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Essays on Hypochondriasis, and Other Nervous Affections
Essays on Hypochondriasis and Other Nervous Affections Author:John Reid General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1821 Original Publisher: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown Subjects: Medical / Neurology Medical / Neuroscience Medical / Surgery / Neurosurgery Medical / Psychiatry / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and ... more »there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 26 ESSAY 111. THE FEAR OF DEATH. " Oh, our life's sweetness! That we the pain of death would hourly bear, Rather than die at once!" K. Lear. " The Egyptians in their hieroglyphics expressed a melancholy man by a hare sitting in a form, as being a most timorous as well as solitary creature." Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. An undue fear of death is one of the most ordinary symptoms of hypo- chondriasis, and not the least frequent perhaps amongst the causes which produce it; unless, indeed, we consider the disease as already formed, as soon as this feeling has encroached, in any inordinate degree, upon the tranquillity of the mind. It is a circumstance somewhat remarkable, that those persons should be in general found to dread most their departure from this state of being, to whom it has proved least productive of enjoyment. The passion for life would seem to be like that for country, which is said to be felt with the greatest vivacity by the native of barren regions. Upon an apparently similar principle, after existence has lost every thing that could enliven or embellish it, we often become more enamoured of its actual deformity than we were with its former loveliness. When all is gone by, that could render the world reasonably dear to us, our attachment to it not only remains, but appears frequently to be strengthened rather than impaired, by the departure of whatever could justify its continuance. The love of life, one...« less