DISEASES CIASS III. 1. 2. II. 



into his chamber and found the corpse of his friend leaning over 

 the arm of a great chair, with the pistol on the ground by him, 

 the ball of which had been discharged into the roof of his mouth, 

 and passed into his brain. 



Mr. and Mr. , two young men, heirs to considerable 



fortunes, shot themselves at the age of four or five and twenty, 

 without their friends being able to conjecture any cause for those 

 rash actions. One of them I had long known to express himself 

 with dissatisfaction of the world; at eighteen years of age he 

 complained, that he could not entertain himself; he tried to 

 study the law at Cambridge, and afterwards went abroad for a 

 year or two by my advice; but returned dissatisfied with all 

 things. As he had an eruption for some years on a part of his 

 face, which he probably endeavoured to remove by external ap- 

 plications; I was induced to ascribe his perpetual ennui to the 

 pain or disagreeable sensation of a diseased liver. The other 

 young gentleman shot himself in his bed-room, and I was in- 

 formed that there was found written on a scrap of paper on his 

 table, " I am impotent, and therefore not fit to live." From 

 whence there was reason to conclude, that this was the halluci- 

 natio maniacalis, the delirious idea, which caused him to destroy 

 himself. The case therefore belongs to mania mutabilis, and not 

 to taedium vitae. 



Those who have been employed during the first half of their 

 lives in some very active business, and suddenly leave it, are li- 

 able to this kind of insanity, and even to suicide; of which I have 

 known two instances, one of them a Birmingham manufacturer, 

 and the other a great arid successful commander. This may be 

 ascribed to the accumulation of the sensorial power of volition, 

 and the want of motive to exert or expend it, and which thence 

 becomes painful. See pain of cold from the want of stimulus, 

 III. 2. 1. 17. 



This may afford consolation to those, whose situation in life 

 obliges them to use perpetual industry in their occupations: they 

 may say, that as they have been long in the habit of exerting 

 much voluntary action, they must continue to employ themselves; 

 otherwise that they shall sink into low spirits, as it is called, and 

 become unhappy. And as the continuance of activity is now 

 necessary to their happiness, they had better employ themselves 

 on such objects, as are useful to themselves or their connections, 

 than to consume their time, and misapply their labour, in card- 

 playing, wine-drinking, or fox-hunting, which are other methods 

 of relieving ennui, or the irksomeness of life by exertion, and con- 

 sequent expenditure of voluntary power. 



Less degrees of this malady are erroneously termed hypochon- 



