We may consider their counteracting influences, for, without doubt, by checking the selfish tendencies and restraining the animal propensities, they assist in controlling the sensual passions, and thus balance the mind and body. Such an equilibrium we call happiness. If the emotions be acute and vehement, they will absorb all other impressions and revel in their culminating and delightful experiences. They exhaust all the bodily energies, and a functional suspension, termed ecstasy, follows. It is a swooning, or fainting, a temporary loss of sensation and volition, accompanied by involuntary movements of the arms, smiting of the hands, sighing, and short ejaculatory expressions of rapture. This condition, occasioned by excessive emotion, as in praying, singing, exhortations, and sympathetic appeals, is contagious, often spreading with mysterious rapidity. Its culmination, ecstasy, is popularly termed "the power." When gradually induced, it is called trance, and each state is regarded by many as supernatural, caused by the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. The explanation is this: when the emotive faculties are suddenly and powerfully excited, they quickly expend the organic forces, so that the individual swoons from sheer exhaustion. Undue expenditure of this class of brain functions not only consumes the bodily powers, but exhausts and prevents other mental operations. The sudden collapse of all voluntary functions resembles the fainting produced by blood-letting. We may sum up this rapid expenditure of energy in one expressive word, EXHAUSTION, which results in Ecstasy, or trance, and which, if carried a degree further, terminates in death. Beginning with the natural exercise of the emotions, we may state the order of sequences thus:
Ordinary exercise leads to CALMNESS.
Proper exercise HAPPINESS.
Increased exercise ECSTASY.
Excessive exercise SYNCOPE.
Prolonged exercise TRANCE.
Fatal exercise MORTALITY.
Their tendencies are EXHAUSTIVE.
PART I.PHYSIOLOGY.CHAPTER I.BIOLOGY.
In:
THE PEOPLE'S COMMON SENSE MEDICAL ADVISER
IN PLAIN ENGLISH: OR,MEDICINE SIMPLIFIED
BY R.V. PIERCE, M.D.
1895