HEART AFFECTIONS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 918, 16 February 1881, Page 2

HEART AFFECTIONS.

Thebe is not a pin’s point surface of the external portion of the body which does not give instantaneous warning of the slightest invasion from without. It is our guard against external dangers. But the more important internal organs are so well protected by the casings which surround them that they do not require such sensitiveness, hence it is not thrown away upon them. For example: It is generally supposed that if the heart is touched we wouM;die instantly. So-far from this being true, bayonets and bullets have been driven into the heart of men and animals without causing death. The bullet which caused the death of William Poole was found imbedded in the solid substance of the heart, and yet he lived 11 days after he was shot.

The great Harvey brought Charles 11, to a British nobleman who had an opening in his chest, through which the heart could be seen and felt. The king touched it with his finger, but the nobleman was not aware of it, unless he saw’ the fingers in the cavity. And yet this same heart responds to every emotion of joy, or grief, or passion, or alarm.

Persons often trouble themselves uselessly about having disease of the heart or lungs, because tl»ey have pain thereabouts. These are good signs, generally, as showing that the pains are external to these organs, for there can be no pain where there are no nerves. The fact is, the most certainly fatal affections of these organs give no note of warning by pain until within the last brief hours of life. The very substance of the lungs and heart are often eaten through, eaten away, without a remote suspicion on the part of the patient that such was the case. Fhe celebrated clerical orator, John Newland Maffitt, died of a literally broken heart—not an emotional breaking, but a structural rupture ; it slowly decayed, rotted away, until so near through that its functions could not be performed when pains came on, and he died in a few hours. On examination it was found that this destruction of parts had been going on for months.

But another result follows the -closing of the pores of the skin, and more immediately dangerous. A main outlet for the waste of the body is closed, it remingles with the blood, which in a few hours becomes impure, and begins to generate disease in every fibre of the system. The whole machinery of the man becomes at once disordered, and he at once complains of feeling “ miserable.” The terrible effects of cheeked perspiration on a dog, who sweats only by his tongue, is evinced by his becoming mad. The water runs in streams from a dog’s mouth in summer, if exercising freely. If it ceases to run, that is hydrophobia. It has been asserted by a French physician that if a person suffering under hydrophobia can be only made to perspire freely he is cured at once. It is familiar to the most common observer that in all ordinary forms of disease the patient begins to get better the moment he begins to perspire, simply because the internal heat is passing off, and there is an outlet for the waste of the system. Thus it is that one of the most important means for curing all sickness is boddy cleanliness, which is simply removing from the mouths of these little pores that gum, and dust, and oil which clog them up. Thus it is, also, that personal cleanliness is one of the main elements of health—thus it is that filth and disease babitate together the world over.

The great practical lesson which we wish to impress upon the mind of the reader is this: When you are perspiring freely, keep in motion until you get to a good fire, or to some place where you are perfectly sheltered from any draft of air whatever,— Examiner.