A dissertation on intemperance : to which was awarded the premium offered by the Massachusetts Medical Society / by William Sweetser.

  • Sweetser, William, 1797-1875.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on intemperance : to which was awarded the premium offered by the Massachusetts Medical Society / by William Sweetser. 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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    sion ; at any rate, some one, or more, important func- tion of life commonly becomes deranged, if the mind be long agitated by strong and turbulent feelings. The constitution cannot long react against (he influence of intemperate excitements. If the springs of life are overstrained, if the functions are impelled into an un- natural state, the laws of the living economy are vio- lated, and evil consequences inevitably ensue, bearing a relation to the nature, violence and duration of ac- tion of the exciting agents. It would almost seem as though life was consumed by the very motions which are necessary to its existence ; as if the stimuli required to sustain the ac- tions of life, were the means tending ultimately to its extinction. We know that some cold blooded animals, accidentally excluded from the excitation of all stimuli, and having consequently only the most obscure vital actions, have lived to periods far beyond what we have any reason to believe possible under an active state of being- No limits in truth can be placed to the exist- ence of some creatures, could they be continued in this dormant condition. Frogs and toads, as is familiar to every reader, have been taken from the interior of solid rocks, from the trunks of trees, and from depths of the earth, in which situations they must probably have re- mained for ages in a torpid state, and on exposure to air and light have immediately resumed their active state of being. Could these animals have maintained their existence for such a period if their living func- tions had been continued in an active and energetic