6. Do we observe the memory, the imagination, and the judgment, to be affected by diseases, particularly by madness? Where is the physician who has not seen the moral faculty affected from the same causes! How often do we see the temper wholly changed by a fit of sickness! And how often do we hear persons of the most delicate virtue, utter speeches in the delirium of a fever, that are offensive to decency or good manners! I have heard a well-attested history of a clergyman of the most exemplary moral character, who spent the last moments of a fever which deprived him both of his reason and his life, in profane cursing and swearing. I once attended a young woman in a nervous fever, who discovered, after her recovery, a loss of her former habit of veracity. Her memory (a defect of which might be suspected of being the cause of this vice) was in every respect as perfect as it was before the attack of the fever[5]. The instances of immorality in maniacs, who were formerly distinguished for the opposite character, are so numerous, and well known, that it will not be necessary to select any cases, to establish the truth of the proposition contained under this head. [5] I have selected this case from many others, which have come under my notice, in which the moral faculty appeared to be impaired by diseases, particularly by the typhus of Dr. Cullen, and by those species of palsy which affect the brain. 7. Do we observe any of the three intellectual faculties that have been named, enlarged by diseases? Patients, in the delirium of a fever, often discover extraordinary flights of imagination, and madmen often astonish us with their wonderful acts of memory. The same enlargement, sometimes, appears in the operations of the moral faculty. I have more than once heard the most sublime discourses of morality in the cell of an hospital, and who has not seen instances of patients in acute diseases, discovering degrees of benevolence and integrity, that were not natural to them in the ordinary course of their lives[6]? [6] Xenophon makes Cyrus declare, in his last moments, "That the soul of man, at the hour of death, appears _most divine_, and then foresees something of future events."