Popular Lectures on Zoonomia: Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and DiseaseGarnett, Thomas
Science
Popular Lectures on Zoonomia: Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease
Garnett, Thomas
Physiology
Health, according to the view we have taken of it, may be compared to
a musical string, tuned to a certain pitch, or note; and though
perhaps in the great bulk of mankind, either from the manner of
living, or from other circumstances, the excitement is a little
below, and requires to be screwed up to the healthy pitch, yet there
are others where it is apt to get constantly above, and where it
requires letting down to this pitch; my constitution is one of these:
but I have this consolation, that if I can for a few years ward off
the fatal effects of some acute sthenic diseases, this tendency to
sthenic diathesis will gradually wear off, and I may probably enjoy a
state of good health, at a time, when most constitutions of an
opposite cast begin to give way. Whenever I have for some time lived
rather fully, though by no means intemperately, after having for some
days, or perhaps some weeks experienced an unusually good flow of
spirits, and taken exercise with pleasure, I begin, first of all, to
have disturbed sleep, I find myself inclined to sleep in the morning,
as if I had not been refreshed by the night's sleep; my spirits
become low, and I am apt to look upon the gloomy side of every thing
I undertake or do. I feel a general sense of languor and debility,
and am ready, as I have heard many patients labouring under the same
state exclaim, to sink into the earth. From the slightest causes, I
am apt to apprehend the most serious evils, and my temper becomes
irritable, and scarcely to be pleased with any thing. If in this
state, I take exercise, I soon feel myself fatigued; a disagreeable
stupor comes on, without, however, the least degree of perspiration,
and I feel an inability to move.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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