Medical inquiries and observations [vol. 2] / by Benjamin Rush.

Date:
1812
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical inquiries and observations [vol. 2] / by Benjamin Rush. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    History of Man. All these faculties are liable to derangement, partially and universally. I. Partial derangement in them is sometimes induced, 1. By ardent spirits. 2. By famine, the effects of which in annihila ting the obligations, not only of morality, but of consanguinity, and inducing the grossest acts of cruelty are recorded in the 56th and 57th verses of the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. The con- sonance of the prediction contained in those ver- ses with the state of the human mind, in similar circumstances of distress from hunger, has been established in many instances, in the histories of crews who have sought relief from shipwreck in a boat, or on a desolate shore. II. The moral faculty, conscience, and the sense of deity, are sometimes totally deranged. The duke of Sully has given us a striking instance of this universal moral derangement, in the charac- ter of a young man who belonged to his suit, of the name of Servin, who, after a life uncommonly distinguished by every possible vice, died, cur- sing and denying his God. Mr. Halsam has