Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
The influence of sounds of a certain kind in producing excitement, and
thereby increasing life, cannot be denied. Fear produces debility, which
is a tendency to death. Sound obviates this debility, and thus restores
the system to the natural and healthy grade of life. The school-boy and
the clown invigorate their feeble and trembling limbs by whistling or
singing as they pass by a country church-yard, and the soldier feels
his departing life recalled in the onset of a battle by the noise
of the fife, and of the poet's "spirit stirring drum." Intoxication
is frequently attended with a higher degree of life than is natural.
Now sound we know will produce this with a very moderate portion of
fermented liquor; hence we find men are more easily and highly excited
by it at public entertainments where there is music, loud talking,
and hallooing, than in private companies where there is no auxiliary
stimulus added to that of the wine. I wish these effects of sound upon
animal life to be remembered; for I shall mention it hereafter as a
remedy for the weak state of life in many diseases, and shall relate
an instance in which a scream suddenly extorted by grief, proved the
means of resuscitating a person who was supposed to be dead, and who had
exhibited the usual recent marks of the extinction of life.
I shall conclude this head by remarking, that persons who are destitute
of hearing and seeing possess life in a more languid state than other
people; and hence arise the dulness and want of spirits which they
discover in their intercourse with the world.
3. Odours have a sensible effect in promoting animal life. The greater
healthiness of the country, than cities, is derived in part from the
effluvia of odoriferous plants, which float in the atmosphere in the
spring and summer months, acting upon the system, through the medium of
the sense of smelling. The effects of odours upon animal life appear
still more obvious in the sudden revival of it, which they produce in
cases of fainting. Here the smell of a few drops of hartshorn, or even
of a burnt feather, has frequently in a few minutes restored the system,
from a state of weakness bordering upon death, to an equable and regular
degree of excitement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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