Frederick the Great said that all culture comes through the stomach. This saying emphasizes pithily the dependence of psychology upon physiology. The stomach with the intestines is certainly the source from which every portion of the body receives its nourishment and most of its diseases. The physiological plus and minus processes leave their reflex on the mind.
Prof. Ch. Bouchard, in his lectures on Auto-Intoxication (Oliver's trans., p. 14), says: "The organism in its normal, as in its pathological state, is a receptacle and a laboratory of poisons. Amongst these some are formed by the organism itself, others by microbes, which either are the guests, the normal inhabitants of the intestinal tube, or are parasites at second-hand, and disease producing."
In the preceding chapters we have mentioned some of the most common cases of retention of excreta in the rectum, sigmoid cavity, colon, cecum, duodenum and stomach, and how the consequent foul conditions often resulted in diarrhea. Auto-infection impairs the functions of every organ in the body, by clogging the pores with poisons and filth. By the transfer of disease germs from one infected, that is, tainted, contaminated part of the body to parts that were free from infection, the kidneys, mucous membrane and skin receive these unnatural products, and their functions are disturbed thereby. The disturbance of the various organs throughout the system sets up such a multiplicity of symptoms that one gets the impression of a pandemonium—a veritable council-hall of evil spirits. The visitation is omnipresent. Infliction, misery, are everywhere. The taint of auto-generated intestinal morbific products, carried and communicated to the remotest parts, manifests itself now here now there as if it were a local trouble, and it is difficult therefore, nay, impossible, to classify scientifically the symptoms of auto-infection. A classification, though necessarily imperfect, will aid in the diagnosis and treatment of the various abnormal conditions of the stomach and intestines, that is, of mal-digestion. The sympathy, good understanding and responsiveness between the brain and the digestive apparatus are so close and intimate that the physician must take into consideration the inter-relationship of these organs before deciding which one is reporting reflex nervous symptoms, and which direct symptoms. Plutarch says in one of his essays: "Should the body sue the mind before a court judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind had been a ruinous tenant to its landlord." The digestive apparatus is, or should be, a farm for the mind, but unfortunately it usually has to wait twenty or more years before the tenant understands how to cultivate it for the uses of his intellectual and esthetical life.
I have referred to the fact that the most common causes of constipation, indigestion and other foul conditions of the alimentary canal favorable to the production of autogenetic poisons and their auto-infection, are such common and every-day matters, so familiar to almost every one that the victim, the parents and the physician feel no alarm of the coming danger for years. During these ignorant and innocent years the poison and filth were being absorbed, infecting the system with their morbific taint and lowering the quality of the blood and lessening its quantity, producing the state known as anemia. Associated with progressive anemia is mal-assimilation, improper nutrition, ebbing of the nervous and vital forces and the lessening of the secretory, excretory and digestive powers. By the time the poor victim is weighing fifteen to twenty-five pounds less than he ought to the symptoms of ill-health are sufficiently alarming to compel the sufferer to seek medical aid for disease of the stomach, bowels, liver, kidneys, lungs, etc.
Slow digestion is perhaps the most common form of functional disturbance of the stomach, due to an insidious auto-infection for years. The eyes and the skin begin to show the effect of the poisonous infection. The skin becomes dry, pale and muddy in color; has more or less annoying eruptions, and exhibits a jaundiced appearance. The body is ill nourished, the nervous system depressed, the blood impoverished, the memory failing, the general appearance languid, irritable, anxious. What a household picture this is to every one of the human family! But let us fill it out somewhat more fully. Note how the undue delay of food in the stomach occasions a sense of weight and oppression, the feeling beginning about an hour after a meal and continuing for hours, sometimes attended with fermentation and sometimes without it. At times there is a feeling of drowsiness due to the absorption of an excessive amount of the gases which distend the stomach and bowels, and this absorption is accompanied by pains in the stomach, head, between the shoulders and in the region of the heart. Sleep is disturbed by dreams, or one is awakened with a feeling of numbness and palpitation of the heart. At times the urine is scanty, strongly acid or high-colored. The tongue is more or less foul, with white or creamy coating. Now and then tasteless or saltish eructations occur. The appetite may be too good, or there is no appetite at all. Note the careworn expression, the wondering what to eat, what to drink or what remedy to take. So between much worse and some better, the trouble continues—both of body and mind.
Indigestion, however, with undue formation of acids proper, or acids unnatural, to the stomach, is a much more annoying affliction than slow digestion. The sufferer from indigestion may be debilitated, anemic, may have a general want of tone; or he may be a more or less vigorous and plethoric person. In some cases flatulence is very troublesome. But the most usual symptoms are heartburn, acid eructations that produce burning sensations, sour taste at intervals or constantly in the mouth, setting the teeth on edge. In the more vigorous or plethoric sufferers a gouty diathesis may exist, which may result in a tendency to inflammation, bringing on neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, etc. Tongue more or less foul; uric acid in the system; confusion in the mind; headaches; pains in the loins, legs and feet; in fact, more or less shifting pains everywhere: these are the common exhibits of indigestion. On the whole, the sufferer is a victim to an irritable body and a fretful mind, necessitating the cultivation by him of patience and the effort to be agreeable.
Besides the symptoms mentioned, indigestion may also be accompanied by gastric pain or by uneasiness at the pit of the stomach. It may be a sense of fulness or tightness, or a feeling of distention or weight, or again, a feeling of emptiness, goneness or sinking. Now and then there are burning, tearing, gnawing, dragging sensations under the breast-bone; and there is a general complaint of a capricious appetite, heartburn, vomiting, nervous headache, neuralgia and cold extremities. Other symptoms are pain from lack of food at the proper hour, or from food taken at the improper time; both of which practices may be followed by flatulency, occasioning a swollen, drum-like condition of the stomach and abdomen; the body of the tongue will be coated white, while the edges will present a redder appearance than in health.
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.
In some cases the functional troubles of the stomach and mind are aggravated by disease of the pelvic organs, which adds to the depression of the mind through nervous sympathy with the abdominal organs.
Dr. Cullen says on this point:—