Remarks on the disorders of literary men, or, An inquiry into the means of preventing the evils usually incident to sedentary and studious habits.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the disorders of literary men, or, An inquiry into the means of preventing the evils usually incident to sedentary and studious habits. 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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    come a philosopher, he wound up his affairs, and took to poring over the metaphysics of Locke, and the Principia of Newton. These new occupations gave him no opportunity for bodily exercise, at all proportioned to that of his mind, and a disordered brain was the early consequence. A cessation of study, with a few medical remedies, soon restored his rea- son and his health ; but again dipping into the sublime, geometry, and metaphysical abstrac- tion, he once more lost his senses. The longer intense thought is continued, the more does the vital energy become accu- mulated in the brain, and deficient in every other part of the body ; this is exemplified by the fact familiar to every student, that when he has been thinking a long time, his thoughts are more vivid, and flow every hour more smoothly and rapidly along ; but when that train is ended, a burning heat is felt in the brain, and extreme languor in every other part. This tendency produces, according to other circumstances, various kinds of inflam- mation, tumours, dropsy, headach, delirium, convulsions, lethargy or apoplexy. It is from