Illustrations of unconscious memory in disease : including a theory of alteratives / by Charles Creighton.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of unconscious memory in disease : including a theory of alteratives / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of a morning is one that seems as far as possible beyond the reach of physic ; but even for that typical example of a conscious voluntary habit, the aid of drugs has been invoked, as the following will show. Among other eminent literary characters who have felt what Dr. Bain calls the volitional solicitations of a strong massive indulgence to be too much for them, was James Boswell, the author of Dr. Johnson's 'Life.' In that biography he has the following remarks with reference to his difficulty in getting up of a morning after he had been wakened :* I said [to Johnson] that was my difficulty, and wished there could be some medicine invented which would make one rise without pain, which I never did, unless after lying in bed a very long time. Perhaps there may be something in the stores of nature which could do this. I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually, but that would give pain, as it would counteract my internal inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the vis inertise, and give elasticity to the muscles. As I imagine that the human body may be put, by the operation of other substances, into any state in which it has ever been, and as I have experienced a state in which rising from bed was not disagreeable, but easy, nay, sometimes agreeable ; I suppose that this state may be produced, if we knew by what. Johnson's reply on this occasion is wanting in its usual bluntness and force, for the excellent reason * ' Life of Johnson/ chap. xli.
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