“From numerous facts which have come within my own observation,” says a distinguished living medical authority,[49] “I am convinced that many strange antipathies, disgusts, caprices of temper, and eccentricities which are considered solely as obliquities of intellect, have their source in corporeal disorder.
“The great majority of these complaints, which are considered as purely mental, such as irascibility, melancholy, timidity, and irresolution, might be greatly remedied, if not entirely removed, by a proper system of temperance, and with very little medicine. There is no accounting for the magic-like spell which annihilates for a time the whole energy of the mind, and renders the victim of dyspepsia afraid of his own shadow, or of things, if possible, more unsubstantial than shadows.
“It is not likely that the great men of the earth should be exempt from these visitations any more than the little; and if so, we may reasonably conclude, that there are other things beside ‘conscience’ which ‘make cowards of us all,’ and that, by a temporary gastric irritation, many an ‘enterprise of vast pith and moment’ has had ‘its current turned away,’ and ‘lost the name of action.’
“The philosopher and the metaphysician, who know but little of these reciprocities of mind and matter, have drawn many a false conclusion from, and erected many a baseless hypothesis on, the actions of men. Many a happy thought has sprung from an empty stomach; many a terrible and merciless edict has gone forth in consequence of an irritated gastric nerve. Thus health may make the same man a hero in the field whom dyspepsia may render imbecile in the cabinet.”
The following case will shew how powerfully indigestion may affect the mind’s operations:—
A young lady, after eating some heavy paste, was attacked by a sensation of burning heat at the pit of the stomach, which increased till the whole of the upper part of the body, both externally and internally, appeared to her to be all in flames. She rose up suddenly, left the dinner table, and ran into the street, from which she was immediately brought back. She soon came to herself, and thus described her horrible ideas. She declared that she had been very wicked, and had been dragged into the flames of hell. She continued in a precarious situation for some time. Whenever she experienced the burning sensation of which she first complained, the same dreadful thoughts occurred to her mind. She seized hold of whatever was nearest to prevent her from being forced away; and such was her alarm that she dreaded to be alone. This lady had long been distressed by family concerns, and harassed by restless and sleepless nights, which greatly affected her health.
Dr. Johnson used to declare that he inherited “a vile melancholy” from his father, which made him “mad all his life, or, at least, not sober.” Insanity was his constant terror. Boswell says that, at the period when this great philosopher was giving to the world proofs of no ordinary vigour of understanding, he actually fancied himself insane, or in a state as nearly as possible approaching to it.
Murphy says, “For many years before Johnson’s death, so terrible was the prospect of final dissolution that when he was not disposed to enter into the conversation which was going forward, he sat in his chair, repeating the well-known lines of Shakspeare—
“To die, and go we know not where.”