There is nothing like the rod, says the doctor; it is a universal specific, it stirs up the stagnating juices, it dissolves the precipitating salts, it purifies the coagulating humours of the body, it clears the brain, purges the belly, circulates the blood, braces the nerves; in short, there is nothing which the rod will not do, when judiciously applied.
Antidotum mortis si verbera dixero, credas!
Attonitum morbum nam cohibere valent.
Having laid down his principle, the doctor proceeds to apply it to various complaints, giving instances, the result of experience.
One predisposing cause of melancholy, observes Paullini, is love, and that eventuates in idiotcy or insanity.
To parents and guardians our author gives the advice, when the first symptoms of this complaint appear in young people under their charge, let them grasp the rod firmly, and lay it on with vigour and promptitude. The remedy is infallible. Valescus de Taranta says, in the case of a young man—and his words are words of gold—“Whip him well, and should he not mend immediately, keep him locked up in the cellar on bread and water till he promises amendment.”
I saw, continues our author, an instance of the good effect of this treatment at Amsterdam. A stripling of twenty, comely enough in his appearance, the son of an artisan in the town, fell in love with the mayor’s daughter. He could neither eat, drink, sleep, nor do anything in the remotest degree rational. The father, unaware of the cause, put him into the hands of a medical practitioner, who did his utmost to cure him, but signally failed. At last the father’s eyes were opened by means of an intercepted letter. Like a sensible man he packed his son off to the public whipping-place, there to learn better moralia. And this had the desired effect; for the youth returned perfectly cured and in his right senses.
But for this treatment he might have sunk into his grave, like him mentioned by P. Boaysten, who died of a broken heart through unrequited love; and, at the post-mortem examination, his bowels were discovered to be uncoiled, his heart shrivelled, his liver shrunk to nothing, his lungs corroded, and his skull entirely emptied of every trace of brains.
For short sight there is nothing like a good thrashing, or at least a violent blow, says our doctor.
An old German, aged eighty, who had all his lifetime suffered from short sight, was one day jogging to market on his respectable mare, Dobbin. Dobbin tripped on a stone and flung her rider. The old man fell upon a stone, which pierced his skull. The dense vapours which had obscured his vision for so long were enabled to escape through the aperture, and on his recovery the venerable gentleman had the sight of an eagle.