260 MORBID BODILY CONDITIONS 



excitement or depression in certain animals. These func- 

 tional derangements include especially 



1. Palpitation, inordinate heart-beating, the condition or 

 sensation known as ' fluttering ' at or of the heart ; and 



2. Fainting, to various degrees short of death, technically 

 known as * syncope.' 



3. Derangements of the pulse, without either palpitation 

 or fainting. 



4. Congestion of various parts of the body, active hyper- 

 cemia, sudden reddening to a marked degree, of the eyes 

 for instance. Or on the other hand equally distinct 



5. Pallor from ancemia, removal of blood from any given 

 visible part of the body. 



Some of these conditions involve the general circulation 

 as well as its central organ, the nerves as well as the 

 blood-vessels and heart, the latter indeed necessarily through 

 the nervous system. Hence it is that so many of them occur 

 in other animals, as in man, in proportion as they are ner- 

 vous, sensitive, highly-bred, delicately organised, luxuriously 

 brought up. Nor must we forget that the condition known 

 as 



Nervousness a highly excited or excitable condition of 

 the whole nervous system is begotten by emotional shock, a 

 condition that in its turn begets a tendency to alarm or fear, 

 a facility of being readily startled. 



Palpitation fluttering of the heart from fear, must be 

 familiar to all captors of small birds. In the case of cap- 

 tured animals, and however captured, manifest heart throbs, 

 or throbbing, are frequently visible or audible, because violent 

 palpitation results or may result, partly from over-exertion 

 of a physical kind, in ineffectual efforts at escape or extri- 

 cation. Heart-fluttering is probably as common an indication 

 of emotion in certain birds as it is in certain nervous or 

 hysterical women, girls or children. A very minute degree 

 of fear or surprise, or mental shock of any kind, puts bird 

 and woman ( all in a flutter' a condition of cardiac palpita- 

 tion of a nervous and temporary kind, its degree being 

 usually disproportionate in such supersensitive individuals 

 to the cause of the mental excitement. Panting is also 



