The philosophy of living; or, The way to enjoy life and its comforts / By Caleb Ticknor.

  • Ticknor, Caleb, 1804-1840.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of living; or, The way to enjoy life and its comforts / By Caleb Ticknor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    PREFACE. The author can assign no other cause for preparing this volume than the presence and universal prevalence in this country of a malady—an epidemic—the like of which was never before witnessed, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition, and being followed by the most unhappy consequences. If the reader ask the name of this disease, he may be told that it is a sort of mania—fanaticism—or ultraism ; if he ask where, and in what it may be seen, he may be answered, in all places and in all things. It is seen in most of the charitable and benevolent operations of the day ; in religious zeal, political warfare, morality, and im- morality ; in most of the domestic concerns of life, and, in fact, in all the particulars and minutiae of liv- ing, moving, and being. There seems a remarkable propensity in us Americans to run into unwarranta- ble extravagances ; whatever scheme is adopted or whatever plan devised, whether for good or evil, is carried to an extreme. To one who contemplates the present condition of our country with calmness and deliberation, everything would seem to be upside down, or in a state of the most perfect confusion. He would see men running into opposite extremes on all subjects, and man warring to the death with