Sudden fear has generally violent effects. Epileptic fits, and other convulsive disorders, are often occasioned by it. Hence the danger of that practice, so common among young people, of frightening one another. Many have lost their lives, and others have been rendered miserable, by frolics of this kind. It is dangerous to tamper with the human passions. The mind may easily be thrown into such disorder as never again to act with regularity.
But the gradual effects of fear prove most hurtful. The constant dread of some future evil, by dwelling upon the mind, often occasions the very evil itself. Hence it comes to pass, that so many die of those very diseases of which they long had a dread, or which had been impressed on their minds by some accident, or foolish prediction. This, for example, is often the case with women in child-bed. Many of those who die in that situation are impressed with the notion of their death a long time before it happens; and there is reason to believe that this impression is often the cause of it.
The methods taken to impress the minds of women with the apprehensions of the great pain and peril of child-birth, are very hurtful. Few women die in labour, though many lose their lives after it; which may be thus accounted for. A woman after delivery, finding herself weak and exhausted, immediately apprehends she is in danger; but this fear seldom fails to obstruct the necessary evacuations, upon which her recovery depends. Thus the sex often fall a sacrifice to their own imaginations, when there would be no danger, did they apprehend none.
It seldom happens that two or three women in a great town die in child-bed, but their death is followed by many others. Every woman of their acquaintance who is with child dreads the same fate, and the disease becomes epidemical by the mere force of imagination. This should induce pregnant women to despise fear, and by all means to avoid those tattling gossips who are continually buzzing in their ears the misfortunes of others. Every thing that may in the least alarm a pregnant or child-bed woman, ought with the greatest care to be guarded against.
Many women have lost their lives in child-bed by the old superstitious custom, still kept up in most parts of Britain, of tolling the parish bell for every person who dies. People who think themselves in danger are very inquisitive; and if they come to know that the bell tolls for one who died in the same situation with themselves, what must be the consequence? At any rate they are apt to suppose that this is the case, and it will often be found a very difficult matter to persuade them of the contrary.
But this custom is not pernicious to child-bed women only. It is hurtful in many other cases. When low fevers, in which it is difficult to support the patient’s spirits, prevail, what must be the effect of a funeral peal sounding five or six times a day in his ears? No doubt his imagination will suggest that others died of the same disease under which he labours. This apprehension will have a greater tendency to depress his spirits, than all the cordials of which medicine can boast will have to raise them.
If this useless piece of ceremony cannot be abolished, we ought to keep the sick as much from hearing it as possible, and from every other thing that may tend to alarm them. So far however is this from being generally attended to, that many make it their business to visit the sick, on purpose to whisper dismal stories in their ears. Such may pass for sympathizing friends, but they ought rather to be considered as enemies. All who wish well to the sick ought to keep such persons at the greatest distance from them.
A custom has long prevailed among physicians, of prognosticating, as they call it, the patient’s fate, or foretelling the issue of the disease. Vanity no doubt introduced this practice, and still supports it, in spite of common sense and the safety of mankind. I have known a physician barbarous enough to boast, that he pronounced more sentences than all his Majesty’s judges. Would to God that such sentences were not often equally fatal! It may indeed be alleged, that the doctor does not declare his opinion before the patient. So much the worse. A sensible patient had better hear what the doctor says, than learn it from the disconsolate looks, the watery eyes, and the broken whispers of those about him. It seldom happens, when the doctor gives an unfavourable opinion, that it can be concealed from the patient. The very embarrassment which the friends and attendants shew in disguising what he has said, is generally sufficient to discover the truth.
Kind Heaven has, for the wisest ends, concealed from mortals their fate; and we do not see what right any man has to announce the death of another, especially if such a declaration has a chance to kill him. Mankind are indeed very fond of prying into future events, and seldom fail to solicit the physician for his opinion. A doubtful answer, however, or one that may tend rather to encourage the hopes of the sick, is surely the most safe. This conduct could neither hurt the patient nor the physician. Nothing tends more to destroy the credit of physic than those bold prognosticators, who, by the bye, are generally the most ignorant of the faculty. The mistakes which daily happen in this way are so many standing proofs of human vanity, and the weakness of science.
We readily admit, that there are cases where the physician ought to give intimation of the patient’s danger to some of his near connexions; though even this ought always to be done with the greatest caution: but it never can be necessary in any case that the whole town and country should know, immediately after the doctor has made his first visit, that he has no hopes of his patient’s recovery. Persons whose impertinent curiosity leads them to question the physician, with regard to the fate of his patient, certainly deserve no other than an evasive answer.