Page images
PDF
EPUB

had given his great offence to the duchess nearly three years before, or immediately after his venal quarrel with the Whigs for their not giving him church promotion so rapidly as he wished. In the "Examiner," of November 23rd, 1710, he published a paper reflecting most severely on the Duke of Marlborough's insatiable avarice, and enormous peculations. The duke, he said, had had £540,000 of the public money for doing work for which a warrior of ancient Rome (an odd enough parallel!) would have received only £994 11s. 10d. ! and at the end of his paper there was an innuendo that the duchess, in the execution of her office as mistress of the robes during eight years, had purloined no less than £22,000 a year.

After such an attack it will not excite surprise that the irate and implacable Sarah should call Dean Swift a scurvy scoundrel whose proper promotion would be the gallows.

It may amuse some of our readers to see how Swift made out his curious account. Here is the account itself, as copied from the Examiner in a volume in reply to Sarah's, entitled "The other side of the Question," and published in the same year.

Imprim.

A Bill of Roman Gratitude.

For frankincense and earthen pots to burn it in

An Embroidered Garment

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

A Bull for Sacrifice

8

50

A Crown of Laurel

A Statue

0 100

A Trophy

. 80

2

A Triumphal Arch

500

A Triumphal Car, valued as a modern coach
Casual Charges at the Triumph

100

150

£994 11 10

1000 Copper Medals, value one halfpenny each

[ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Pall Mall Grant, the Wr. Rangership, &c. 10,000 0

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

The anonymous author of "The other side of the Question," does not name Swift, but says this account was drawn up many years ago in the Examiner, for the use of the Marlborough family, " by one of the greatest wits that ever did honour to human nature."

LXXIX.

THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS.

EVERY one knows the influence of the depressing passions on the human frame. A beaten army has always more sick (exclusively of the wounded) than a victorious one; and in civil life, the effects of losses and chagrin in destroying the digestion, and wasting the strongest constitution, are but too familiar to the commonest observer. But the picture has a brighter side. Hope and success are finer tonics than any to be found in the pharmacopœia, and even fear may boast its cures. Boerhaave, so runs the tale, succeeded in curing an epidemic convulsion among the children of a poor-house by the fear of a redhot poker. The fits had spread by sympathy and imitation; and this great physician, mistrusting the ordinary

248

THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS.

A

remedies in so grave a case, heated his instrument, and threatened to burn the first who should fall into a fit. The convulsions did not return. Muretus, the celebrated scholar, was attacked with fever at a small country inn. He was visited by two physicians; and one of them supposing from the poverty of Muretus's appearance, that he would not understand Latin, said to the other, "Faciamus experimentum in corpore vili"-"Let us try an experiment on this mean person." As soon as they were gone, Muretus got out of bed, huddled on his clothes, scampered off as fast as he could, and was cured of his fever by his fright. A similar instance is related by a recent writer. (Griffin on functional affections of the spinal cord.) girl of the name of Dalton being attacked with typhus fever, was sent to the Limerick fever hospital. A week afterwards, her brother was seized with the same disease, and was sent to the same institution. "On getting out of the car at the gate of the hospital, he was assisted up stairs by the nurses, but in his way was met by some persons who were descending with a coffin on their shoulders. The sick man inquired whose body they were removing, when one of the bearers inadvertently answered, 'a girl of the Daltons.' The brother, horrorstruck, sprung from between his conductors, dashed down the stairs, passed the gate of the hospital, and never ceased running until he reached his cabin in Pallas-Kenry

a distance of about twelve miles. He flung himself on the bed immediately, fell into a sound sleep, and awoke in the morning free from illness."

Under the head of hope or faith we may rank the cures of the ague by charms and amulets, and the success

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

of homoeopathy in many maladies, (though in this case the strict regulation of the diet must share the praise.) Other instances abound: take one of an imaginary disease healed by an imaginary remedy. "So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, the celebrated Fracastoro found the robust bailiff of his landed estate groaning, and with the aspect of a person in the extremity of despair, suffering the very agonies of death, from a sting in the neck, inflicted by an insect which was believed to be a tarantula. He kindly administered, without delay, a portion of vinegar and Armenian bole, the great remedy of those days for the plague and all kinds of animal poisons; and the dying man was, as if by a miracle, restored to life and the power of speech. Now, since it is quite out of the question that the bole could have anything to do with the result in this case, notwithstanding Fracastoro's belief in its virtues, we can only account for the cure by supposing that a confidence in so great a physician prevailed over this fatal disease of the imagination, which would otherwise have yielded to scarcely any other remedy except the tarantella."-Hecker on the Dancing Mania, translated by Dr. Babington.

66

Rush,

The most beautiful instance, however, that we have met with, is one in which the cure depended on the combination of the pleasures of hope and of memory: we are indebted for it to Dr. Armstrong's lectures. who has been called the American Sydenham, mentions a very remarkable and interesting case, showing the influence over typhus fever which is produced by cheerful impressions on the mind. When a youth, he was educated in the country, in a very remote part of which he

was in the habit of visiting, in company with a farmer's daughter, various scenes of beauty and sublimity, and, among others, the nest of an eagle in a romantic situation. For some time these visits were very frequent. Rush afterwards left the school, and settled in Philadelphia, where he found his former associate a married woman. Many years after, she had an attack of typhus fever, under which she lay in a complete state of insensibility, apparently lost to all surrounding objects. In this state Rush, then a physician, was called to visit her. He took her by the hand, and said, with a strong and cheerful voice, The eagle's nest!' The words revived an association of ideas comprehending the actions of her youth. She immediately grasped his hand, opened her eyes, and from that hour recovered rapidly."

[ocr errors]

LXXX. NOT PARTICULAR.

THAT accomplished rake and courtier, the Mareschal de Bassompierre, tells a most amusing story about the facility with which French noblemen in the sixteenth century changed sides and fought for any party that allowed them the privilege of using their swords. Fighting was then a qualification indispensable in a gentleman; and, provided they could but fight, the ruffling gallants of those days seem hardly to have cared for whom, or for what. There are many stories of the same kind, but we know none so rich as the following. We must premise that Bassompierre and his brother had gone to Italy to complete their education, as was then the custom with many of the French nobility; for the best masters of riding,

« PreviousContinue »