Meantime, this case, belonging to a class generated by a London life, was in some quarters well understood even then; _now_, it is well known that, had different remedies been applied, or had the sufferer been able to stand up under his torture until the cycle of the symptoms had begun to come round, he might have been saved. The treatment is now well understood; but even then it was understood by some physicians; amongst others by that Dr. Willis who had attended George III. In several similar cases overpowering doses had been given of opium, or of brandy; and usually a day or two had carried off the oppression of the brain by a tremendous reaction. In Birmingham and other towns, where the body of people called Quakers are accumulated, different forms of nervous derangement are developed; the secret principle of which turns not, as in these London cases, upon feelings too much called out by preternatural stimulation, but upon feelings too much repelled and driven in. Morbid suppression of deep sensibilities must lead to states of disease equally terrific and perhaps even less tractable; not so sudden and critical perhaps, but more settled and gloomy. We speak not of any physical sensibilities, but of those which are purely moral--sensibilities to poetic emotions, to ambition, to social gaiety. Accordingly it is amongst the young men and women of this body that the most afflicting cases under this type occur. Even for children, however, the systematic repression of all ebullient feeling, under the Quaker discipline, must be sometimes perilous; and would be more so, were it not for that marvellous flexibility with which nature adapts herself to all changes--whether imposed by climate or by situation--by inflictions of Providence or by human spirit of system. These cases we point to as formidable mementos, _monumenta sacra,_ of those sudden catastrophes which either ignorance of what concerns the health, or neglect in midst of knowledge, may produce. Any mode of life in London, or not in London, which trains the nerves to a state of permanent irritation, prepares a _nidus_ for disease; and unhappily not for chronic disease only, but for disease of that kind which finishes the struggle almost before it is begun. In such a state of habitual training for morbid action, it may happen--and often has happened--that one and the same week sees the victim apparently well and in his grave.