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their caufes, confequences, and cures, together and apart, that every man, who is in any meafure affected with this ENGLISH MALADY, may know how to examine it in himself, and apply the remedies.

It muft, however, be confeffed, that it is extremely difficult to diftinguish these three fpecies from each other, and to describe their several causes, symptoms, and cures, inasmuch as they are fo intermixed with other diseases, are fo frequently confounded together, and have so close an affinity with each other, that they can scarcely be separated by the moft experienced, or difcerned by the most accurate physician. Melancholy frequently exifts as a difeafe together with the vertigo, stone, gravel, caninus appetitus, jaundice, and ague: and Paulus Regoline, a great doctor in his time, who was confulted on the case of a melancholy patient, was fo confounded with a confufion of fymptoms, that he knew not to what species to refer it: and Trincavellius, Fallopius, and Francanzanus, famous doctors in Italy, being separately confulted in the case of the melancholy Duke of Cleves, gave all of them, at the same time, three different opinions on the fubject. It appears, in the works of Reinerus Solinander, that he and Dr. Brande both agreed that a patient's difeafe was hypochondriacal melancholy,

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Polish Count, Cafar Claudinus was of opinion, that he laboured under the head melancholy and the bodily melancholy at the fame time. The three kinds, indeed, may exift in the fame fubject femel et fimul, or in fucceffion. The feveral fpecies of melancholy feem to be with phyficians what the pure forms of governments are with politicians; each diftinct kind, the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic, are most admirable in theory; but in practice, as Polybius truly obferves, they will never be found independent and unmixed; * as might be instanced

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* "The great and tedious debates," fays a fenfible French writer of the old political fchool," about the best form of fociety, are only proper for the exercife of wit; and have their being only in agitation and controverfy. A new form of government might be of fome value in a new world; but ours is a world ready made to our hands, and in which each diftinct form is blended by cuftom. We do not, like Pyrrho and Cadmus, make the world; and by whatever authority it is we affert the privilege of fetting it to rights, and giving it a new form of government, it is impoffible to twift it from its wonted bent, without breaking all its parts. In truth and reality, the best and moft excellent government for every nation, is that under which it is maintained; and its form and effential convenience depends upon cuftom. We are apt to be difpleafed at the prefent condition; but I do nevertheless maintain, that, to defire any other form of government than that which is already established, is

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in the ancient governments of Rome and Lacedemon, and in the modern governments of Germany and England: and therefore, it is in like manner of little confequence what phyficians fay of diftinct species of diseases in their mootings and fpeculations, fince, in their patients' bodies, the diseases are generally intire and mixed.

both VICE and FOLLY. place, it may be propped; and the alterations and corruptions natural to all things, obviated fo as to prevent their being carried too far from their origin and principles; but to undertake to caft anew fo great a mafs, and to change the foundation of fo vaft a building as every government is, is reforming particular defects by an univerfal confufion, and like curing a diforder by death."

When any thing is out of its proper

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difficulty ;* and happy is he who can perform it right.t

Causes may be confidered as either general or fpecial. General caufes are natural or fupernatural. Supernatural caufes are thofe which fpring from God and his angels, or, by his permiffion, from the devil and his ministers; for the Almighty fometimes vifits the fons of men with this direful disease, as a punishment for their manifold fins and wickedness, of which the holy fcriptures furnish us with many instances, in the characters of Gehazi,‡ Jehoram,§ David, || C 4 Saul,

*Tanta enim morbi varietas ac differentia ut non facile dignofcatur, unde initium morbus fumpferit. Melanelius è Galeno.

+ Montaigne, after commenting very pleasantly on the abfurdity of pretending, amidst such an infinite number of indications, to difcern the true fign of every difeafe, relates the celebrated fable from Æfop of the physician, who, having bought an Ethiopian flave, endeavoured to search for the true caufe of the blacknefs of his complexion, and having persuaded himself that it was merely accidental, and owing to the ill ufage he had received from his former mafters, put him under a preparatory course of medicine, and then bathed and drenched him for a long time with cold water, in order to restore him to his true complexion; but the poor fellow retained his fable hue, and loft, irrecoverably, his health. But Montaigne entertained great prejudices against the useful fcience of medicine.

2 Reg. v. 27.

1 Par. xxi.

§ 2 Chron, xxi.

15.

Pfalm xliv. I. Pfalm xxxviii. 8.

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