The different mental feelings, liberated during sleep from the control of the judgment, are in many instances highly extravagant, and altogether out of proportion to the causes exciting them. Hence, in dreams, our fears are often aggravated and distressing, and some persons are in the habit of starting suddenly from their repose, in the greatest dismay, uttering deep and direful cries, their bodies perhaps bathed in sweat, and remaining even for a considerable time after they are fully awake, under the painful impression of the fancy which affrighted them. Even convulsions and epilepsy have been the unhappy consequence of such imaginary terrors. Tissot relates an instance of a robust man, who, on dreaming that he was pursued by a bull, awoke in a state of great agitation and delirium, and, in not many minutes after, fell down in a severe fit of epilepsy.

In childhood, the impression of dreams being particularly strong, so that they are sometimes ever afterwards remembered as realities, and fear being then a very active principle, more injury is liable to accrue from their imaginary terrors than at later periods of life. Some children are apt to rouse suddenly from their sleep, screaming, crying, perhaps springing up on end, or out of bed, in a wild delirium of fright, and it may be a good while before their fears can be quieted, and their minds composed to rest. Those convulsions, too, with which children are occasionally seized at night, may not unfrequently proceed from the same visionary terrors.

If the fears of children, from any particular cause, have

been strongly excited while awake, they will sometimes be renewed, even in a more intense degree, perhaps for several successive nights, during their slumbers, thus multiplying the fearful impressions, and thereby the danger.

10

CHAPTER XIX.

FEAR CONTINUED.-IN ITS MORE CHRONIC OPERATION IT BECOMES THE OCCASION OF VARIOUS PREJUDICIAL EFFECTS IN THE ANIMAL ECONOMY.-SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS IN REGARD TO DEATH ARE IN MANY PERSONS A CAUSE OF MUCH SUFFERING BOTH TO BODY AND MIND.-THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS EVENT SHOULD BE REGARDED.-DANGER OF INDULGING THE FANCY OF CHILDREN IN TALES OF SUPERNATURAL TERRORS. -FORTITUDE OPERATES AS A WHOLESOME STIMULUS BOTH TO MIND AND BODY.

HAVING learnt how serious are the consequences oftentimes arising from acute fear, we rationally infer that even its more chronic action may be attended with important injury to health.

A bold, intrepid spirit may justly be ranked among the conditions which secure to the constitution its full measure of physical power. Few causes will more certainly impair the vigor of the nerves, break down the manliness of the body, and degrade the energies of the mind, than the habitual indulgence in imaginary fears.

The depressing agency of fear is well known to augment

the susceptibility of the constitution to disease; and especially to the action of contagion, and epidemic influences. It was observed by an old and distinguished medical writer (Willis), that they who have the greatest fear of small-pox, are generally the first to be attacked by it. Hecker, in his history of the Black Death, a malignant and wide-spreading epidemic of the fourteenth century, says that many fell victims to fear, on the first appearance of the distemper. And Dr. Caius, in his account of the Sweating Sickness, another fatal and extensive epidemic which appeared in England in 1485, advises, among other means of escaping the disease, to set apart all affections, as fretting cares and thoughts, doleful or sorrowful imaginations, vain fears, foolish loves, gnawing hates, and to live quietly, friendly, and merrily one with another, to avoid malice and dissension, and every one to mind his own business. The cholera is well known during its epidemic prevalence to have been often induced in timid people through their strong apprehensions of it.

Tarantism, to which I have before alluded, was doubtless often the effect of imaginary fears of having been bitten by the tarantula. Thus the bite from any unseen insect would not unfrequently bring on all the symptoms of this peculiar affection. "The persuasion," says Hecker, "of the inevitable consequences of being bitten by the tarantula, exercised a dominion over men's minds which even the healthiest and strongest could not shake off. . . . Wherever we turn, we find that this morbid state of mind prevailed, and was so supported by the opinions of the age, that it needed only a stimulus in the bite of the tarantula, and the supposed cer

tainty of its very disastrous consequences, to originate this violent nervous disorder."

Many cases may be found recorded where symptoms of hydrophobia have arisen from the mere apprehension of having been bitten by a rabid animal. The hypochondriac fancies and fears himself the subject of particular diseases, and straightway he begins to feel all their symptoms. Some medical students, of sensitive and nervous temperaments, not only imagine that they have the diseases of which they are studying, but will sometimes actually present more or less of their symptoms.

If the sick yield themselves to the impulse of fear, their chances of recovery will generally become lessened; its depressing influence serving to reduce the reacting or restorative powers of the vital economy. It has been remarked, that the small-pox is particularly apt to prove unfavorable in the young and beautiful, who naturally dread a disease so fatal to beauty. A strong will may do much for us in disease, as well as in health. The timid and dispirited, other circumstances being the same, run down the soonest under disease. I have seen those who appeared to me to continue valetudinarians from mere pusillanimity, from lack of ener gy or moral courage to be well; a certain force of character being a needful stimulus to the physical, as it is to the mental actions.

Undue anxiety, and superstitious apprehensions in regard to death, which so prey upon the minds of some people, may operate to the serious injury of both the physical and moral health and tranquillity. It is, as I conceive, the sol