p. 319 | GOOD HEALTH

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 24, 1878

GOOD HEALTH.

Dyspepsia.

ITS CAUSES; HOW TO PREVENT, HOW TO CURE.

FEW words in the English language express so much of misery and suffering as are comprehended in this single word, dyspepsia. Indigestion is a synonym for every unpleasant, wretched, painful feeling to which humanity is subject. It is a disease which deprives its victims of nearly all the pleasures of living, and yet allows them to drag out year after year of misery until they are finally worn out by constant suffering.

But we need not expatiate upon the horrors of this direful malady, for who is not acquainted with them? How few are there who have not felt some of the tortures of indigestion, either chronic or acute! Indeed, it has become a proverb which is repeated by every author who attempts to write upon this subject, that the American people are a nation of dyspeptics. An examination of the older medical works reveals the fact that this lamentable condition has arisen within the last fifty years. Not that dyspepsia was unknown a half century ago; but its prevalence was then so limited as to be of little significance. Now we see this disease appearing, in some one of its myriad forms, in every household; and so rapidly is it extending its ravages that, unless its course is speedily stayed, it will soon become a universal malady. Already does it annually claim more victims than any other single disease. Cholera is a fearful scourge. Yellow fever may well excite alarm as a great destroyer. Scarlet fever and small-pox are most calamitous imports into any community. But dyspepsia is a much more stupendous evil than any or all of these, notwithstanding the fact that it never figures largely, if at all, in the mortuary tables of the published reports of vital statistics.

Nearly 33,000 deaths from various causes were reported for New York city during the year 1872. Of this vast number not one was attributed to dyspepsia. Of the 10,766 deaths in Michigan during 1870, only twenty-five were attributed to dyspepsia. These reports are exceedingly deceptive; for they attribute to other causes thousands of deaths which are really due to derangements of the digestive apparatus. And, furthermore, thousands of other deaths occur from diseases which never could have existed, had the digestion remained unimpaired. Taking these considerations into the account, it is evident that at least one-half of all the deaths which occur, are the more or less direct results of some of the various forms of dyspepsia.

A brief glance at a few of the diseases which spring directly from dyspepsia will make this fact still more apparent. Diarrhea, dysentery, constipation, worms, colic, cholera, and the great majority of bowel complaints, originate in indigestion. The best medical authors admit that most of the derangements of the liver are due to the same cause. The same is true of kidney diseases. Paralysis and apoplexy, heart-disease, bronchitis, together with inflammations of the stomach and bowels, are also almost wholly due to dyspepsia. Consumption almost always comes subsequent to indigestion, as a consequence of defective nutrition and lowered vitality. Other lung diseases are also the direct results of the same morbid conditions.

WHAT IS DYSPEPSIA?

Notwithstanding its exceeding prevalence, to frame a satisfactory definition of this disease is a task of no little difficulty. The difficulty does not consist, however, in the obscurity of the symptoms, or in their indefinite character; but it lies in the fact that so numerous are the conditions, so varying the symptoms which characterize this disease, that to describe it is to describe nearly every morbid condition, every unnatural and unpleasant feeling, in fact, every symptom of deranged function or perverted action which is presented in the long list of diseases which the nosologist enumerates.

This wonderful multiplicity of symptoms grows out of the fact that dyspepsia is not a local disease. It is rather the name of a pathological condition which involves every organ, tissue, and structure in the body. It is a general deterioration of the whole physical organization. In fact, it may be said to be “the sum of all chronic diseases.”

SYMPTOMS OF DYSPEPSIA.

As will be inferred from the preceding remarks, no small difficulty is experienced in accurately defining the multitudinous symptoms which indicate the existence of this disease. So various are its manifestations that no two persons suffering from this malady will find their conditions similar in more than a few particulars. One is troubled with excessive flatulency. Another is habitually costive. A third has no pain in stomach or bowels, but is troubled with a constant headache; he does not dream of dyspepsia—only his head troubles him. Another has a torpid liver, with frequent irritation from gall-stones. Still another individual complains only of palpitation and a feeling of heaviness. He is confident that he has heart-disease, and that his stomach is all right. A person of different habits will describe as his symptoms a feeling of “goneness,” eructations, pain in the stomach, times accompanied with sick headache. Some other patient will suffer great distress from cramp in the stomach and bilious vomiting. And thus successive individuals will complain of diarrhea, distress after eating, capricious appetite, canker, inflammation of the mouth, general weakness, nausea, loss of appetite, unnatural cravings, nervous debility, difficult breathing, catarrh, or hypochondriasis.

One very prominent feature of the disease is that the symptoms are exceedingly variable, so that the patient will be subjected alternately to each, or any combined number, of the above list. The poor victim imagines himself recovering, perhaps, when he observes a certain unpleasant symptom disappearing; but in vain is his hope, for he is soon beset by another equally painful one in some new locality.

Thousands of people are suffering from various local ailments, as catarrh, chronic headache, cold extremities, or similar difficulties, without the slightest suspicion that anything is wrong with their digestive apparatus, or that their disease is anything more than a local affection. Hence it is not strange that all their attempts at curing the disease are so unsuccessful. It is, in fact, more often than otherwise the case that the chronic dyspeptic has no pain in his digestive organs, for a long time after he begins to suffer materially from the results of impaired digestive powers and consequent defective nutrition.