Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/27

 was confined, to such a degree as to render his body scarcely visible.

Again, this disease sometimes appears in a typhus form, in which it is attended with coldness, a feeble pulse, muttering delirium, and involuntary discharge of faeces and urine. But it now and then pervades the whole country in the form of an epidemic. It prevailed in this way in England in the years 1355 and in 1373, and in France and Italy in the year 1374, and Dr. Wintringham mentions its frequent occurrence in England in the year 1719.

A striking instance of the union of madness with common fever is mentioned by Lucian. He tells us that a violent fever once broke out at Abdera, which terminated by haemorrhages, or sweats, on the seventh day. During the continuance of this fever the patients, affected with it, repeated passages from the tragedy of Andromeda with great vehemence, both in their sick-rooms and in the public streets. This mixture of fever and madness continued until the coming on of cold weather. Lucian ingeniously and very properly ascribes it to the persons affected, having heard the famous player Archilaus act a part in the above tragedy in the middle of summer in so