66

"effects upon the nerves, diminishes their energy and the tone of the muscular fibres, and induces a confiderable degree both of fenfibility and irritability on "the whole fyftem. It alfo promotes the thinner evacuations very powerfully, " and diminishes the flesh and bulk of thofe, who use it. Thefe effects tend "to impair the strength and to promote the above confequences on the nervous "fyftem. Hence the ufe of tea has been found very agreeable to the studious. "But I believe with us it has had the effect of enfeebling and enervating the bodies of the people, and of introducing feveral diforders that arife from laxity and debility; and has been of ftill more confequence in making way "for the use of fpirituous liquors, which are often taken to relieve that depreffion, which tea occafions. It evidently injures the health by the effects "it produces on the nerves, contributes to abate courage, vigour and steadiness “of mind. Tea (as a plant) belongs to the natural order of the Coadunatæ, "which are all of the narcotic kind [s]." Other physicians however speak differently of the effects of tea, and think, that where it apparently does not agree, it is because the habit of body is "already" enervated; and that even then, it is the warm water, which is more prejudicial than the tea. It is acknowledged on all hands, that nervous diforders have very much increased of late years, but that they may be afcribed to many other caufes more hurtful in every point of view than the introduction of tea; fuch are among others, diffipated luxury, high feafoned viands, fpirituous liquors, effeminate modes of life and irregular hours.

To thefe diftant caufes of fuicide arifing from climate and diet, fome also add that of our principal fuel, Coal;" whofe fulphureous exhalations are fuppofed to be very prejudicial to a weak and relaxed state of the body, and which we use in more abundance than many other nations.

But fince fpirits depreffed (from whatever caufe) naturally fhrink from exertion, the foregoing caufes may unite in producing an indolence and inactivity of temper, a love of sedentary rather than active employments; from whence the origin of many bodily diforders may be traced, which center in nervous.

[s] "The Japanese (adds Falconer) are great tea-drinkers, and fubject from its ufe to the diabetes and confumptive diforders refembling the atrophy."

affections,

affections, in weakness, lownefs, melancholy, and that fpecies of lunacy, which gives birth to fuch frequent fuicide.

Now it is not meant to be afferted, that thefe general caufes exert an influence on every individual alike, but that there must be [r] a previous aptitude in the frame and contexture of the body to receive fuch and fuch impreffions. The ftrong habit of body will refift all fudden changes of atmosphere, will throw off all oppreffions of redundant food by violent exercise, and live in health and vigour amid many engines of malady: but let the fame caufes work on one

[T] "It is a common obfervation (and I think a just one) that fools, weak or ftupid perfons, heavy and dull fouls, are feldom much troubled with vapours or lownefs of fpirits. The intellectual faculty, without all manner of doubt, has material and animal organs, by which it mediately works, as well as the animal functions. What they are and how they operate, as, I believe, very few know, so it is very little to our purpose to inquire. The works of imagination and memory, of ftudy, thinking and reflecting, from whatever fource the principle on which they depend, fprings, muft neceffarily require bodily organs. Some have thefe organs finer, quicker, more agile and fenfible, and perhaps more numerous than others. It is evident that in nervous diftempers, and in many other bodily dif eafes, these faculties and their operations are impaired, nay totally ruined and extinguifhed to all ap-pearance; and yet by proper remedies and after recovery of health, they are reftored and brought to their former state. Now fince this prefent age (n. b. Cheyne's book was published 1733) has made efforts to go beyond former times in all the arts of ingenuity, invention, ftudy, learning, and all the contemplative and fedentary profeffions (I fpeak only here of our own times and of the better fort, whofe chief employments and ftudies these are) the organs of thefe faculties being thereby worn and spoiled, muft affect and deaden the whole fyftem, and lay a foundation for the diseases of lowness and weakness. Add to this, that those who are likelieft to excel and apply in this manner, are moft capable and most in hazard of following that way of life, which I have mentioned, as the likelieft to produce thefe difeafes.-"Great wits" are generally "great epicures," at leaft men of " tafte." And the bodies and conftitutions of one generation, are ftill more corrupt, infirm and diseased than those of a former, as they advance in time and the ufe of the caufes affigned." CHEYNE'S English Malady. P. I. C. vi.

Cheyne obferves alfo in his Advertisement to Part III, "the difeafe of low fpirits is as much a bodily diftemper, (as I have demonftrated) as the fmall-pox or a fever; and the truth is, it seldom and I think never happens nor can happen to any, but thofe of the livelieft and quickest natural parts whofe faculties are the brightest and most spiritual (full of spirits) and whofe genius is moft keen. and penetrating, and particularly where there is the most delicate fenfation and taste, both of pleasure and pain.. So equally are the good and bad things of this mortal ftate diftributed. For I feldom or ever obferved a heavy, dull, earthy, clod-pated clown much troubled with "nervous" diforders, or at leaft not to any eminent degree; and I fcarce believe the thing poffible from the animal economy and. the prefent laws of nature."

N. B.. Thefe opinions of Cheyne are left with the reader to comment on as he pleafes.

9

of

of delicate and tender « ftamina” of life, and they will produce a feries of the moft dreadful diforders that are incident to human nature,-the excess of low fpirits and nervous affections.

Again; let the fame man be at one time robust and full of fanguine health, and at another relaxed and vapourish, debilitated and nervous, he will in the former cafe exert a manliness and fortitude in enduring the misfortunes and affictions of life; in the latter he will become a prey to idle apprehenfions and imaginary evils, which will act on his mind with more violence than real ones do on others, and give him up to the tortures of melancholy and despair. Men are known to covet the very dregs of life, while labouring under the pain of the acuteft diforders, fuch as gout, ftone, &c. but when once attacked by thefe (as Cheyne calls them) finking, fuffocating, and ftrangling" nervous affections, they are thrown at once into inevitable dejection and the blackness of horror and despair. While the fpirit is erect and firm, the greatest troubles may be endured; but this being once wounded and broken.down, the supports are fallen, a desolation of all the mental and animal powers fucceeds, and the man is overwhelmed, as it were, in his own ruins. Nervous disorders in their extreme degree are the most deplorable, and without comparison the most dreadful to fuffer, of all the miferies that attack the human frame in this vale of tears and forrow. But what adds to their wretchedness is, that this extreme dejection of fpirits, this melancholy, this lunacy and propenfity to fuicide, like many other diforders, is not confined to the unhappy object in the first instance, but by attacking fucceffive generations of the fame family proves itfelf to be hereditary. But as our inland is remarkable for thefe nervous diforders which are emphatically [u] ftyled the " English malady," and for a frequency

of

[u]" The title I have chofen for this treatise is a reproach univerfally thrown on this island by foreigners and all our neighbours on the continent, by whom nervous diftempers, fpleen, vapours, and lowness of fpirits, are in derifion called the "English malady." And I wish there were not fo good grounds for this reflection. The moisture of our air, the variablenefs of our weather (from our fituation amid the ocean) the ranknefs and fertility of our foil, the richness and heaviness of our food, the wealth and abundance of the inhabitants (from their univerfal trade) the inactivity and fedentary occupations of the better fort (among whom this evil moftly rages) and the humour cf living in great populous, and confequently unhealthy towns,-have brought forth a clafs and fet of distempers with atrocious and frightful fymptoms, fcarce known to our ancestors, and never rifing to fuch fatal heights.

nor

of defpondency and lunacy arifing from them, no wonder that it is alfo noted

nor afflicting fuch numbers in any other known nation. These nervous diforders being computed to make almost "one third" of the complaints of the people of condition in England."--CHEYNE'S Preface to his English Malady.

"All diseases have in fome degree or other, or in embrio, been extant at all times, at least might have been, if the efficient caufes, " idleness and luxury," had been fufficiently fet to work, which were chiefly in the power of men themselves. What we call nervous diftempers were certainly in fome fmall degree known and obferved by the Greek, Roman, and Arabian phyficians, though not such a number of them as now, nor with so high symptoms, fo as to be fo particularly taken notice of, except those called "hyfteric," which seem to have been known in Greece, from whence they have derived their name. But as they were probably a stronger people and lived in a warmer climate, the flow, cold, and nervous diseases were lefs known and obferved; the diftempers of all the eastern and fouthern countries being moftly "acute." When thefe general causes, which I have mentioned, came to exist in some more confiderable degree, and to operate in the more northern climes, then these nervous diforders began to fhow themfelves more eminently, and to appear with higher, more numerous, and atrocious symptoms. Sydenham our countryman was the physician of note, who made the most particular and full obfervations on them, and established them into a particular class and tribe, with a proper, though different, method of cure from other chronical and humorous diftempers; though their true nature, cause, and cure has been lefs univerfally laboured and known, than that of most other difeases; so that thofe, who could give no tolerable account of them, have called them vapours, spleen, flatus, nervous, hysterical, and hypochondriacal distempers."-CHEYNE'S English Malady, P. I. C. vi. The following is a poetical defcription of this kind of low-fpiritedness or melancholy, from Cowper's Poems, Vol. I.-Retirement.

"Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill

Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil;

Gives "melancholy" up to nature's care,

And fends the patient into purer air.

Look where he comes-in this embower'd alcove

Stand close conceal'd, and see a statue move:

Lips bufy and eyes fixt, foot falling flow,
Arms hanging idly down, hands clafp'd below,
Interpret to the marking eye, distress,
Such as its symptoms can alone express.
That tongue is filent now, that filent tongue
Could argue once, could jeft or join the song;
Could give advice, could cenfure or commend,
Or charm the forrows of a drooping friend.
Renounc'd alike its office and its fport,
Its brifker and its graver ftrains fall short:
Both fail beneath a fever's fecret sway,
And like a fummer-brook are past away.
Bbb

1

This

noted for an abundance of fuicide proceeding from thefe melancholic [x] causes.

The foregoing may be deemed "phyfical" caufes of fuicide in England, which exert their influence over the mind by first disordering the body. There are

This is a fight for pity to peruse,

Till the refemble faintly what she views;
Till fympathy contract a kindred pain

Pierc'd with the woes that fhe laments in vain.

This of all maladies that man infeft

Claims moft compaffion and receives the leaft.

'Tis not, as heads that never ach fuppofe,
Forgery of fancy and a dream of woes :
Man is an harp, whose chords elude the fight,
Each yielding harmony difpos'd aright.
The screws revers'd (a task which if He pleafe,
God in a moment executes with ease)
Ten thoufand, thousand ftrings at once go loofe,
Loft, till He tune them, all their power and ufe.

No wounds like thofe a wounded spirit feels,

No cure for fuch, till God, who makes them, heals.”

[x] "We do not find, that the Romans ever killed themselves without a cause; but the English destroy themselves moft unaccountably. They deftroy themselves often in the very bofom of happinefs. This action among the Romans was the effect of education; it was connected with their principles and cuftoms; among the English it is the effect of a diftemper. It may be complicated with the fcurvy, which in fome countries, especially renders a man whimfical and unsupportable to himself. (See Pirard's Voyages, P. II. C. xxi.) It is connected with the physical state of the machine, and independent of every other caufe. In all probability it is a defect of the filtration of the nervous juices; the machine, whofe motive faculties are every moment without action, is weary of itself: the foul feels no pain, but a certain uneafinefs in exifting. Pain is a local thing, which leads us to the defire of seeing an end of it: the burden of life is an evil confined to no particular place, which prompts us to the defire of ceafing to live. It is evident, that the civil laws of fome countries may have reafons for branding fuicide with infamy, but in England it cannot be punished without punishing the effects of madness."--MONTESQUIEU, Spir. Laws, B. XIV. C. xii.

Montesquieu however in his conclufion here speaks too generally. What he fays must be confined to that particular kind of fuicide, which proceeds from melancholy and excefs of nervous dejection producing lunacy to a certain degree; and this in fact is not punished by English law. But when it arifes in England from other causes, it is and ought to be liable to cenfure and punishment in England as well as elsewhere.

2.

others