Self-murderers, increase of, how to be accounted for id. Necessity of making an early will Heirs provided by law in cases of intestacy d. Transition from obscurity to opulence vice versa, from one state of mind to another, &c. &c. &c. 270 ERRATA. P. 13, second line from top, for contain, read restrain. HEALTH WITHOUT PHYSIC. SECTION I. ON THE RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE BETWEEN A STROKE of personal satire, says a modern writer, was evidently levelled at Dryden, where Bayes informs us of his preparation for a course of study, by a course of medicine! "When I have a grand design," says he, "I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part, in fine, you must purge the belly!"* Such was really the practice of the poet, as La Motte, who was a physician, informs us; and, in his medical character, did not perceive that ridicule in the subject which the wits and most readers have unquestionably enjoyed. Among the philosophers, one of the most famous disputants of antiquity, Carneades, was accustomed to take copious doses of white helebore, a great aperient, as a preparative to refute the dogmas of the Stoics. * Vide Curiosities of Literature. B Dryden's practice was neither peculiar nor whimsical to the poet; he was of a full habit, and no doubt had often found, by experience, the beneficial effects, without being aware of the cause, which is nothing less than the reciprocal influence of mind and body! The simple fact is, indeed, connected with one of the most important inquiries in the history of man; the laws which regulate the invisible union of the soul with the body-in a word, the inscrutable mystery of our being, a secret, but undoubted intercourse, which must probably ever elude our perceptions. The combination of metaphysics with physics, has only been productive of the wildest fairy tales among philosophers with one party the soul seems to pass away in its last puff of air, while man seems to perish in "dust to dust;" the other, as successfully, gets rid of our bodies altogether, by denying the existence of matter. We are not certain that mind and matter are distinct existences, since the one may be only a modification of the other; however this great mystery be imagined, we shall find, with Dr. Gregory in his Lectures (on the Duties, &c. of a Physician), that it forms an equally necessary inquiry in the science of morals and of medicine. When the vulgar distinctions of mind and body are considered as an union, or as a modified existence, no philosopher denies that a reciprocal action takes place between our moral and physical condition. Of these sympathies, like many other mysteries of nature, the cause remains occult, while the effects are obvious. If This close yet inscrutable association-this concealed correspondence of parts seemingly unconnected--in a word, this reciprocal influence of the mind and the body, has long fixed the attention of medical and metaphysical inquirers; the one having the care of our exterior organization, the other that of the interior. Can we conceive the mysterious inhabitant as forming a part of its own habitation? The tenant and the house are so inseparable, that, in striking at any part of the building, you inevitably reach the dweller. the mind is disordered, we may often look for its seat in some corporeal derangement. Often are our thoughts disturbed by a stranger irritability, which we do not even pretend to account for. This state of the body, called the fidgets, is a disorder to which the ladies are particularly liable. A physician being earnestly asked by a female patient to give a name to her unknown complaints; this he found no difficulty to do, as he is a sturdy assertor of the materiality of our nature: he declared that her disorder was atmospherical. It was the disorder of her frame under damp weather, which was reacting on her mind; and physical means, by operating on her body, might be applied to restore her to her half-lost senses. Our imagination is highest when our stomach is not overloaded; in spring than in winter; in solitude than amidst company; and in an obscure light than in the blaze and heat of noon. In all these cases the body is evidently acted on, and re-acts upon the mind. Sometimes our dreams present us with images of our rest |