Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 2).

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 2). 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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    As sensibility is the avenue to the moral fa- culty, every thing which tends to diminish it tends also to injure morals. The Romans owed much of their corruption to the sights of the contests of their gladiators, and of criminals, with wild beasts. For these reasons, executions should never be pub- lic. Indeed, I believe there are no public punish- ments of any kind, that do not harden the hearts of spectators, and thereby lessen the natural horror which all crimes at first excite in the human mind. Cruelty to brute animals is another means of destroying moral sensibility. The ferocity of sa- vages has been ascribed in part to their peculiar mode of subsistence. Mr. Hogarth points out, in his ingenious prints, the connection between cru- elty to brute animals in youth, and murder in man- hood. The emperor Domitian prepared his mind, by the amusement of killing flies, for all those bloody crimes which afterwards disgraced his reign. I am so perfectly satisfied of the truth of a connection between morals and humanity to brutes, that I shall find it difficult to restrain my idolatry for that legislature, that shall first establish a system of laws, to defend them from outrage and oppression.