An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons

Part 1

AN ESSAY ON DISEASES INCIDENTAL TO Literary and Sedentary Persons. WITH PROPER RULES for preventing their fatal Consequences. AND INSTRUCTIONS for their CURE.

By S. A. TISSOT, M. D. Professor of PHYSICK at BERNE.

Now first translated into ENGLISH.

LONDON: Printed for EDWᵈ. and CHARLES DILLY, in the Poultry. MDCCLXVIII.

The CONSULS, QUÆSTORS, TRIBUNES, and other illustrious and great Men of the senatorial Order at Berne.

I am indebted to you for many great obligations, most illustrious and great men; and lately you have done me the honour to confer a most noble and unexpected favour upon me. It is but just that I should by words thank those to whom I am incapable of making any other return; and such a testimony of gratitude I will shew them as long as I live. It is proper that, being publickly graced by your favours, I should make a public acknowledgment, and give some pledge of my gratitude, however mean and inadequate. Receive therefore, most illustrious and excellent men, and deign to receive favourably, this first though feeble proof of my diligence in my new office. May the Almighty enable me to promote the public interest of the academy by more considerable and more valuable productions, and may the hopes which you have conceived of me, venerable fathers of your country, and the hopes which the people have conceived concerning this new professorship, be fulfilled to general satisfaction. May the propitious Deity likewise favour all your public and private undertakings, and shower all his choicest blessings both upon you and yours, and the whole commonwealth. And cease not, reverend fathers, to make happy, by your constant benevolence and favour, a man entirely devoted to the service of your excellencies.

S. A. TISSOT.

Lausanne, April 29, 1766.

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The occasion of this discourse, and the choice of the materials, will sufficiently appear from the discourse itself: therefore, courteous reader, I shall not trespass upon thy patience by a long preface.

I have long since read many treatises and dissertations concerning the health of the studious; but of all the authors, who have treated this subject, the only one who has acquitted himself to my satisfaction is BERNARD RAMAZINI: for I have not yet had an opportunity of reading the work of the celebrated PUJATUS, a man who in other respects has deserved highly of the medicinal science; but whose treatise upon this subject is, I find, neither praised by the journals nor by his friends. Nor is the work of RAMAZINI compleat; since he has left more topicks untouched than he has elucidated. I have therefore undertaken an important, an agreeable, and even a new subject; and I hope I shall not appear unequal to it; but it will be sufficient to have pointed out the road at a distance to learned travellers; they will soon be able of themselves to shew the unknown paths; which is my earnest wish and desire. In this treatise there will occur many passages transcribed verbatim from CELSUS, GAUBIUS, and other eminent men, and that even without distinguishing them by quotation. This plagiarism will, I hope, be excused, because I looked upon it as a sort of profanation to alter their words, as they were extreamly eloquent, and admirably adapted to my purpose: besides, it was improper to disgust the reader by too great a number of quotations.

ON THE

DISEASES

Literary and Sedentary Persons.

When I consider with myself how many and how great men have formerly ascended this chair, with how general an applause they apply’d to the education of youth, and how every branch of erudition has been cultivated to such advantage by the present set of teachers, into whose learned order I am this day admitted by the great favour and indulgence of our senate; whilst I at the same time reflect how much this new situation differs from my former manner of living, in which as I had willingly pass’d a considerable part of my life, I had determin’d to continue to my old age; when I reflect upon all these circumstances, a tremor seizes my limbs, and my voice falters. But because from the very foundation of this respectable academy, custom, which governs all things, and your expectation requires it of me, embolden’d by your kindness, I will make trial of my abilities.

Being a new member, and ascending a new chair, I propos’d to speak of the connexion between physic and other academical studies, and it was my design to explain what it borrows from them, and what it contributes to them in its turn.

It would be a pleasure to me, reverend pastors of the church, and illustrious professors of divinity, to declare aloud how much physick is indebted to religion; I would gladly vindicate the principles of physicians from the imputations of ancient calumny, and prove that religion is strongly supported by a science, which, being totally conversant in the contemplation of an admirable creature, demonstrates from the wonderful mechanism of a man in health, and the surprising cures of the sick, the existence and great wisdom of the Supreme Artificer, and that even to the most obstinate. Do men forget the Deity? Physicians stand forth, and theology is entirely reviv’d; for who have spoken more truth, or in a sublimer stile concerning God, than they? There would be no end, were I to cite them all; but I must not pass over in silence HIPPOCRATES, the first who ever asserted that fate produc’d nothing, but that all those events, which we call fortuitous, are regulated by the will of God: the next to him is GALEN, who diffusively proves, that the existence of God is demonstrated by the position of the thumb alone; and calls his treatise concerning the use of the parts, a monument to the glory of the Deity: to him must be added POLYCHRESTUS, to whom the illustrious sir-name of Lover of God was given, on account of his great piety: BOYLE, who wrote excellent works himself, and founded an admirable institution for the promotion of religion, which he nobly endow’d; his friend SYDENHAM; the immortal LOCK; HOFFMAN, who carried his piety so far, that he was not entirely free from superstition; the admirable TRALLES; and my dear and worthy friend HALLER, who in an excellent treatise has asserted the utility of religion in a manly stile, as usual, and exerts himself to the utmost to promote its cause.

Physicians indeed laugh at the idle tales of old women, at the extravagancies of the vulgar, and thereby incur the censure of weak and superstitious people; they deride the inventions of imagination; and whilst every divine lays down his own opinion as the rule of truth, physicians make a jest of the phantoms which these set up for religion, and refuse to embrace a cloud for a Juno: thence all these clamours, these accusations, these reproaches, and these calumnies. But if some of our society have in fact been led astray by error, which I am sorry to say cannot be denied, the severe censure of their colleagues has soon convinced the public how much they disapprov’d of their principles.

It would be a pleasure to me, most learned professor of morality, whom to address by the tender name of father-in-law is my greatest happiness; it would be a pleasure to me, I say, to treat to the best of my abilities of the connexion between the knowledge of morals and of health; how near the relation is between them, how exact the concatenation in every respect. This is certainly both an agreeable and useful undertaking: nor is it altogether new; for HIPPOCRATES has in his whole treatise concerning diet, done his utmost to prove that souls are the same in all men, and that the various degrees of wisdom and folly proceed from the different temperament of their bodies; and GALEN, who has admirably demonstrated the power of the body over the mind and the motions of the will, desired the teachers of philosophy, sixteen ages ago, to send all persons of bad morals to him to be cur’d.

Should I be ever so full, most learned professor of jurisprudence, I could not entirely display the connexion between us; for whether a legislator regulates a commonwealth, or whether a judge upon the bench weighs questions of civil law, or criminal and ecclesiastical causes, in the ballance of Themis, there occur cases, and those not a few, in which he cannot do without the assistance of our art.

It would be necessary to lay open the greatest part of natural knowledge, most profound professor of philosophy, were I to treat of all that it has in common with physick; for you well know that both the cure of diseases, and the contemplation of the nature of things, had their beginnings from the same authors. We are therefore inform’d that many of the professors of natural philosophy were well skilled in physick, and that the most illustrious of these were PYTHAGORAS, EMPEDOCLES, and DEMOCRITUS. HIPPOCRATES was the first who separated these studies; but he did not separate them in such a manner as to pull them asunder entirely, but so as to split that comprehensive science into several more minute members, that many might cultivate divided, what one could not learn entire; but that neither should desert what nature made inseparable.

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