The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan].

  • James Foulis Duncan
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sense of shame, operated powerfully on her mind, and pro- duced a marked state of Nervous depression. Nothing particular occurred till the period of her confinement, when the shock of such a trial, occurring in an enfeebled System, proved too much for Nature to surmount. The delivery was safely accomplished, but inflammation of the Uterus succeeded, and death followed in a few hours. On exa- mination of the body afterwards, the parts were found in a complete state of Gangrene. Ann Burroughs, the daughter of a respectable Dairy- man in Thomas-street, was seduced by a man under pro- mise of marriage, and deserted. Driven from her father’s house, either by feelings of shame on her own part, or of displeasure at her improper conduct on his, she sought a shelter in the Workhouse, where she was, in due time, safely delivered of a son. Still trusting in the honourable feelings of her betrayer, she was buoyed up with the hope that at last he wxmld consider her situation, and provide for her and her child. Disappointed with continued ne- glect, she sank beneath the load. A few days after her Delivery, symptoms of Typhus Fever set in, and she died without the slightest effort at reaction being percep- tible. Many of those severe and fatal cases of Nervous Fever which occur sporadically, I have no doubt would be found, upon close investigation, to depend upon some of these emo- tions which had previously weighed down the spirit of the Patient, and unfitted it for the ordeal through which it had to pass. But the difficulty of arriving at a correct con- clusion prevents this being established as clearly as would be desirable. There are many circumstances of this kind which few persons can be got to divulge, and many, which if known, could not be corrected. All that we