THE HEART 129 



more hurtful than joy, and though this does not appear to be the 

 case, yet these emotions have in their turn been fatal to many. 

 Philip II., King of Spain, enjoys the unenviable notoriety of having 

 frightened two of his counsellors to death. One of his Ministers 

 of State died suddenly on being sharply rebuked for a hesitating 

 answer. Another, the Cardinal Espinoza, died a few days after 

 being sternly told, " Cardinal, know that I am master." ... In 

 the end of last century Prince George Louis of Holstein, having 

 removed the body of his wife from one coffin to another of more 

 costly materials, desired his valet to read him some pages from a 

 pious book, and, kneeling at the side of the coffin, he burst into 

 tears and died. And a few years ago there occurred in France an 

 even more startling instance of the fatal effect of overwhelming 

 emotion. Dr. Deleau, a celebrated aurist, only forty-four years 

 of age, leaning over his dying daughter to receive her last farewell, 

 himself fell dead as if struck by lightning.' 



Even in the more prosaic records of clinical medicine 

 death from a ' broken heart ' is not unknown,* and it is 

 thanks to the play of emotional influences on the in- 

 hibitory mechanism that 



' A merry heart goes all the day ; 

 Your sad tires in a mile-a.' 



2. The nervous mechanism of the heart may also 

 be affected reflexly by impulses arising either in the 

 skin or in the internal organs. A good example of 

 reflex inhibition of the heart from stimulation of the 

 skin is seen in some cases of death from so-called 

 ' cramp ' on plunging into cold water. On the other 

 hand, gastric irritation is one of the commonest causes 

 of that temporary diminution of vagus control which 

 manifests itself in ' palpitation '; and many similar 

 instances might be multiplied. 



* See Schrotter, < Verhand. d. 17th Cong. f. Inn. Med.,' Weisbaden, 

 1899, p. 23. 



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