The influence of _fear_, both in occasioning and aggravating diseases, is very great. No man ought to be blamed for a decent concern about life; but too great a desire to preserve it is often the cause of losing it. Fear and anxiety, by depressing the spirits, not only dispose us to diseases, but often render those diseases fatal which an undaunted mind would overcome. Sudden fear has generally violent effects. Epileptic fits, and other convulsive disorders, are often occasioned by it. Hence the danger of that practice, so common among young people, of frightening one another. Many have lost their lives, and others have been rendered miserable, by frolics of this kind. It is dangerous to tamper with the human passions. The mind may easily be thrown into such disorder as never again to act with regularity. But the gradual effects of fear prove most hurtful. The constant dread of some future evil, by dwelling upon the mind, often occasions the very evil itself. Hence it comes to pass, that so many die of those very diseases of which they long had a dread, or which had been impressed on their minds by some accident, or foolish prediction. This, for example, is often the case with women in child-bed. Many of those who die in that situation are impressed with the notion of their death a long time before it happens; and there is reason to believe that this impression is often the cause of it. The methods taken to impress the minds of women with the apprehensions of the great _pain_ and _peril_ of child-birth, are very hurtful. Few women die in labour, though many lose their lives after it; which may be thus accounted for. A woman after delivery, finding herself weak and exhausted, immediately apprehends she is in danger; but this fear seldom fails to obstruct the necessary evacuations, upon which her recovery depends. Thus the sex often fall a sacrifice to their own imaginations, when there would be no danger, did they apprehend none. It seldom happens that two or three women in a great town die in child-bed, but their death is followed by many others. Every woman of their acquaintance who is with child dreads the same fate, and the disease becomes epidemical by the mere force of imagination. This should induce pregnant women to despise fear, and by all means to avoid those tattling gossips who are continually buzzing in their ears the misfortunes of others. Every thing that may in the least alarm a pregnant or child-bed woman, ought with the greatest care to be guarded against.