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
2. The love of money sets the whole animal machine in motion. Hearts
which are insensible to the stimuli of religion, patriotism, love,
and even of the domestic affections, are excited into action by this
passion. The city of Philadelphia, between the 10th and 15th of August,
1791, will long be remembered by contemplative men, for having furnished
the most extraordinary proofs of the stimulus of the love of money upon
the human body. A new scene of speculation was produced at that time by
the scrip of the bank of the United States. It excited febrile diseases
in three persons who became my patients. In one of them, the acquisition
of twelve thousand dollars in a few minutes by a lucky sale, brought on
madness which terminated in death in a few days[100]. The whole city
felt the impulse of this paroxysm of avarice. The slow and ordinary
means of earning money were deserted, and men of every profession and
trade were seen in all our streets hastening to the coffee-house, where
the agitation of countenance, and the desultory manners, of all the
persons who were interested in this species of gaming, exhibited a truer
picture of a bedlam, than of a place appropriated to the transaction
of mercantile business. But further, the love of money discovers its
stimulus upon the body in a peculiar manner in the games of cards and
dice. I have heard of a gentleman in Virginia who passed two whole days
and nights in succession at a card table, and it is related in the life
of a noted gamester in Ireland, that when he was so ill as to be unable
to rise from his chair, he would suddenly revive when brought to the
hazard table, by hearing the rattling of the dice.
[100] Dr. Mead relates, upon the authority of Dr. Hales, that more
of the successful speculators in the South-Sea scheme of 1720
became insane, than of those who had been ruined by it.
3. Public amusements of all kinds, such as a horse race, a cockpit, a
chase, the theatre, the circus, masquerades, public dinners, and tea
parties, all exert an artificial stimulus upon the system, and thus
supply the defect of the rational exercises of the mind.
4. The love of dress is not confined in its stimulating operation to
persons in health. It acts perceptibly in some cases upon invalids. I
have heard of a gentleman in South-Carolina, who always relieved himself
of a fit of low spirits by changing his dress; and I believe there are
few people who do not feel themselves enlivened, by putting on a new
suit of clothes.
5. Novelty is an immense source of agreeable stimuli. Companions,
studies, pleasures, modes of business, prospects, and situations, with
respect to town and country, or to different countries, that are _new_,
all exert an invigorating influence upon health and life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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