Essays on hypochondriacal and other nervous affections / by John Reid.

  • Reid, John, 1776-1822.
Date:
May 20, 1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hypochondriacal and other nervous affections / by John Reid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    22/220
    ven or embellish it, we often become more enamoured of its present deformity than we were with its former loveliness, When all is gone by, that could render the world reasona- bly dear to us, our attachment to it not only re- mains, but appears frequently to be strength- ened rather than to be impaired by the de- parture of whatever could justify its continu- ance. The love of life, one might fancy, in some cases, to be a product formed from the decomposition of its pleasures. These remarks are, in no case, so well il- lustrated as in that of many a nervous invalid, to whom the continuance of being is often only the longer lingering of torture. The un- happy hypochondriac is unwilling to lay down the burden which oppresses him. The rack of life upon which he is stretched, he prefers to the repose of the grave. He is loath to re- linquish that breath which is spent in little else than sighs and lamentations. To him ex- istence is a chronic malady: and yet he feels an insuperable aversion from its only effectual cure. I was once present when a poor pa- tient of a dispensary, conscious that he was la- bouring under the last agonies of asthma, ari- sing from water in the chest, breathed a con- fession, that he was ashamed of feeling so much attached to this last rag of life. This