Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/363

 ties are liable to derangement, partially and universally.

I. Partial derangement in them is sometimes induced,

1. By ardent spirits.

2. By famine, the effects of which, in annihilating the obligations, not only of morality, but of consanguinity, and inducing the grossest acts of cruelty, are recorded in the 56th and 57th verses of the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. The consonance of the prediction contained in those verses with the state of the human mind, in similar circumstances of distress from hunger, has been established in many instances, in the histories of crews who have sought relief from shipwreck in a boat, or on a desolate shore.

II. The moral faculty, conscience, and the sense of deity, are sometimes totally deranged. The Duke of Sully has given us a striking instance of this universal moral derangement, in the character of a young man who belonged to his suit, of the name of Servin, who, after a life uncommonly distinguished by every possible vice, died, cursing and denying his God. Mr. Halsam has described