"In fevers, the sudden failing of the strength and pulse ought, we are told, to be regarded by us as signs of the despairing soul's discontinuing her care of the body, and being soon about to relinquish it: nay, sometimes, like a mean and silly coward, she sinks even under such diseases, as, in their own nature, are not at all deadly; and, through false alarms, she is either thrown into a great hurry and trepidation, which urges her to make wild work of it, and to do much mischief; or else she becomes very backward and remiss in her endeavours to preserve the body, and, as if it were a field not worth keeping, foolishly deserts it: though, were she but always wise enough, and, neglecting things of less moment, were solely intent on the preservation of the body, she could, if we may believe the Doctor [Stahl], not only prevent diseases, as far, at least, as they proceed from internal causes, but protract also the life of man, it may be, to a thousand years: a term greatly beyond what the adepts promised themselves from their aurum potabile, or Universal Remedy!"
— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)
Metaphor
"In fevers, the sudden failing of the strength and pulse ought, we are told, to be regarded by us as signs of the despairing soul's discontinuing her care of the body, and being soon about to relinquish it: nay, sometimes, like a mean and silly coward, she sinks even under such diseases, as, in their own nature, are not at all deadly; and, through false alarms, she is either thrown into a great hurry and trepidation, which urges her to make wild work of it, and to do much mischief; or else she becomes very backward and remiss in her endeavours to preserve the body, and, as if it were a field not worth keeping, foolishly deserts it: though, were she but always wise enough, and, neglecting things of less moment, were solely intent on the preservation of the body, she could, if we may believe the Doctor [Stahl], not only prevent diseases, as far, at least, as they proceed from internal causes, but protract also the life of man, it may be, to a thousand years: a term greatly beyond what the adepts promised themselves from their aurum potabile, or Universal Remedy!"
Metaphor in Context
When the body is disordered,or exhausted with fatigue, the soul frequently hides herself in sleep, and retires from external things, in order that she may be more at leisure to recruit the body, or to rectify what has happened amiss in it; and hence the inclination to sleep after child-bearing: hence, also, the frequent sleeping of infants; whose anima, it seems, is so taken up with directing and governing the vital motions, that it has little time to attend to any thing else.--The soul, however, seems to neglect, in a great measure, this province, as often as she is too much distracted with external things; and hence it is, that health is so much impaired by fear, sorrow, love, and other more violent passions: nor is she without her wilful and froward fits; as appears from her sending the milk back into the blood from the breasts of pregnant women, whose foetuses she had only fancied were suddenly dead, and from her not deriving into them again those nourishing streams, when living children are really born; as if, for her part, she had rather they were starved, than that she herself should seem to have been under mistakes.--In fevers, the sudden failing of the strength and pulse ought, we are told, to be regarded by us as signs of the despairing soul's discontinuing her care of the body, and being soon about to relinquish it: nay, sometimes, like a mean and silly coward, she sinks even under such diseases, as, in their own nature, are not at all deadly; and, through false alarms, she is either thrown into a great hurry and trepidation, which urges her to make wild work of it, and to do much mischief; or else she becomes very backward and remiss in her endeavours to preserve the body, and, as if it were a field not worth keeping, foolishly deserts it: though, were she but always wise enough, and, neglecting things of less moment, were solely intent on the preservation of the body, she could, if we may believe the Doctor [Stahl], not only prevent diseases, as far, at least, as they proceed from internal causes, but protract also the life of man, it may be, to a thousand years: a term greatly beyond what the adepts promised themselves from their aurum potabile, or Universal Remedy!
(Sect. XI, pp. 277-9n)
