Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health

by S. A. D. Tissot

Of those Swoonings, which arise from nervous Disorders.

§ 500. This Species of Swooning is almost wholely unknown to those Persons, for whom this Treatise is chiefly intended. Yet as there are some Citizens who pass a Part of their Lives in the Country; and some Country People who are unhappily afflicted with the Ailments of the Inhabitants of large Towns and Cities, it seemed necessary to treat briefly of them.

By Disorders of the Nerves, I understand in this Place, only that Fault or Defect in them, which is the Cause of their exciting in the Body, either irregular Motions, that is, Motions without any external Cause, at least any perceivable one; and without our Will's consenting to the Production of them: or such Motions, as are greatly more considerable than they should be, if they had been proportioned to the Force of the Impression from without. This is very exactly that State, or Affection termed the Vapours; and by the common People, the Mother: And as there is no Organ unprovided with Nerves; and none, or hardly any Function, in which the Nerves have not their Influence; it may be easily comprehended, that the Vapours being a State or Condition, which arises from the Nerves exerting irregular involuntary Motions, without any evident Cause, and all the Functions of the Body depending partly on the Nerves; there is no one Symptom of other Diseases which the Vapours may not produce or imitate; and that these Symptoms, for the same Reason, must vary infinitely, according to those Branches of the Nerves which are disordered. It may also hence be conceived, why the Vapours of one Person have frequently no Resemblance to those of another: and why the Vapours of the very same Person, in one Day, are so very different from those in the next. It is also very conceivable that the Vapours are a certain, a real Malady; and that Oddity of the Symptoms, which cannot be accounted for, by People unacquainted with the animal Oeconomy, has been the Cause of their being considered rather as the Effect of a depraved Imagination, than as a real Disease. It is very conceiveable, I say, that this surprizing Oddity of the Symptoms is a necessary Effect of the Cause of the Vapours; and that no Person can any more prevent his being invaded by the Vapours, than he can prevent the Attack of a Fever, or of the Tooth-ach.

§ 501. A few plain Instances will furnish out a more compleat Notion of the Mechanism, or Nature, of Vapours. An Emetic, a vomiting Medicine, excites the Act, or rather the Passion, the Convulsion of Vomiting, chiefly by the Irritation it gives to the Nerves of the Stomach; which Irritation produces a Spasm, a Contraction of this Organ. Now if in Consequence of this morbid or defective Texture of the Nerves, which constitutes the Vapours, those of the Stomach are excited to act with the same Violence, as in Consequence of taking a Vomit, the Patient will be agitated and worked by violent Efforts to vomit, as much as if he had really taken one.

If an involuntary unusual Motion in the Nerves, that are distributed through the Lungs, should constrain and straiten the very little Vesicles, or Bladders, as it were, which admit the fresh Air at every Respiration, the Patient will feel a Degree of Suffocation; just as if that Straitening or Contraction of the Vesicles were occasioned by some noxious Steam or Vapour.

Should the Nerves which are distributed throughout the whole Skin, by a Succession of these irregular morbid Motions, contract themselves, as they may from external Cold, or by some stimulating Application, Perspiration by the Pores will be prevented or checked; whence the Humours, which should be evacuated through the Pores of the Skin, will be thrown upon the Kidnies, and the Patient will make a great Quantity of thin clear Urine, a Symptom very common to vapourish People; or it may be diverted to the Glands of the Intestines, the Guts, and terminate in a watery Diarrhœa, or Looseness, which frequently proves a very obstinate one.

§ 502. Neither are Swoonings the least usual Symptoms attending the Vapours: and we may be certain they spring from this Source, when they happen to a Person subject to the Vapours; and none of the other Causes producing them are evident, or have lately preceded them.

Such Swoonings, however, are indeed very rarely dangerous, and scarcely require any medical Assistance. The Patient should be laid upon a Bed; the fresh Air should be very freely admitted to him; and he should be made to smell rather to some disagreeable and fetid, than to any fragrant, Substance. It is in such Faintings as these that the Smell of burnt Leather, of Feathers, or of Paper, have often proved of great Service.

§ 503. Patients also frequently faint away, in Consequence of fasting too long; or from having eat a little too much; from being confined in too hot a Chamber; from having seen too much Company; from smelling too over-powering a Scent; from being too costive; from being too forcibly affected with some Discourse or Sentiments; and, in a Word, from a great Variety of Causes, which might not make the least Impression on Persons in perfect Health; but which violently operate upon those vapourish People, because, as I have said, the Fault of their Nerves consists in their being too vividly, too acutely affected; the Force of their Sensation being nowise proportioned to the external Cause of it.

As soon as that particular Cause is distinguished from all the rest, which has occasioned the present Swooning; it is manifest that this Swooning is to be remedied by removing that particular Cause of it.