Psychotherapy Part 44

Cough.--In the chapter on Coughs and Colds we have outlined how much coughing may depend on suggestion, or habit, or on the tendency to yield to slight bronchial irritation when there is no real necessity for it. Most tuberculous patients cough much more than is necessary.

This is always somewhat dangerous for them since it disturbs their lungs, has a tendency to distribute tubercle bacilli in their lungs, or in the air around them, and may by efforts at expulsion lacerate affected blood vessels and produce hemorrhage. Whenever cough is productive it should be indulged in, for it removes material that should not be allowed to acc.u.mulate. Unproductive coughing, however, can usually be controlled by training.

It is particularly at the beginning of phthisis that the control of coughing by suggestion is important. There are many little coughs, "hacks" as they are sometimes called, frequently repeated by those in a very early stage of pulmonary tuberculosis and which are consequent upon irritation either of pulmonary nerves or of pulmonary tissues, but that are quite unnecessary, as a rule, if a little attention is paid to suppressing them. As a warning sign they are excellent, but the patient should be taught not to indulge in them. Coughing tends to prevent nature's curative reaction and the contraction of pulmonary tissues which may take place around a lesion. In beginning consumption, even where there is but slight infiltration, we know from the observation of the movements of the diaphragm either by the X-ray or directly by Litton's method that its excursions on the affected side are shortened. Coughing is in direct opposition to this setting of the lung at rest and therefore should be controlled; however, as our drug remedies are likely to disturb the stomach, whose healthy function is so important in these cases, the use of the mind in the control of the cough is of the greatest value.

Thoracic Discomfort.--Complaints are often made by the tuberculous of pains in the thorax. Ordinarily the discomfort is supposed to be due to the lung condition, and it is a.s.sumed that it is either actually in the lung itself or in the pleura, or communicated from them by reflex to the muscles. In most cases, however, patients complain of pain on the side that is either not affected at all or least affected. If they have been told that the other side is suffering most from tuberculosis, they are p.r.o.ne either to think that now the {362} well side is being invaded or else that their physician is making a mistake, and both thoughts are seriously discouraging. The reason for the pains on the well or the better side, however, are easy to understand. As far as possible, as can be readily demonstrated by the X-rays or seen in the observation of the so-called Litten's phenomenon--the excursions of the diaphragm--nature puts the ailing lung at rest and the diaphragm moves much less on that side than on any other. In order to make up for the lack of breathing in this side the other lung does compensatory work. This over-stretches the muscles of the thorax on the well side and causes some over-work in them. The consequence is a tiredness which may become fatigue; in damp weather this may be even painful. Just why damp weather has this particular effect on muscles is not surely known. Muscular action is probably accomplished with more difficulty in damp weather because of the relaxing effect of moisture on tissues and circulation. Rea.s.surances may be given them, then, that will keep them from thinking seriously of the significance of these pains except as an index of nature's compensatory efforts. The painful conditions instead of causing discouragement will, then, be a source of encouragement. It must not be forgotten that rubbing with some gentle stimulant, soap, liniment, or the like, will greatly improve the thoracic muscles in these cases, but the rubbing must be done gently and by someone else beside the patient, for it is only beneficial if done from before, backwards, in order to help the return venous circulation which runs in that direction in the external respiratory muscles.

Alt.i.tude.--There is a marked difference between the amount of water which finds its way out through the lungs at varying alt.i.tudes. At sea level an ordinary patient will lose during the night about 300 cc, that is, something more than half a pint of water, through his respiratory tract. At an alt.i.tude of 5,000 feet, however, this amount is almost doubled, and at 10,000 feet is almost trebled. At 2,000 feet it is half as much again as it is at sea level. This copious giving off of water has a marked effect on the lungs. It const.i.tutes one of the reasons why alt.i.tude is a favorable element in the treatment of tuberculosis. Only beginning cases of tuberculosis, however, are able to stand the additional work thus put on them, though a slight elevation, up to 2,000 or even 3,000 feet, rather seems to be of benefit to all cases. How far-reaching the effect of this extra loss of fluid is, is appreciated from the concentration of blood which takes place and which produces a blood count of 8,000,000 red cells at a mile of alt.i.tude in patients who, at the sea level, have no more than 4,500,000. Such patients, of course, need much more water and fluids generally to be comfortable than when living lower down.

Suggestion and Treatment.--There are many accessory suggestions with regard to food that serve to confirm the patient in the idea that abundance and variety of food must be taken if the battle with the disease is to be won. To patients who find milk difficult to take, it must be explained that a copious amount of fluid in the system is needed in order to make coughing easier. So milk serves a therapeutic as well as a nutritional purpose. In the same way it may be explained that fats, such as bacon and cream, help to keep the bowels from becoming constipated and constipation inevitably disturbs the appet.i.te.

Explanations as to the advisability of being out of the city and in a portion of country not very thickly populated, in order to avoid the possibilities of secondary infection with other respiratory diseases and bacteria of various {363} kinds, will make a patient understand the necessity for leaving town. It may be helpful, also, to insist on the value of living at some elevation above sea level as an aid to expectoration.

Cough is the symptom that many of these patients fear most, and a promise of any amelioration of it by a simple change of location helps them to make the sacrifice of city life for a while. Some patients who have been benefited by a stay in a sanatorium come back with a relapse of their symptoms. They dread to return to the sanatorium and think they can care for themselves as well at home, since they know what the regulations are, though it may be evident to the physician that they are losing ground in their city environment. It is well worth while to give them a careful explanation of what we know of the effect of alt.i.tude upon consumptives who have sufficient reactionary power to stand it.

_Negative Suggestions_.--Some suggestions are valuable for the prophylaxis of complications. For instance, tuberculous patients must be warned not to indulge in breathing exercises without the express consent of the physician. So much is said in popular literature as to the value of breathing exercises that many a patient suffering from tuberculosis thinks that, not only may they be indulged in with impunity, but that they will surely do good and can do no possible harm. Nothing could be more erroneous. Many localized lesions have been diffused in this way and there is always danger that the strain will cause hemorrhage. Patients must be warned also to avoid any possible condition in which they might have to over-exert themselves.

Because of the dust inevitably breathed during automobile riding, this pleasure must be denied to tuberculous patients as a rule, but even when they have recovered sufficiently so that this may be permitted they must be warned not to take long rides into the country lest the breaking down of the machine should place them under the necessity of walking a long distance. This idea should also be emphasized for rowing excursions, or trips by motor boat, for occasionally they lead to serious and exhausting exposure.

One negative suggestion should be given at the very initial stage to every patient in whom the presence of pulmonary tuberculosis has been recognized. This should be a warning to exercise the greatest care against permitting the development of constipation. Tuberculous patients must never strain at stool. Almost necessarily a certain number of tubercle bacilli are swallowed every day whenever pulmonary tuberculosis is at all active and they are constantly present in the digestive tract. If tuberculous patients then strain at stool, little abrasions of the mucous membrane of the r.e.c.t.u.m are caused in which tubercle bacilli find a favorable nidus. Ischio-rectal abscesses are common among the tuberculous and rectal fistulas often give much bother. When a tuberculous patient develops such a condition, a period of depression and discouragement will follow, for there is a curious tendency to depression a.s.sociated with all lesions of the r.e.c.t.u.m. A pulmonary patient who has been doing well will often fail to make progress for months after the development of even a small ischio-rectal abscess.

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CHAPTER III

NEUROTIC ASTHMA AND COGNATE CONDITIONS

For the consideration of its psychotherapy asthma may be divided into two forms--symptomatic and essential, or neurotic, asthma. Symptomatic asthma is a difficulty of breathing, the result of some interference with the circulation, as by heart disease, or with the oxidizing power of the blood, as by kidney disease, or various blood conditions, or from direct interference with respiration from some pulmonary affection. Essential asthma is not dependent on any organic condition, but is an interference with breathing without any distinct pathological condition in the lungs themselves or in the general circulation. There may be some emphysema, but not enough to account for the respiratory difficulty. It is spoken of as neurotic asthma, and the most careful investigations made of individuals who have died during a seizure has failed to give any sure pathological basis for the affection. Certain accompanying phenomena are worthy of note. The most interesting of these are Curschmann's spirals, which usually occur in the form of translucent pellets very characteristically described by Laennec as pearls. They are evidently formed in the finer bronchioles and show that the affection extends to the terminal portions of the bronchial system. In connection with these the so-called asthma crystals first described by Charcot and Von Leyden and sometimes called by their combined names are often found. Besides, there are a large number of eosinophiles in the sputum itself entangled within the filaments of the spirals and an eosinophila of the blood.

Etiology.--Not only are we ignorant of the reasons for these phenomena but there is even some doubt as regards the mechanism of the respiratory spasm itself. There is a general impression that the paroxysm is due to incapacity to inspire because of a paroxysmal spasm of the respiratory muscles. Gee in his "Medical Lectures and Aphorisms" [Footnote 30] rather leans towards the explanation that suffering is due not to any inability to fill the lungs but to incapacity to empty them when they have become over-distended with air. He tells the story related by Dean Swift of the old man whose barrel-shaped chest was fixed in spasm so full of air that the patient could not find room for the slightest additional breath. "If I ever get this air that is in me out," the patient declared to the Dean, "I will never take another breath."

[Footnote 30: Frowde, Oxford Univ. Press. 1908.]

It is important to differentiate symptomatic from neurotic or essential asthma. In symptomatic asthma the only a.s.sured treatment of the condition must come through amelioration of the organic condition causing the symptoms. Cardiac and renal asthma respond promptly to remedies which relieve critical conditions that may be present in the heart or kidneys. It must not be forgotten, however, that respiration is readily disturbed by mental influences. Where cardiac or renal disease causes interference with respiration this is much emphasized by the patient's unfavorable mental att.i.tude toward it, or much relieved by keeping him from worrying over his condition. Even symptomatic asthma, then, has a definite place in psychotherapeutics, though {365} it would be serious not to recognize the underlying conditions and treat them. If the patient's att.i.tude of mind is one of discouragement, the respiratory difficulties will continue to be a marked symptom of the case, even though the proper remedies for the relief of cardiac or renal conditions are administered.

Symptomatic Picture.--What is likely to be one of the most disturbing experiences of the young physician early in practice, especially if he has not before seen a typical case, is to be called to a patient suffering from a severe attack of asthma. Often the sufferer is sitting up in bed so as to get all the air possible, and, though the windows are wide open, he is gasping for breath, usually pleading for more air with a tense, anxious expression, starting eyes, and the sweat pouring from his forehead, while the accessory muscles of respiration, deeply engaged in moving his thorax to move air enough to keep him from stifling, emphasize his dyspnea. Occasionally a degree of cyanosis develops that is quite startling for the untrained observer. Most of those who see the symptomatic picture for the first time think that death is impending, and the patient himself, if he has not had a series of attacks, will fear a fatal termination. It appears impossible to believe that the next morning, within six or seven hours of this, the patient will, as a rule, be quite well and walking round in the enjoyment of apparent good health.

As a rule, the worse these cases seem in their intensity and the more the patient is anxious, the more surely are they merely of functional nervous origin; above all, the more complaints of lack of air and of fear of impending death that are made, the more likely is the patient to be all right within a few hours. Asthma looks as though it must be due to some serious organic condition. Of course, in many cases of difficult breathing, even with asthma-like attacks, there are underlying serious conditions of heart and kidneys that are extremely dangerous. As a rule, however, these do not produce the woeful pictures of purely neurotic asthma. Even when the basis of the asthma is an emphysema, which of itself is not dangerous and is quite compatible with long life, the attacks, though frequent and severe, are usually not so serious looking as those in which absolutely no pathological condition of the lungs, or heart, or kidneys can be found, and, indeed, in which there is absolutely no organic change to account for the extremely uncomfortable and even terrifying symptoms.

Mental Influence.--In the medical literature of asthma there are abundant proofs that the att.i.tude of mind of the patient towards his affection means very much. There is the story, thoroughly vouched for, of the two friends stopping at a little country hotel late at night.

One of them was a neurotic subject, who, whenever he remained for some time in a stuffy atmosphere, was likely to have a severe asthmatic attack. The quarters a.s.signed to them proved to be one of the cramped little rooms with a single small window that occasionally are found in the attics of country inns in England. During the night the patient of asthmatic tendencies had one of his attacks and begged his friend to open the window. The friend, suddenly roused from sleep, did not remember the position of the window and, the night being very dark, he felt for it and finally found it. He could not raise the sash and he could not move it either inward or outward and there seemed no way of getting it open. His friend was insistently clamoring for air with that tone of despair and {366} dread of impending death so characteristic of the young, inexperienced asthma sufferer. Unable to get the window open, the sympathetic companion finally took his shoe and smashed the gla.s.s. The relief was immediate. Scarcely had the crash of the broken gla.s.s been heard before the patient gave an audible sigh of relief. When his friend went over to him he felt so much better that it was rather easy for the sufferer to persuade him that nothing more would be needed and that he should go back to bed.

In the morning, when the friend awoke, his first glance, directed by the sunlight that came streaming into the window, was toward the broken panes of the night before. To his surprise it was not broken.

Wondering what had happened, he looked round the room to find that he had smashed two panes in an old bookcase set into the wall, and that it was the breaking of the gla.s.s with the suggestion of free ingress of air that it involved and not any real provision of fresh air that had cured his friend's asthma so promptly.

_Suggestion_.--When much-vaunted cures for asthma are a.n.a.lyzed, many of them are found to depend more on suggestion than on any other element. Various forms of cigarettes are used, comparatively innocuous in themselves, and certainly of no strong therapeutic action, yet they work marvels in loosening the spasm that comes over the lungs in asthmatic attacks. Any sort of a cigarette will do at the beginning. I have seen dried grape-vine stems work very well in the country, especially in young women to whom the idea of smoking anything was strongly suggestive. Cubebs cigarettes have the same effect on older people. Doubtless there is some relaxing action in the smoke. This is not enough, however, to account for the effect produced without mental influence. After cubebs have been tried for a period and begin to lose their efficacy, then other materials that produce a pungent smoke or have a certain sensory action, as stramonium leaves, may be used, and will also have the marvelous power of cubebs. After a time, however, they, too, lose their efficacy, and, as a rule, each successive cigarette that is tried has less power than the first to control the difficulty of breathing.

The more one hears of cures for asthma, and the longer one has experience with these cases, the clearer does it become that there is a large suggestive element in every successful treatment. If a piece of ordinary blotting paper be dipped in a strong solution of saltpeter and allowed to dry, it will, if touched by a lighted match, burn slowly without flame, but with the production of heavy, thick smoke.

The therapeutic elements in this are not very strong, but the suggestive element, when a room gets full of it, is intense and is c.u.mulative. Very probably the thick smoke, rich in nitrites, has some tendency to relax the spasm in the lungs which causes the asthmatic seizure, but after a time the remedy fails and something else has to be tried. In many cases, when first used, it almost works a miracle.

This is the simplest type of suggestive treatment for asthma.

_Mental Shock_.--Any strong mental influence, especially if accompanied by the suggestion of a.s.sured relief, is likely to do much for asthma of essentially neurotic character, and indeed is more powerful in dispelling the symptoms of the seizure than almost any other means that we have. Sometimes even things absolutely indifferent which produce a profound mental impression, prove curative. There are many stories of men in the midst of a severe asthmatic seizure being suddenly roused by the cry of fire, or an alarm of some {367} kind near them, having the spasmodic conditions disappear as if by magic.

Occasionally where attacks of asthma recurred regularly on successive nights for a considerable period, travel on a railroad train or anything else which occupied the attention much, prolonged the interval between seizures and sometimes put an end to the series of attacks. The more one knows of asthma the more one realizes how much its occurrence depends on mental influences of many kinds in a.s.sociation with various reflex irritations, some of them very distant from the respiratory tract and comparatively trivial in their effects on other people.

_Loss of Control_.--Occasionally in elderly neurotic people over-fatigue induces an attack of asthma about the time that sleep becomes deep. This usually occurs after the first hour or two of sleep. The inhibitory power of the nervous system over spasmodic contraction of the lung tissues seems lost in deep sleep and then the asthmatic condition develops. The greater the effort to breathe the more intense does the contraction become, until the antispasmodic effect of the presence of a lessened amount of oxygen and an abnormal quant.i.ty of carbon dioxide in the blood makes itself felt. In many cases these patients will be relieved of the tendency to such spasm by taking a cup of coffee. This stimulates the general circulation and minimizes the reflex tendency which centers in their respiratory tracts. Such patients after taking an amount of coffee that would keep ordinary people awake all night, sink in the course of half an hour into a quiet, restful sleep and awake quite refreshed. This is not entirely suggestive, but suggestion plays an added role in the relief of all the symptoms.

Treatment.--_Varied Cures_.--We do not mean to say that asthma is entirely amenable to suggestive treatment, but we emphasize the mental influences in its production and its cure. A new and almost infallible cure is announced nearly every year for asthma, as for tuberculosis.

Sometimes this is some new treatment for the nose, occasionally it is a novel method of treating the throat, but reflexes from a great many other organs not at all in touch with the respiratory system have also been supposed to be productive of asthma, and their treatment has been followed by relief from this trying condition. Washing out the stomach, for instance, has been followed by prolonged cessation of asthmatic attacks. In children it is claimed that occasionally the correction of eye-strain by the proper gla.s.ses has cured neurotic asthma. There are those who have had cases where the relief of long-continued constipation had a like therapeutic result and there are other and even more curious claims for curative effect in this affection.

_Negative and Positive Suggestion_.--Any condition in the human body that sets nerves in tension and requires constant inhibition may lead to such a c.u.mulative effect of repression that reaction follows and explosion takes place. In particularly susceptible individuals, irritable respiratory centers may be affected with consequent asthmatic seizures. The direct treatment of the respiratory tract to secure ease of respiration often does away with the liability to asthma by direct prevention. If patients, especially young patients, are mouth-breathers the clearing out of the throat and nose so as to insure normal breathing can naturally be expected to lessen any tendency to asthma. In the same way treatment of irritative or degenerative conditions in the throat and larynx, as well as in the nose, may be considered directly curative. On {368} the other hand, there is no doubt that many of the slight ameliorations of intranasal conditions suggested by enthusiastic specialists as curing asthma do not have any direct therapeutic influence but owe their efficacy to the strong suggestion of the operator's a.s.surance on the patient's mind that this treatment has cured asthma in many cases and will surely cure him.

_Drugs and Suggestion_.--The medicines that are especially effective in asthma of neurotic origin are those which also have a large suggestive influence because of their taste or their effects upon the system. Hoffman's anodyne is an efficient antispasmodic and is wonderfully effective in relieving the tendency to asthma. I have always felt, however, though I have given it freely, that a large element in its effectiveness was its particularly disagreeable taste and odor and then its excretion through the lungs with a certain sense of well-being allied somewhat to the intoxication that comes from the inhalation of ether. I have seen asthmatic tendencies in young women greatly relieved by the use of valerian. Undoubtedly this remedy, like the compound spirits of ether, is antispasmodic in action, yet to a much less degree than Hoffman's mixture, and over and over again I have noted that in pill form, though given in large doses, it was not as effective as if given in liquid form when its nauseating smell added distinctly to its suggestive influence. The drug itself does good but it is distinctly helped by the influence upon the patient's mind of its taste and, above all, of its aroma. The elixir of ammonium valerianate being particularly unpleasant is likely to be more beneficial to these patients.

_Climatotherapy and Suggestion_.--The climatic treatment of asthma has received much attention. Change of scene and environment nearly always does good. Different patients, however, require very different conditions. Of two cases of neurotic asthma in which no diagnostic differences can be found, one will improve at the seash.o.r.e or on a sea voyage, while the other will be made worse by such a change though probably the asthma will be improved in the mountains or in some dry climate. Even moving from one part of a city to another has brought great improvement in asthma. Sometimes there were good reasons for this, as, for instance, when an investigation showed that the patient had previously been living above a bakery from which there came a good deal of hot air and flour dust. Some people are actually improved by close contact with human beings in rather crowded quarters. I have known a settlement worker to experience great relief from asthma when living in the slums. Where there is intense occupation of mind, especially if combined with the suggestion that now the asthma ought to be better, seizures will be less frequent and less severe. All sorts of places in the mountains and by the seash.o.r.e have acquired reputations as relieving asthma which were justified by many cured cases and yet they have lost this reputation. Whenever there are many sufferers together, the expectancy of relief seems to do great good.

CHAPTER IV

DUST ASTHMA, SEASONAL CATARRH, HAY FEVER

Grouped under the term "hay fever" there are probably as many different affections as there are under the term "chronic rheumatism."

There are {369} people who, in the springtime, as soon as the weather gets warm, suffer from what is popularly called hay fever. This is often called "spring catarrh" or "rose cold" and seems often to be a.s.sociated with the pollen of flowers. Then there are people whose hay fever, as it is called, develops about the first of June and continues to be bothersome until the middle of July, when there is a remission of symptoms, though in dry prolonged hot periods after that the affection may recur. It seems as if, at the beginning of the heated term, the warm, dry dusty air irritates their nostrils very much, while after some weeks they gradually become used to this and the reaction is not so violent. Then there are the regular hay-fever patients whose affection occurs princ.i.p.ally in haying time, during August and September, though most of them have not been near hay pollen, and the disease is an affection of dwellers in cities rather than in the country, of indoor livers more than of farming people, who might be expected to suffer most from the supposed cause, hay pollen.

Even where pollen is directly concerned in its causation it is probably oftener the pollen of the rag weed rather than that of hay that is responsible for it.

There are two elements in the disease apparently of equal importance.

One of these is a strictly local condition interfering with respiration in some way, or with the circulation to the mucous membrane of the nose and the lachrymal ducts. The other is an individual over-sensitiveness so that there is an exaggerated reaction to irritation. Some of this is mental, that is, is due to expectancy, or to the persuasion that this reaction is sure to occur under certain circ.u.mstances. As a consequence, attacks of hay fever are reported even after a distant view of a hayfield, or of rose cold due to the sight of an artificial rose, and of other recurrences that show the power of the mind to bring about at least a beginning of symptoms.

While the first or physical element in the etiology of dust catarrh can be treated successfully by various means, it is important to get the mind of the individual in a favorable state so as to enable him to obtain better control over his vaso-motor system which is so much influenced by emotions and thoughts. It is this latter element in the causation of the disease that has been successfully treated by the many remedies that for a time have had reported success in the cure of hay fever yet afterwards proved to be of no benefit because they had lost their influence over the patients' minds.

In a review of Morell MacKenzie's book "Hay Fever, with an Appendix on Rose Cold," Dr. J. N. MacKenzie [Footnote 31] has some paragraphs on hay fever which, though written twenty-five years ago, are worth recalling for a proper understanding of the disease. He preferred to call the disease rhinitis sympathetica or coryza vaso-motoria periodica, names which are much better descriptive terms and have no unsubstantiated suggestions of etiology in them.

[Footnote 31: _American Journal of Medical Sciences_, 1886.]

According to our conception, the so-called nasal reflex neuroses, whether taken singly or collectively, as the cause of the _ensemble_ of phenomena known as "hay fever," may be regarded as the protean manifestation of a morbid condition to which we have given the name rhinitis sympathetica, and which is characterized by a hyperesthetic condition of the vaso-motor nerve centers linked to a peculiar excitability of the nasal cavernous tissue. For, if we inquire what condition or conditions is common to them all, and what morbid process is capable of producing them, either singly or in combination; how phenomena apparently {370} so widely different in character and anatomical sphere of operation may be traced to a solitary source, we find the answer in certain more or less clearly defined changes in the nasal apparatus and in a certain exalted state of the sympathetic nervous system, to which latter we instinctively turn as the organ most conspicuously concerned in the evolution of purely reflex acts. In whatever relation the local nasal affection and the condition of the sympathetic stand to each other in the matter of cause and effect, they must both be regarded as inseparable factors in the production of the phenomena under consideration. It matters not to what hypothesis the path of speculation may lead. Of this we can be reasonably sure, that in the production of the characteristic symptoms of this disease, a certain excitability of the nasal pa.s.sages is necessary, plus an exalted state of the central nervous system.