Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/72

 year 1794, induced by a successful East India voyage. A farmer, near Albany, who refused to take twenty shillings a bushel for a large quantity of wheat, in the year 1798, became insane from the sudden reduction of its price. Suicide was induced in a farmer of great wealth, in York county, in Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1812, by a similar disappointment, in obtaining a less price than he had been previously offered for a quantity of clover seed. Gaming is an occasional cause of madness in some countries. At Penang in the East Indies, where men often stake their wives upon the issue of a game, this disease is very common. The unfortunate gambler often rises from his seat in a fit of derangement, and sallies out into the street with instruments of murder in his hands; a bell is rung at this time, which drives people into their houses, to avoid being killed. A late German writer has remarked, that nervous diseases increase in the cities of Germany in proportion to the fondness of their citizens for seeing tragedies. It is easy to conceive they may extend their effects a little further, so as to excite morbid commotions in the blood-vessels of the brain. I have heard the greater frequency of madness in England, than in some other countries, ascribed in part to its inhabitants preferring tragedy to comedy in their stage entertainments.