78 NERVOUS APOPLEXY. servers see only the depression that follows. It is the continuance of this depression so as to seriously interfere with the offices of the principal organs of life, that has obtained the name of "broken heart"-the unhappy sensations about (not in) the heart being most keenly felt. This, as I said before, may last for a long time, if "food and physic" are not permitted to augment the "fretting." But it sometimes, on the other hand, happens that the excitement of passion is so vehement as to kill instantaneously: the nervous system never rallies, so utterly exhausted, extinguished, have been its energies by the first shock. In this case the reverberation of that shock from the brain upon the other great nervous centres, the stomach and heart, annihilates the power of movement and sensation in them. The heart ceases to beat, the stomach to move-the very blood in the vessels is broken down, and will not coagulate. The passion has produced precisely the same effects as a stroke of lightning, or a blow in the pit of the stomach. This too, is "a broken heart." And when we behold all the hopeless misery that attends that slight reaction of the nervous system which just, and only just, enables THE WASTING GRIEF. 79 the brain and heart and stomach to carry on a slow, lingering, painful degree of function: when we hear the prayer for death whispered in every sigh, and uttered in every groan: when we look on the now faded, but once fair, form bending under, broken down by, the crushing weight that has fallen on the spirit:-how true to the ear and to the universal sense are the poet's words, when he says; "The heart-which may be broken; happy they! Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould, The precious porcelain of human clay, Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold The long year link'd with heavy day on day, By virtue of this "strange principle," the "wasting broken-heart" is much more frequent than the instantaneous. One instance of the latter arising from one of the passions now under consideration -unrequited love, has fallen under my knowledge: it is a brief but a fearful history. A young lady engaged to wed a man whom she loved exceedingly, and who professed to, and I think, did love her in return, had parted from him 80 66 EXAMPLE OF A BROKEN HEART." previous to his return to his parents in a distant part of the country, for the purpose of making final arrangements for his marriage. Considerations of various kinds urged by his parents upon him induced him to write at once and announce to her the impossibility that he could fulfil his engagements: he told her, in short, that they could meet no more. This letter reached her in the afternoon of a day on which a great number of friends had been invited to a ball at her parents' house. The effect upon her must be imagined, for no external sign, save some quivering about the lips and nostrils, announced it. Her parents desired to postpone the ball. She would not hear of it, laughed, but in strange guise, at the idea of postponing pleasure on account of aught that he could say or do; then dressed, danced, and was in mad spirits the whole night. Whispering to none what had occurred, the unfortunate girl was obliged to listen to repeated congratulations on her approaching happiness: can imagination conjure up a more painful position? The guests departed, she was accompanied by her mother to her room, who saw her safely in bed, and the last she heard from her child was a hearty laugh! About six hours afterward she again went into THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND DRUGS. 81 her daughter's room-she was dead! The effort, sustained during the whole evening against the shock, had exhausted her nervous power so much, that when the inducements to make it had ceased, when solitude and darkness forced upon her all the misery of her situation, it is probable that the functions ceased instantaneously, that death came on immediately: for the corpse was quite cold when discovered in the morning. Every inquiry was made concerning the mode of death: but nothing was elicited to countenance the idea of selfdestruction:she had died of a "broken heart." Is, then, the nervous system of those unhappy sufferers from the actions of the passions to which I have just alluded, in a condition to bear at all, much less to benefit from, the irritating operation of such remedies as calomel, scammony, jalap, colocynth, quinine, steel, and arsenic,-in short from the whole or any part of the vulgar list of vulgar remedies? In the next part of "Stomach Complaints and Drug Diseases," the subject of causes will be continued, and the miserable history of Napoleon's last illness given in detail, with special references to the mental and physical agencies by which it G 82 THE NEXT "PART." was called into being. It will form a striking instance of the fretting that attends "that last infirmity of noble minds," ambition. Besides this, the forthcoming part will comprehend the Rationale of Drug Disease, with a discussion on the real effects of the principal drugs usually employed, with cases illustrative of Drug Practice; many hints on Diet; and an essay on the uses of water in the palliation and cure of maladies produced by both. THE END. |