HOW AUTO-INFECTION AFFECTS THE GASTRIC DIGESTION, AND VICE VERSA.
Frederick the Great said that all culture comes through the stomach.
This saying emphasizes pithily the dependence of psychology upon
physiology. The stomach with the intestines is certainly the source
from which every portion of the body receives its nourishment and most
of its diseases. The physiological _plus_ and _minus_ processes leave
their reflex on the mind.
Prof. Ch. Bouchard, in his lectures on Auto-Intoxication (Oliver's
trans., p. 14), says: "The organism in its normal, as in its
pathological state, is a receptacle and a laboratory of poisons.
Amongst these some are formed by the organism itself, others by
microbes, which either are the guests, the normal inhabitants of the
intestinal tube, or are parasites at second-hand, and disease
producing."
In the preceding chapters we have mentioned some of the most common
cases of retention of excreta in the rectum, sigmoid cavity, colon,
cecum, duodenum and stomach, and how the consequent foul conditions
often resulted in diarrhea. Auto-infection impairs the functions of
every organ in the body, by clogging the pores with poisons and filth.
By the transfer of disease germs from one infected, that is, tainted,
contaminated part of the body to parts that were free from infection,
the kidneys, mucous membrane and skin receive these unnatural products,
and their functions are disturbed thereby. The disturbance of the
various organs throughout the system sets up such a multiplicity of
symptoms that one gets the impression of a pandemonium--a veritable
council-hall of evil spirits. The visitation is omnipresent.
Infliction, misery, are everywhere. The taint of auto-generated
intestinal morbific products, carried and communicated to the remotest
parts, manifests itself now here now there as if it were a local
trouble, and it is difficult therefore, nay, impossible, to classify
scientifically the symptoms of auto-infection. A classification, though
necessarily imperfect, will aid in the diagnosis and treatment of the
various abnormal conditions of the stomach and intestines, that is, of
mal-digestion. The sympathy, good understanding and responsiveness
between the brain and the digestive apparatus are so close and intimate
that the physician must take into consideration the inter-relationship
of these organs before deciding which one is reporting reflex nervous
symptoms, and which direct symptoms. Plutarch says in one of his
essays: "Should the body sue the mind before a court judicature for
damages, it would be found that the mind had been a ruinous tenant to
its landlord." The digestive apparatus is, or should be, a farm for the
mind, but unfortunately it usually has to wait twenty or more years
before the tenant understands how to cultivate it for the uses of his
intellectual and esthetical life.
I have referred to the fact that the most common causes of
constipation, indigestion and other foul conditions of the alimentary
canal favorable to the production of autogenetic poisons and their
auto-infection, are such common and every-day matters, so familiar to
almost every one that the victim, the parents and the physician feel no
alarm of the coming danger for years. During these ignorant and
innocent years the poison and filth were being absorbed, infecting the
system with their morbific taint and lowering the quality of the blood
and lessening its quantity, producing the state known as anemia.
Associated with progressive anemia is mal-assimilation, improper
nutrition, ebbing of the nervous and vital forces and the lessening of
the secretory, excretory and digestive powers. By the time the poor
victim is weighing fifteen to twenty-five pounds less than he ought to
the symptoms of ill-health are sufficiently alarming to compel the
sufferer to seek medical aid for disease of the stomach, bowels, liver,
kidneys, lungs, etc.
_Slow digestion_ is perhaps the most common form of functional
disturbance of the stomach, due to an insidious auto-infection for
years. The eyes and the skin begin to show the effect of the poisonous
infection. The skin becomes dry, pale and muddy in color; has more or
less annoying eruptions, and exhibits a jaundiced appearance. The body
is ill nourished, the nervous system depressed, the blood impoverished,
the memory failing, the general appearance languid, irritable, anxious.
What a household picture this is to every one of the human family! But
let us fill it out somewhat more fully. Note how the undue delay of
food in the stomach occasions a sense of weight and oppression, the
feeling beginning about an hour after a meal and continuing for hours,
sometimes attended with fermentation and sometimes without it. At times
there is a feeling of drowsiness due to the absorption of an excessive
amount of the gases which distend the stomach and bowels, and this
absorption is accompanied by pains in the stomach, head, between the
shoulders and in the region of the heart. Sleep is disturbed by dreams,
or one is awakened with a feeling of numbness and palpitation of the
heart. At times the urine is scanty, strongly acid or high-colored. The
tongue is more or less foul, with white or creamy coating. Now and then
tasteless or saltish eructations occur. The appetite may be too good,
or there is no appetite at all. Note the careworn expression, the
wondering what to eat, what to drink or what remedy to take. So between
much worse and some better, the trouble continues--both of body and
mind.
_Indigestion_, however, with undue formation of acids proper, or acids
unnatural, to the stomach, is a much more annoying affliction than slow
digestion. The sufferer from indigestion may be debilitated, anemic,
may have a general want of tone; or he may be a more or less vigorous
and plethoric person. In some cases flatulence is very troublesome. But
the most usual symptoms are heartburn, acid eructations that produce
burning sensations, sour taste at intervals or constantly in the mouth,
setting the teeth on edge. In the more vigorous or plethoric sufferers
a gouty diathesis may exist, which may result in a tendency to
inflammation, bringing on neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, etc. Tongue more
or less foul; uric acid in the system; confusion in the mind;
headaches; pains in the loins, legs and feet; in fact, more or less
shifting pains everywhere: these are the common exhibits of
indigestion. On the whole, the sufferer is a victim to an irritable
body and a fretful mind, necessitating the cultivation by him of
patience and the effort to be agreeable.
Besides the symptoms mentioned, indigestion may also be accompanied by
gastric pain or by uneasiness at the pit of the stomach. It may be a
sense of fulness or tightness, or a feeling of distention or weight, or
again, a feeling of emptiness, goneness or sinking. Now and then there
are burning, tearing, gnawing, dragging sensations under the
breast-bone; and there is a general complaint of a capricious appetite,
heartburn, vomiting, nervous headache, neuralgia and cold extremities.
Other symptoms are pain from lack of food at the proper hour, or from
food taken at the improper time; both of which practices may be
followed by flatulency, occasioning a swollen, drum-like condition of
the stomach and abdomen; the body of the tongue will be coated white,
while the edges will present a redder appearance than in health.
_Impaired digestion_ with nervous symptoms--in which the morbid
sensibility of the mind is apparently the greatest--is called
_hypochondria_. This class of sufferers, whose bodily and mental ills
and morbid fears are so chaotically interwoven, are deserving of much
consideration. So numerous are their fears and so fertile are their
reasons for the many changes they arbitrarily make in their efforts to
get well or keep from getting worse, so obstinately sure are they of
being always right--that we can but give them our sincerest pity.
In some cases the functional troubles of the stomach and mind are
aggravated by disease of the pelvic organs, which adds to the
depression of the mind through nervous sympathy with the abdominal
organs.
Dr. Cullen says on this point:--
"In certain persons there is a state of mind distinguished by a
concurrence of the following circumstances: a languor, a
listlessness, or want of resolution and activity with respect to
all undertakings; a disposition to seriousness, sadness and
timidity as to all future events; an apprehension of the worst or
most unhappy state of them; and therefore, often upon slight
grounds, an apprehension of great evil. Such persons are
particularly attentive to the state of their own health, to every
smallest change of feeling in their bodies; and from any unusual
feeling, perhaps of the slightest kind, they apprehend great danger
and even death itself. In respect to all these feelings and
apprehensions, there is commonly the most obstinate belief and
persuasion." (Quoted in Leared, _On Imperfect Digestion_, p. 106.)