A treatise on the stomach and its trials / by J.C. Eno.

  • Eno, J. C.
Date:
[1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the stomach and its trials / by J.C. Eno. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/82 (page 14)
    on the lips and cheeks, and a great variety of anxious and painful sensa¬ tions. Persons of both sexes, especially of a nervous temperament, who are subject to hysteria, hypochondria, melancholy, epilepsy (fits),* and similar disorders, are predisposed to this form of complaint. Epilepsy and fits are simply the result of indigestion, and the best means of cure we point out below. If we give way to passion, we over-excite the ac¬ tion of the heart, and no one who is intemperate, and does not learn to control his temper, can expect health and longevity. Spasm of the Heart is also not unfrequent. It is a most distressing symptom, generally occurring after a full meal, and the patient possesses a feeling as if he were about to die, and if not ultimately relieved, sooner or later one of these spasms terminates his existence. Now, there is very seldom in any of these cases any actual disease, either in the heart or the stomach; the symptoms are merely sympathetic of imperfect digestion. The true cause arises from the ordinary unphysiological habits of living, which deprive the system of nutrition, shatter the nerves, contract the heart, and render the circulation laborious. Much mischief is caused to the heart by indulgence in unnatural excitements, by the use of stimulating drinks, and by a want of control over the passions. If the reader will pause for a moment, I will endea¬ vour to bring this fact more forcibly home to him. As I have else¬ where observed, the human heart acts as a force pump, and at seventy years of age, the valves of the heart have moved some three thousand millions of times without once stopping. If you saw a man at an ordi¬ nary pump over a well, and instead of pumping regularly and smoothly, he was working it in jerks and roughly, you would say, That man will do that pump no good, he is not doing fair by it, it will not last near so long as if he was working it properly, that is regularly ; the pump was not made to be used in that manner. It is just so with the heart; the great majority of men nowadays don’t live a real, true life, they don’t live in accordance with natural laws, they don’t live the life their Maker intended they should live, and consequently they wear out prematurely, or they live a living death. Of course the heart is diseased in other ways, as we have remarked in other parts of this treatise, but we have given the above few lines, because wre believe it to be a cause that is too much overlooked. As you sow, so will you reap. See the quotation from Professor Huxley, on Natural Laws, p. 66. It has been remarked ‘ that the table kills more than the sword.’ People indulge too much in full suppers, retiring afterwards to bed. How does this operate? The whole system, from the fatigues of the * Take the Digestive Granules regularly with meals, and use the Bro¬ mide of Potassium mixture, given on page 65, twice a day,