An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New-York, and the members of the legislature : at the capitol in the city of Albany, the 2d. of February, 1820, on the influence of the mind upon the body in the production and cure of diseases / by John Stearns, M.D. president of the society.

  • Stearns, John, 1770-1848.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New-York, and the members of the legislature : at the capitol in the city of Albany, the 2d. of February, 1820, on the influence of the mind upon the body in the production and cure of diseases / by John Stearns, M.D. president of the society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    G Whether Enoch ami Elijah were personally and by descent so pre-eminent for virtue, as to exempt their bodies from the evils incident to depraved na- ture, are suggestions which their miraculous trans- lation to a new existence seems to confirm, and which acquire additional strength from the extraor- dinary longevity of the predecessors and immediate successors of the former. The same cause proba- bly preserved Moses in the full enjoyment of his mental and corporeal faculties, at the advanced age of one hundred and twenty years. Experience and Revelation afford ample evidence that a life of virtue is necessarily connected with moral happiness, and if perpetuated through a line- al succession of generations, would probably re- store that beauty, health, and felicity which man lost in Paradise. That mental depravity produces not only disease, but also corporeal deformity, may be inferred from that Jewish law which precluded deformed persons from performing, and consequent- ly prophaning the holy rites of the Priesthood, and also prohibited the oblation of all animals with similar defects.—This inference is fortified by tra- cing a similar connection between virtue and beauty even to its figurative perfection in the Deity, and to its visible exemplification in the body which Christ animated on earth.—It is for this reason that beauti- ful objects naturally excite the most ardent affections of the heart, which always increase as those ob- jects approach the perfection of beauty, till they are consummated in the rapturous enjoyment of God himself. The propriety of this love and its neces- \ connection with our happiness, are susceptible