SECT. III.
The Symptoms of the Disorder.
The first and lightest of the signs that shew this illness are a lowness of spirits, and inaptitude to motion; a disrelish of amusements, a love of solitude and a habit of thinking, even on trifling subjects, with too much steadiness. A very little help may combat these: but if that indolence which is indeed a part of the disorder, will neglect them; worse must be expected soon to follow.
Wild thoughts; a sense of fullness, weight, and oppression in the body, a want of appetite, or, what is worse, an appetite without digestion; for these are the conditions of different states of the disease, a fullness and a difficulty of breathing after meals, a straitness of the breast, pains and flatulencies in the bowels, and an unaptness to discharge their contents.
The pulse becomes low, weak, and unequal; and there are frequent palpitations of the heart, a little dark-coloured urine is voided at some times; and a flood of colourless and insipid at others; relieving for a moment, but increasing the distemper: there is in some cases also a continual teazing cough, with a choaking stoppage in the throat at times; then heartburn, sickness, hardness of the belly, and a costive habit, or a tormenting and vain irritation.
The lips turn pale, the eyes loose their brightness and by degrees the white grows as it were greenish, the gums want their due firmness, with their proper colour; and an unpleasing foulness grows upon the teeth: the inside of the mouth is pale and furred, and the throat dry and husky: the colour of the skin is pale (though there are periods when the face is florid) and as the obstruction gathers ground, and more affects the liver, the whole body becomes yellow, tawny, greenish, and at length of that deep and dusky hue, to which men of swift imagination have given the name of blackness.
These symptoms do not all appear in any one period of the disease, or in one case, but at one time or other all of them, as well as those which follow: the flesh becomes cold to the touch, though the patient does not himself perceive it; the limbs grow numbed and torpid, the breathing dull and slow, and the voice hollow; and usually the appetite in this period declines, and comes almost to nothing: night sweats come on, black swellings appear on the veins, the flesh wastes and the breast becomes flat and hollow: the mouth is full of a thin spittle, the head is dizzy and confus'd, and sometimes there is an unconquerable numbness in the organs of speech.
I have known the temporary silence that follows upon this last symptom become a jest to the common herd; and the unhappy patient, instead of compassion and assistance, receive the reproof of sullenness, from those who should have known and acted better.