Essay on the disorders incident to literary men, and on the best means of preserving their health : read before the Royal Society of Literature, Nov. 5, 1834, and dedicated, by permission, to the Lord Bishop of Salisbury / by W. Newnham.

  • Newnham, W. (William), 1790-1865.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the disorders incident to literary men, and on the best means of preserving their health : read before the Royal Society of Literature, Nov. 5, 1834, and dedicated, by permission, to the Lord Bishop of Salisbury / by W. Newnham. 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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    to misconstrue intended kindnesses for some very opposite design : before, benevolent, and always trying to think the best of mankind, he now becomes morose and misanthropic ; the dark- ening shades of bodily infirmity soon convert him into the hypochondriac, if they do not produce a less harmless form of insanity. h. The various actions of the bodily system suffer. There follow great feebleness of muscular power; a perversion, and even a very remarkable devia- tion from healthy sensation, as well as a loss of that organic sensibility which enables each organ to re- spond properly to the notices it receives, of the necessity for the exertion of its peculiar function. To this cause may be traced all the dyspeptic symptoms, all the torpid action of the liver, all the disordered function of the heart, all the slug- gish bowels, all the errors and deficiencies of the nutritive life ; and these evils all arising, not from sympathy with an overstrained brain, but really because the respective organs cannot obtain the requisite supply of nervous energy, to enable them to carry on their functions. And now these organs, having themselves be- c