Elidæus, cotemporary with Capivaccio, and preceptor to Forrestus, who has preserved to us this observation[114], advised a young man, who was in a marasmus, to asses milk, and to have his nurse lie in the same bed with him, who was a woman extremely healthy, and in the flower of her age: this advice had the greatest success; nor was the compliance with it discontinued till the patient owned he could no longer resist the inclination grown upon him, to make an illicit use of the strength that was returned to him. A remedy, on the foot of this utility by inhalation might be preserved, and yet the danger be prevented by not mixing the sexes.
The PASSIONS.
The intimate union of the soul and body has been precedently mentioned; how great the influence is of the well-being of the first, over the last, cannot have escaped comprehension; the sinister effects of melancholy have been pointed out; so that it is almost needless here to add, that too great care cannot be taken to avoid the unpleasant sensations of the soul, and that it is of the highest consequence to procure for it none but the most agreeable ones; indeed in all distempers, but especially in those, which, like the tabes dorsalis, of themselves dispose to sadness, a sadness which, by a vitious circle, considerably augments those distempers. But (and this makes one of the difficulties of the cure) it often happens that the patients take a kind of pleasure in this symptom of their disorder, and there is no prevailing on them to determine upon making any efforts to get the better of it. Besides, not to deceive ourselves, we must not imagine that it is enough to prescribe to a person to be chearful, for him to be so. Mirth is voluntary. Laughing is no more to be commanded than it is to be forbidden. A man can no more help his being sad, than having a fit of a fever, or the torture of a tooth-ach. All that can be required or expected of the patients is, that they will no more refuse their yielding to accept or try the remedies prescribed to them against their melancholy, than they refuse yielding to other remedies. Now the remedies are not so much, in this case, company, (we have already observed that it was displeasing to them, for particular reasons) as a variety of situations. A continual change of objects for a succession of ideas that diverts them, and this is what they need.
Nothing can be more pernicious to persons inclined to deliver themselves up to one idea, than inaction, or want of occupation. But, above all, nothing is worse than that for the case here treated of: the patients cannot too much avoid idleness, and the being too much left or abandoned to themselves. Rural exercises, or employment, comprehend the most powerful diversion. M. Lewis advises, “that the sick should, if possible, see none but those of their own sex;
“Nam non ulla magis vires industria firmat
Quam Venerem et cæci stimulos avertere amoris.
Virg.
“that they should never be absolutely alone; that they should be kept from giving themselves up to their own reflexions; that they should be diverted or kept from reading, or any occupation of the mind; all these, (as he observes,) being so many causes that exhaust the spirits and retard the cure.” I should not, however, be for totally debarring them from all reading. It might be enough to forbid their reading for too long a time at once, if it were but on account of the weakness of their eyes; or all reading that should require too much application, but especially and severely any kind of reading that might recall to their mind ideas, or to their imagination objects, of which it were to be wished they should lose the remembrance: but there are subjects which, without much fixing the attention, and without recalling dangerous images, might agreeably divert, entertain, and prevent the terrible dangers of a wearisome idleness.