Essays on hypochondriasis and other nervous affections by John Reid M.D. 1921 : [Review].

Date:
[1822]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hypochondriasis and other nervous affections by John Reid M.D. 1921 : [Review]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    lity of opium may be a pleasurable state; but compared with the fresh feelings of unsullied health, it is a hateful one. Opium eating is a practice which begins in sorrow, and ends in sorrow. We have examined a sufficient number of these Essays to show our readers their character, and we have room for no more. The author’s object, as will be readily perceived, is not so much to extend our knowledge of the pathology of these diseases as to se- lect those particulars which seem most important, and put them in a striking shape. The audience he has in view are not so much medical practitioners as nervous invalids ; these he lectures on the tendencies of their complaints, the habits by which they have been involved in them, and the mental and bodily regimen most likely to extricate them ; and this with so much force and elegance of style, as occasionally to remind us of some of the best papers in the Rambler and Spectator. Art. VI.—Cases of Walcot v. Walker; Southey v. Sherwood; Murray v. Benhow, and Lazvrence v. Smith. JT'EW things would more puzzle a literary foreigner, who should now, for the first time, visit London, than the disproportionate prices at which he would find different works of the same living author circulated. If he wished to enrich his library with Mr. Southey’s poems he would be told that some were out of print, and that in the purchase of others he must pay for typographical luxury and valuable copyright. One of them alone would be ob- truded on him in unlimited abundance, and at a price scarcely more than nominal. If he asked for Lord Byron’s last tragedies, he would find ‘ Sardanapalus and the Two Foscari’ an expensive pur- chase f but he would be stopped at the end of Piccadilly by a man offering him 5000 copies of ‘ Cain’ at 6d. a piece. He would pay for medical books a price proportioned to their limited sale and laborious preparation; but in every obscure bookseller’s shop he would meet with proposals for the publication of Mr. Law- rence’s ‘ Lectures’ at a price so low as to exclude all remuneration to the author, or implying a most extensive sale. If he asked for an explanation of all this, we doubt whether his original surprise would be diminished by the answer. He would be told that ‘ Wat Tyler,’ and 1 Cain,’ and c Lawrence’s Lectures’ were allowed to be circulated without restriction because it was supposed that their tendency might be injurious to the best interests of society—that * Wat Tyler’ was supposed to be an attempt to support the worst passions by the worst reasoning, and to inflame the idle and the abandoned into an attack on the property and the laws of the king- dom ; the i Lectures’ to remove the restraints of religion by denying