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A Treatise on Emotional Disorders of the Sympathetic System of Nerves
A Treatise on Emotional Disorders of the Sympathetic System of Nerves Author:William Murray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ' CHAPTER II. THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION ON THE CEREBKO-SPINAL SYSTEM. Having reviewed the various phases of emotional excitement, which are common to all, in ... more »periods of health and disease, the next inquiry which presents itself is concerning the bodily effects produced by these emotions. One general proposition is certain: " That they do influence the body for good or evil most materially," Among the disorders in which individual peculiarities are observable, those connected with emotion are most conspicuous ; so much results from temperament, and temperament is so various, that these phenomena, the effects of depressing emotions, scarcely ever occur twice exactly alike ; there are, however, certain leading features of their action common to all persons, which enable us to draw the outlines of a picture by a likeness to which they may be recognized. The most philosophical plan of dealing with the succeeding part of our subject would be to classify the emotions, and then to trace the effect or action of each of the leading emotions throughout the body; but, as before explained, our power to distinguish the effects or action of one kind of emotion from that of allied emotions, is too small to admit of the attempt. Although we cannot allot to each emotion a certain definite action by which it may be distinguished from other emotions, I firmly believe that such a distinction exists, had we the means of detecting it. Until we have made this advance we can but divide the emotions intoclasses, and give each class the part played by it in the economy. For the present our division is very simple, our object in Section I being chiefly to determine the relation which emotion bears to the sympathetic system, and thus to prepare the way for a better understanding of Section II. To fa...« less