Syncretism

“ From these many considerations, we may conclude that the primitive seat of the attack in syncope, is the heart, which does not cease to act, because the action of the brain has been interrupted, but because it is the nature of some of the passions in such way to affect it, the brain at the same time, suffering a temporary death, because it no longer receives the fluid, which is necessary to its excitement. The nature of syncope is well enough illustrated, by the vulgar expression of being sick at heart. ”

“ It's better to sock the man you hate and stand a chance of having him sock you back than it is just to hate him and let the hate gnaw you like a grave-worm."
"What've you got against the Syndic?"
"Nothing, Max. Nothing against it and nothing for it. What I'm for is people. The Syndic is people. You're people. Slug 'em if you want and they'll have a chance to slug you back. Maybe you'll pull down the Syndic like Samson in the temple; more likely it'll crush you. But you'll be doing something about it. That's the great thing. That's the thing people have to learn—or they wind up in Riveredge." ”

“ When it is affected sympathetically with the brain, the liver, the orifice of the stomach, and from sorrow, fear, and many other causes, it brings on the affection called syncope, being a sudden collapse of the vital powers, indicated by prostration of strength, deliquium animi, a small pulse, coldness of the extremities, and copious perspiration. When this affection is of a violent nature, it also is irremediable; but if the strength stands out, it may sometimes be relieved. But strong palpitations of the heart often arise from a fulness or effervescence of its blood. ”

“ A phenomenon like this is easy to understand and will repeat itself the oftener, the more people there are like me; that is, hyper-analytical sceptics inclined to hysteria, with a great nothingness in their souls, and a strong neurosis in their veins. This modern product of our epoch, drawing to its end, may not love at all, or may look upon love as mere licentiousness; but if it happen that all the forces of one's life centre in one feeling, and come under the sway of his neurosis, the predilection will become as ineradicable as any other chronic disease. ”

“ Fear probably occasions each kind of syncope in different cases. In some cases, the right cavities of the heart become distended owing to impeded respiration, and possibly to a diminution of power in the heart itself. More frequently, the syncope appears to be of the ordinary or anæmic kind, the effect of the mental condition acting first on the more distant parts of the circulation. ”

“ You could not transmit the Power through a broken crystal—why, not even through one that had a flaw.
There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney? ”

“ When fear has still more violently affected the system, there have been instances where syncope, and sudden death, or a total stoppage of the circulation, have succeeded: in these last cases, the pain of fear has employed or exhausted the whole of the sensorial power, so that not only those muscular fibres generally exerted by volition cease to act, whence the patient falls down; and those, which constitute the organs of sense, whence syncope; but lastly those, which perform the vital motions, become deprived of sensorial power, and death ensues. ”

“ In cardiac syncope, on the other hand, the cavities of the heart, or at all events the right cavities of this organ, are always full, whether the syncope depend on paralysis of the heart by a narcotic, or inherent weakness of its structure, or on its being overpowered by the quantity of blood with which it is distended. After death from this kind of syncope, if the blood have not been displaced by artificial respiration or other causes, the right cavities of the heart and the adjoining great veins will be found filled with blood, and the lungs will in many cases be more or less congested. ”

“ Disordered people look disordered, unusual people look unusual. A youth with long hair, a velvet coat, extravagant manners, and the other effeminacies of emptiness looks the charlatan he is. Synge gave one from the first the impression of a strange personality. He was of a dark type of Irishman, though not black-haired. Something in his air gave one the fancy that his face was dark from gravity. Gravity filled the face and haunted it, as though the man behind were forever listening to life’s case before passing judgment. ”

“ You'll be a young man who hates the Syndic. We'll tear down your present personality a gray cell at a time. We'll pump you full of Seconal every day for a quarter of a year.... We'll obliterate your personality under a new one. We'll bury Charles Orsino under a mountain of suggestions, compulsions and obsessions shoveled at you sixteen hours a day while you're too groggy to resist. ”

“ In all the syncopes, which I have seen induced after convulsive fits, the pulse has continued natural, though the organs of sense, as well as the locomotive muscles, have ceased to perform their functions; for it is necessary for the perception of objects, that the external organs of sense should be properly excited by the voluntary power, as the eye-lids must be open, and perhaps the muscles of the eye put into action to distend, and thence give greater pellucidity to the cornea, which in syncope, as in death, appears flat and less transparent. ”

“ Taylor went on, "a roundup or a registration, or mass treatment or any such violation of the Syndic's spirit."
Charles exploded: "Damn it, this is a matter of life or death to the Syndic!"
"No, Charles. Nothing can be a matter of life or death to the Syndic. When anything becomes a matter of life or death to the Syndic, the Syndic is already dead, its morale, is already disintegrated, its credit already gone. What is left is not the Syndic but the Syndic's dead shell. I am not placed so that I can say objectively now whether the Syndic is dead or alive. I fear it is dying. ”

“ It is of no importance to our present purpose, whether syncope depend on polypi, on aneurism, or be the result of some violent emotion. The successive affection of the organs is always the same. They die for the moment in the same way, as they really perish when the heart is wounded, or a ligature put upon the aorta. In the same manner also are those sorts of syncope produced, which succeed after any great evacuation of blood, pus or water. [208] The heart is affected from sympathy, the brain for want of its excitant. ”

“ This dear aunt has managed things with a clumsy hand in writing to me about Kromitzki and the encouragement he had from Aniela's mother. In these times of overwrought nerves, it is not only women that are like sensitive plants. A rough touch, and, the soul shrinks, folds itself up, maybe forever. I know it is foolish, even wrong, but I cannot help it. To change myself I should have to order at an anatomist's a new set of nerves, and keep those I have for special occasions. No one, not even Pani Sniatynski, can judge me more severely than I judge myself. ”

“ And suddenly he felt her come. From far-off, from her place among the blessed, she came rushing, as if on wings. He heard nothing; he saw nothing; but with every nerve he felt the vibration of her approach, of her presence. She was close to him now, closer than hearing or sight or touch could bring her; her self to his self; her inmost essence was there.
The phantasm of a week ago was a faint, insignificant thing beside this supreme manifestation. No likeness of flesh and blood could give him such an assurance of reality, of contact. ”

“ He says that paralysis of the heart would be death by syncope, but that the symptoms before death, and the conditions of the organs met with afterwards, are not in accordance with such a view of the case. In order to show that both the symptoms and the after death appearances, in the fatal cases of inhalation of chloroform, are consistent with paralysis of the heart, it is necessary to point out the difference between ordinary syncope and cardiac syncope. ”

“ Avicenna, Averrhoes, and Rhases treat the case exactly as our author.
SECT. XXXIX.—ON THE OTHER CAUSES WHICH OCCASION SYNCOPE.
There are four other causes from which men fall into syncope; namely, violent pain, watchfulness, too great evacuation, and sometimes motion when in a state of delirium. To these, if you please, you may add a fifth, namely, an intemperament of the primary organs. Death takes place most quickly when the heart is affected, next, when the brain, but not so when the liver. ”

“ She saw herself and John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her at the foot and Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton with another stretcher.
Nothing for her and John and Gwinnie but field work; the farm had spoiled them incurably for life indoors. But it had hardened their muscles and their nerves, it had fitted them for the things they would have to do. The things they would have to see. There would be blood; she knew there would be blood; but she didn't see it; she saw white, very white bandages, and greyish white, sallow-white faces that had no features that she knew. ”

“ His face was opposite to Thyrsis, and the latter watched his expression, breathless with dread. But the doctor only said, “Ah, yes.”
He turned to Corydon. “These pains that you feel,” he said, “are from the compressing of the womb. Don’t let them frighten you—everything is just as it should be. You will find that you can help at each pang by holding your breath; just as soon as you cry out, it releases the diaphragm, and the pressure stops, and the pain passes. You must bear each one just as long as you can. ”

“ Besides Asklepios, I had to do with sons of Asklepios. When I was troubled a little last year in my bladder, they prescribed for me. I saw that they were tricksters, but I said to myself: ‘What harm! The world stands on deceit, and life is an illusion. The soul is an illusion too. But one must have reason enough to distinguish pleasant from painful illusions.’ I shall give command to burn in my hypocaustum cedar-wood sprinkled with ambergris, for during life I prefer perfumes to stenches. ”

“ I supposed the vial to be in the box when I took it, but when I got to my room and had an opportunity to examine the deadly trinket, I found it empty, just as you found it when you took it from my hair. Some one had taken the vial out before my hand had ever touched the box."
Like a man who feels himself suddenly seized by the throat, yet who struggles for the life slowly but inexorably leaving him, Sinclair cast one heartrending look toward the conservatory, then heavily demanded:
"Why were you out of your room? Why did they have to look for you? ”

“ On the supposition that neuropathy forms a necessary condition of abnormal instinct, is it generic neuropathy or a specific type of that disorder? If generic, can valid reasons be adduced for regarding nervous malady in any of its aspects (hysteria is the mother, insanity is the father) as the cause of so peculiarly differentiated an affection of the sexual appetite? If specific, that is, if the ancestors of the patient must have been afflicted with sexual inversion, in what way did they acquire it, supposing all untainted individuals to be incapable of the feeling? ”

“ He looked at the two of them and shrugged. "Lee, so stern, Charles so grim," he said. "I suppose you're dedicated now." He looked at the desk.
He thought: I have a faint desire to take the pistol from my desk and shoot you both. I have a nervous feeling that you're about to embark on a crusade to awaken Syndic Territory to its perils. You think the fate of civilization hinges on you. You're right, of course. The fate of civilization hinges on every one of us at any given moment. We are all components in the two-billion-body problem. ”

“ Or else he was lying for Maisie's sake.
Downstairs in the library he turned on him.
"Look here; there's no good lying to me. I want truth."
"My dear Fielding, I shouldn't dream of lying to you. There's nothing wrong with your wife's heart. Nothing organically wrong."
"With that pain? She was in agony, Ransome, agony. Why can't you tell me at once that it's angina?"
"Because it isn't. Not the real thing. False angina's a neurosis, not a heart disease. Get the nervous condition cured and she'll be all right. Has she had any worry? ”

“ The minutes seemed to drag into hours, as I lay there struggling for breath.
Suddenly, out of the horrible black stillness, I heard a noise above me. Listening, with every racked nerve on edge, I heard it come nearer—nearer. At first I could not make it out—could not understand—and then, suddenly, the truth dawned upon me with a horrible intensity: The body snatchers were after me for the dissecting-room! ”

“ So great indeed is the effect which the passions occasion upon the organs of the circulation, as even to arrest them altogether in their functions, where the affection is very powerful. In this way is syncope produced, for the primitive seat of syncope is always, as I shall soon prove it to be, in the heart, and not in the brain. ”

“ Death from syncope may be associated with any mode of hanging, but is perhaps most frequently connected with the long drop. It is about the most rapid and least painful, though perhaps the rarest form of death. In a case of syncope, I have seen the heart's action cease in two minutes from the time the bolt was drawn. Fear largely contributes to this mode of death.
It now remains for us to consider death by dislocation or fracture of the cervical vertebræ, with consequent laceration of the spinal cord. ”