to us a definite disturbance in some one organ or organic function, the remaining organs and functions being, in the first instance at least, unaffected. ”

“ Such are the degenerations of the brain, the heart and blood vessels, the liver, pancreas and kidneys; conditions which are accompanied by demonstrable changes in the structure of these organs, are often progressive in character, and usually incapable of repair. ”

“ The diseases in consequence of frequent inebriety, or of daily taking much vinous spirit without inebriety, consist in the paralysis, which is liable to succeed violent stimulation. Organs, whose actions are associated with others, are frequently more affected than the organ, which is stimulated into too violent action. ”

“ Observation revealed that illness was frequently accompanied by an excess of fluid or matter in the body, as in the case of colds, respiratory disorders, swollen joints, diarrheas, or the skin eruptions that accompanied such epidemic diseases as the plague or smallpox. ”

“ The supply of blood to the brain and nerve substance is curtailed in the same manner, and for lack of sustenance these structures commence to decay, which accounts for diminished mental activity and sensory impressions. ”

“ The injury done by stays is so entirely internal that it is not strange that the maladies caused by wearing them should be attributed to every reason under the sun except the true one, which is, briefly, that all the internal organs, being by them displaced, are doing their work imperfectly and under the least advantageous conditions: and are, therefore, exactly in the state most favorable to the development of disease, whether hereditary or otherwise.—Macmillan's Magazine. ”