Essays on hypochondriasis, and other nervous affections / By John Reid.

  • John Reid
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hypochondriasis, and other nervous affections / By John Reid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/454 page 8
    ad a radoxical extravagance, scarcely yields to the doctrine of a modern, though already obsolete writer, on. the Philosophy of 7 orals, who asserted that no one need ‘die, if, with a sufficient energy, he deter- mined to live.* To command, or to advise * Of alate member of the English bar, whose strong original powers of mind had been obscured and en- feebled by the sensuality of his habits, it has been related that in the extremity of his last illness, when the shadows of death were fast coming over him, he, with a blasphemous audacity, swore, by God, that he would not die! - In this state of morbid and impious rage, he struggled out of his bed, tottered down the stairs, and fell lifeless in the passage. From the exclamation of this unfortunate man, it would seem as if he fancied that he held the reins of life in his hands, and could arrest at will the rapidity of its descending career. It is remarkable, that a similar story is related in Spence’s Anecdotes, recently published, of Salvini, ** an odd sort of man, subject to gross absences, and a very great sloven... His behaviour in his last hour was as odd as any of his behaviour in all his lifetime before could have been. Just as he was departing, he cried out in a great passion, ‘ Je ne veux pas > 9) mourir, absolument.
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