nursing. Even medicines given to the parent act upon the child through the medium of the milk; and a sudden fit of anger or other violent emotion, has not unfrequently been observed to change the quality of the fluid, so much as to produce purging and gripes in the child. Care and anxiety, in like manner, exert a most pernicious influence, and not only diminish the quantity, but vitiate the quality, of the milk."[1] Here, we have a striking proof of the immediate action of the mind upon the body,—of mental disorder instantaneously producing physical derangement, having the power to corrupt the purest juices of the system, and even to extend its deleterious effects to a second individual,—to communicate disorder and pain to an innocent infant. So powerful and so immediate is moral evil in producing physical.
The case just adduced leads to the consideration of the subject from a second point of view. It may be said—admitting that evil or disorder in the mind has the effect sometimes of immediately producing disease in the body, and admitting that it was the original cause of disease,—yet, is it not also true that a great portion of the disease and consequent suffering existing in the world, has no direct, or at least no visible, connection with moral evil or sin in the individual patient? the greatest sinners are not always the greatest sufferers: bad men often enjoy good physical health, while the good are often afflicted with disease: and look at little infants, who cannot have been guilty of any sin,—how distressing to see them writhing and tossing their little limbs in pain. How can this be explained? and why does a God of goodness permit it?
- ↑ Combe's Physiology, p. 245
