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Hack Tuke, Daniel – Sickness - Endothelial dysfunction induced by powerful emotions – grief
Identifier
026125
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
As described in Illustrations Of The Influence Of The Mind Upon The Body In Health And Disease, Designed To Elucidate The Action Of The Imagination - Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D., M.R.C.P.,
PART II. THE EMOTIONS.
CHAPTER IX. INFLUENCE OF THE EMOTIONS UPON THE INVOLUNTARY MUSCLES.
BLOODVESSELS.
" Arterial relaxation with murmur," observes Dr. B. W. Richardson, " is the result of injury involving the emotional or organic nervous centres. I have seen it follow a direct physical injury, and I have seen it follow a mental shock as distinctly.
It is a common result of intense grief, and is characterized by sudden changes of vascular tension, coldness, chills, frequent perspirations, irregular actions of the bowels, and, often diuresis. But the most distressing symptom of all is the arterial murmur. This is usually heard by the patient, and is sometimes mistaken for aneurismal tumor.
It is produced at those parts of the arterial tract where an artery runs through a rigid canal, as through the abdominal opening of the diaphragm, or the carotid canal in the base of the skull. In rigid canals, the arteries being relaxed, the sides of the vessels press, with each impulse of the heart, on the surrounding resisting wall. Thus, there is vibration, and murmur is painfully audible to the patient.
In these cases the symptoms are often developed in the most sudden manner, and recovery, again, is often as equally sudden" (The Journal of Mental Science. Edited by Drs. Maudsley and Sibbald, Oct., 1869).