HYPOCHONDRIAC AFFECTIONS.

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quently to unbend their minds by music, diversions, or going intoagreeable company.

With regard to diet, I shall only observe, that nervous diseasesmay be induced either by excess or inanition. Both of these ex-tremes hurt the digestion, and vitiate the humours. When natureis oppressed with fresh loads of food, before she has had time todigest and assimilate the former meal, her powers are weakened,and the vessels are filled with crude humours. On the other hand,when the food is not sufficiently nourishing, or is taken too seldom,the bowels are inflated with wind, and the humours, for want ofregular fresh supplies of wholesome chyle, are vitiated. These ex-tremes are, therefore, with equal care to be avoided. They bothtend to induce a relaxation and debility of the nervous system,with all its dreadful train of consequences.

But the most general cause of nervous disorders is indolence.The active and laborious are seldom troubled with them. Theyare reserved for the children of ease and affluence, who generallyfeel their keenest force. All we shall say to such persons is, thatthe means of prevention and cure are both in their own power.If the constitution of human nature be such, that man must eitherlabour or suffer diseases, surely no individual has any right to ex-pect an exemption from the general rule.

Those, however, who are willing to take exercise, but whose oc-cupations confine them to the house, and perhaps to an unfavoura-ble posture, really deserve our pity. We have in a former partof the book endeavoured to Jay down rules for their conduct ; andshall only add, tiiat where these cannot be complied with, theirplace may, in some measure, be supplied by the use of bracing andstrengthening medicines, as the Peruvian bark, with other bitters ;the preparation of steel ; the elixir of vitriol, and such like.

Among many remarkable cases of the nervous kind, which Ihave often met with, one very lately attracted my notice in a pe-culiar manner. It was written by the patient himself, a gentle-man of fortune and of liberal education ; and it might be justlycalled a picture from nature, drawn with uncommon sensibility andforce. The whole account being too long for insertion, the follow-ing extract may serve as a specimen of the writer's sufferings anddescriptive talents :—" It is in vain," he says, " that I attempt toimpress the Faculty with the real state of my sufferings. Thesymptoms of the disorders are not to be described, from their unu-sual pressure upon the mind ; nor can they be conceived, I believe,by any but those who have suffered under them. They may besaid to constitute a phenomenon in the science of diseases. SinceI know of no terms to express them in, or language to describe themby, I am obliged to content myself with denominating the disorderand its effects together a mental agony, whose influence creates ureal tedium vitœ. It attacks me sometimes when sitting, some-times when walking ; and if I were not to throw myself on a bedduring the violence of the paroxysm, I should certainly dash my-self to pieces. This is accompanied with a lassitude, restlessness,and total incapacity of attending to any concerns in life." .

The same spirit animated every part of the affecting descrip-tion ; and the case was accompanied with a list of eleven eminent

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