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[451] house, many, both male and female, whom we have known, have told us that the patients there were numerous, young, and not very sick; and that the hilarity and frolic of the convalescents exceeded all bounds. There was one disorder not uncommon among our early settlers and their descendants: it was dropsy; and we opine that over-doses of cider may have been the cause. Cider did not produce intoxication; but it filled the stomach to satiety, and produced a kind of water-loggedness and distention, which were apt to make the men cross, and the women sleepy. There is another more active demon, not chronicled in ancient mythology, whose history has recently been written in fire. He gets a letter of introduction, and comes in the guise of a friend to a house, but finally murders the whole family. The temperance reformers have tried to cast this demon out; but he will not depart until he has thrown down his victim, and “rent him sore.” Luxurious living has produced diseases in the digestive organs, and boundless ambition has produced them in the nervous system. Humors have been created in our day, and are becoming transmissible to a degree which threatens whole families. The marriage of first-cousins together has done something to produce imbecility and early death.
John Wilson and son. 22 School Street. Boston. 1855.
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