III
Maladies which have their origin in fear must be distinguished from those morbid conditions which are suddenly aggravated by the effect of a strong emotion.
There are many who, when they receive a fright, become for the first time aware of some infirmity, which then increases so rapidly as to endanger their life.
Lamarre tells the following fact.[35] A lady, seventy-five years of age, had suffered for about ten years from defective action of the valves of the heart without this disease having hindered her housewifely activity. Dr. Lamarre, who was her physician from 1865 to 1870, was called a few times to her. The hypertrophy of the heart sufficiently counterbalanced the defect of the valves, and the pulse was regular.
When the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870, her sons agreed to keep her in ignorance of it, lest she should be afraid, she having already witnessed the plundering of her father’s house by the Prussians in 1815. They succeeded easily in keeping all news of national disasters from her, for they lived isolated in the country, and their mother read no newspapers.
On September 4, 1870, she suddenly heard of the defeats of the French, and of the march of the German army upon Paris. It was such a terrible shock to her that her face became livid, and she scarcely had the strength to cry, as she pressed her hand to her heart, 'I am suffocating—I am suffocating!’ Three-quarters of an hour later she died in her sons’ arms.
The movements which she made with hands and face till the last moment, and the great irregularity of the pulse, caused Dr. Lamarre to abandon the idea of apoplexy, and accept as the cause of decease a nervous perturbation of the heart brought on by violent mental agitation.
Pinel, one of the greatest celebrities in the domain of mental diseases, always began the examination of a patient by asking him whether he had not had some fright or some great vexation. In the study of every nervous malady great importance must always be attributed to the investigation of the moral causes. The vivid impression of a strong emotion may produce the same effects as a blow on the head or some physical shock. There are men who, through fear, have lost consciousness, sight, or speech; others, still more sensitive, have remained for a long time paralytic, unable to move legs or arms, and have lost all sensibility. Some remain for a long time sleepless, others fall into a sort of exaltation resembling the outbreak of mental disease, many lose their appetite, or are afflicted with articular diseases, and in some the nervous system suffers such a shock as to cause violent fever.
Dr. Kohts, in his account of the maladies caused by fright during the siege of Strasburg in 1870, gives a minute description of the cases of paralysis agitans and of convulsions which he observed. The tremor and singing in the ears arose suddenly, often lasting for months, and even for life in very nervous persons, as is also the case in catalepsy, paralysis, and aphasy.
Leyden considers fright as one cause of myelitis. Likewise, in sclerosis of the arteries, cardiac hypertrophy, fright may produce hemiplegy. Berger instances two cases of perfectly healthy persons who, immediately after a fright, were attacked by paraplegy, with accompanying insensibility, without any serious anatomical injury, for the phenomena rapidly disappeared.
It is often said, and with good reason, that children should not be allowed to witness an epileptic fit, for the fright and emotion which they suffer may prove dangerous, causing later a similar attack in themselves. However difficult it may be to comprehend such a thing, it is yet admitted by all. Quite recently Eulenburg and Berger saw two old men, the one seventy, the other sixty-five years of age, who had an epileptic fit immediately after such a fright, although they had never had one before, nor were they predisposed to it. Romberg gives an instance of a boy, ten years old, who was frightened in the morning by a dog, and in the evening had an attack of St. Vitus’s dance.
One of the most moving instances I have read about the influence of fear on the organism is in the description of the voyage of a sailing ship, so storm-tossed that one wonders how it could withstand the hurricanes which burst upon it. When scurvy broke out on board, the doctor noticed that the disease increased whenever the fear gained ground that land might still be far off. In every fresh tempest several died, and others were seized with the malady; and when at length the captain died, in whom all had great faith, the number of patients became five times greater.