[565]. Male’s Elements of Juridical Medicine, edit. 2, p. 237.
[566]. Principles of Forensic Medicine, p. 470.
[567]. See a paper in the 3d vol. of the Medical Trans. of the Coll. of Phy. p. 112, by Sir George Baker, entitled “An account of a singular disease, which prevailed among some poor children maintained by the parish of St. James, in Westminster. A. D. 1784.”
[568]. Haygarth on the Imagination.
[569]. The influence of sympathy in propagating a spasmodic paroxysm was illustrated, in a very extraordinary manner, some years ago in the county of Cornwall, when the methodists assembled in great numbers in their meeting-houses, and continued for many hours, and even days, in the agony of supplication, waiting for an assurance of divine mercy; during which period many persons who attended as visitors became convulsed. The author was at that time resident in the county, and lost no opportunity of investigating a phenomenon so anomalous and extraordinary. The visitation was called the Revival, and the meetings appear to have been very similar to the “Camp Meetings” in America. It was the author’s intention to have selected from the notes which he had taken upon the occasion, some account of this Revival, but he has declined the task from the same feeling that induced the painter to throw a veil over the face of Agamemnon, because he despaired of giving it the expression which it required.
[570]. That Cummin possesses this property is a very ancient opinion; thus Pers. Sat. v.
“Rugosum Piper, et pallentis grana Cumini.”
Dioscorides maintained that it had made those persons pale who drank it, or washed themselves with it; and Pliny says that it was reported, that the disciples of Porcius Latro, a famous master of the art of speaking, used it to imitate that paleness which he had contracted by his studies; thus too Horace
“——Proh! si
Pallerem casu, biberent exsangue Cuminum,”