Observations placeholder
Hack Tuke, Daniel – Sickness - Sciatica induced by powerful emotions – Fear
Identifier
026175
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The power of suggestion and the incompetence of doctors.
Frighten someone by telling they have a disease and they tense up, once they have tensed up the nerves are affected and become squashed - and thus illness results
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.,
CHAPTER XVI. INFLUENCE OF MENTAL STATES UPON DISORDERS OF SENSATION, MOTION, AND THE ORGANIC FUNCTIONS.
SECTION I. — Influence of Mental States upon Disorders of Sensation.
Burton quotes from Dr. Cotta's "Discovery of Ignorant Practitioners of Physick" two examples of what
" Phansie is able to do ; the one of a parson's wife in Northamptonshire, Anno, 1607, that coming to a physician, and told by him that she was troubled with the sciatica, as he conjectured (a disease she was free from), the same night after her return, upon his words, fell into a grievous fit of a sciatica; and such another example he hath of another good wife, that was so troubled with the cramp ; after the same manner she came by it, because her physician did but name it"
(Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 1651. Edit. 1836., p. 169).