But let me turn away from these recollections of misery, now when I see crowding before me more cheerful pictures--of that solemn tremor with which I have seen parents overcome, who, at the wedding of their children, could no longer hold the glass in their hands, and stammered unintelligible words with tears in their eyes. I see young poets, too, who cannot steady the paper as they rise to read their verses to a merry company; and busy housewives with trembling lips, and faces beaming with satisfaction, who have to sit down because they cannot subdue their exultation at their success; and lastly, relatives who, with convulsive hands, embrace each other in the joy of meeting once more. I have known men so nervous that they had to retire at the slightest emotion, lest they should betray an agitation which seemed ridiculous to them; and I have seen others support themselves with a hand on a table or chair that they might not tremble when they heard a moving speech or saw the representation of a tragedy at the theatre. I remember onanists who, from fear of their trembling-fits, have been reduced to the humiliation of confessing their loathsome, degrading vice; love-sick friends who have been startled at the trembling of their hands, which altered the character of their writing; colleagues who have consulted me on account of a trembling which appeared after they were exhausted by mental work; and persons who, in consequence of a fright, were subject to trembling for the rest of their lives. VII But it is in _delirium tremens_ that fear and trembling together form the most awful torture, the most horrible punishment of human nature. During my life as a physician I have only seen three such cases, and the faces of the wretches float before me, covered, as it were, with a veil of profound melancholy. I shall condense the observations which I made into a single picture, so as not to detain the reader too long amongst such scenes of misery. Generally, one is called in haste to a patient who is vomiting, or who is thought to be seized with insanity. One finds a wan, emaciated man, who looks at us indifferently, or answers with a few impolite words in a dull, rough voice. Relatives, wife and children, who stand frightened around the bed, tell us that he has been immoderate in drinking, and had been brought home intoxicated the night before; that he had grumbled the whole night long, and did not rise in the morning because of excessive fatigue; that he had felt sick all day and had had no appetite, and that he had then begun to vomit. When he shows his tongue, we see that it is covered with a thick, whitish coat, as in catarrh of the stomach.