126 PHYSIOLOGY. 



to be remarked, that the passions, by means of the change 

 which takes place in the brain, affect the whole nervous sys- 

 tem. We find, for example in nervous females, that the ex- 

 citing passions give rise to spasmodic action of certain mus- 

 cles, especially those supplied by nerves belonging to the 

 respiratory system ; hence the crying, sobbing, sighing, and 

 the spasmodic distortion of the features. In the depressing 

 passions, such as fear and terror, the muscles of the body lose 

 their tone, because the supply of nervous influence from the 

 brain is cut off; the limbs are not able to support the body ; 

 the features lose their expression ; and the loss of power may 

 be so great as to cause complete paralysis of the whole body. 



9. In like manner is the heart affected by the exciting and 

 depressing passions. {It throbs irregularly under the influ- 

 ence of fear and terror ; it beats high and strong under the 

 influence of joy ; while its action is weakened under the 

 operation of grief and care ; in short, it is affected in a 

 greater or less degree by every emotion which agitates the 

 human breast. But this no more proves that the passions 

 are seated in the heart, than that they are seated in the eye, 

 because grief brings tears into that organ.) Neither has the 

 liver, as the ancients believed, any relation to the passions of 

 rage and vexation, although a fit of jaundice, may, in some 

 persons labouring under a disease of this organ, follow a 

 paroxysm of these passions. In other individuals, a fit of 

 dyspepsia may follow as a consequenee of the same emotions ; 

 or any other organ, may suffer, according as it is predis- 

 posed by debility, disease, or other causes. Such phenome- 

 na only prove that the whole body is bound up in one indis- 

 soluble bond of sympathy, or as St. Paul expresses it, "God 

 hath tempered the body together, that there should be no 

 schism in the body, but that the members should have the 

 same care one for another ; so that, whether one member suf- 

 fer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, 

 all the members rejoice with it." 



10. The brain, like all the other organs of the body, in- 



