man's interiors). Thus is produced the first and inmost obstruction, and thence the first and inmost vitiation of the blood; which vitiation, when it increases, causes disease, and thence death."[1]
But, whatever be the precise manner in which the effect is produced, the fact is certain; for every day's experience bears witness to its truth. As that which caused the Fall in the beginning—namely, self-love and disobedience to the Divine laws,—is still every day causing a yet deeper fall, or confirming the evil effects of the original fall, in man's mind,—so is that which produced disease at first, still and continually operating to produce disease. We can see the original course of things in the present course of things. Every physician knows that physical maladies are daily produced or aggravated in individuals by their disorders of mind and life; as by self-indulgence and intemperance, but, what is still more striking, by the immediate operation of evil passions. Says the writer just quoted "the mind so operates upon the body as to disturb and vitiate the blood; as when the mind desires anything which it fails to realise, it becomes so angry, so enraged and furious, that the blood becomes heated, and the bile is so copiously expelled from its duct, that fever seizes upon the viscera, and in some cases the intestines are so affected as to be twisted into a knot (Iliac passion.) It is said that a violent fit of rage, or sometimes even intense anxiety, will so vitiate a mother's milk, as to hurt the child. "It is no new or uncertain doctrine," says Dr. Combe, "that the quality of the mother's milk is affected by her own health and conduct» and that, in its turn, directly affects the health of the
- ↑ Swedenborg: Arcana Cœlestia, n. 5712,—26.
