Volume 1 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL EVENTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION UPON THE HUMAN BODY.

There were several circumstances peculiar to the American revolution, which should be mentioned previously to an account of the influence of the events which accompanied it, upon the human body.

1. The revolution interested every inhabitant of the country of both sexes, and of every rank and age that was capable of reflection. An indifferent, or neutral spectator of the controversy, was scarcely to be found in any of the states.

2. The scenes of war and government which it introduced, were new to the greatest part of the inhabitants of the United States, and operated with all the force of novelty upon the human mind.

3. The controversy was conceived to be the most important of any that had ever engaged the attention of mankind. It was generally believed, by the friends of the revolution, that the very existence of freedom upon our globe, was involved in the issue of the contest in favour of the United States.

4. The American revolution included in it the cares of government, as well as the toils and dangers of war. The American mind was, therefore, frequently occupied at the same time, by the difficult and complicated duties of political and military life.

5. The revolution was conducted by men who had been born free, and whose sense of the blessings of liberty was of course more exquisite than if they had just emerged from a state of slavery.

6. The greatest part of the soldiers in the armies of the United States had family connections and property in the country.

7. The war was carried on by the Americans against a nation, to whom they had long been tied by the numerous obligations of consanguinity, laws, religion, commerce, language, interest, and a mutual sense of national glory. The resentments of the Americans of course rose, as is usual in all disputes, in proportion to the number and force of these ancient bonds of affection and union.

8. A predilection to a limited monarchy, as an essential part of a free and safe government, and an attachment to the reigning king of Great-Britain (with a very few exceptions), were universal in every part of the United States.

9. There was at one time a sudden dissolution of civil government in all, and of ecclesiastical establishments in several of the states.

10. The expences of the war were supported by means of a paper currency, which was continually depreciating.

From the action of each of these causes, and frequently from their combination in the same persons, effects might reasonably be expected, both upon the mind and body, which have seldom occurred; or if they have, I believe were never fully recorded in any age or country.

It might afford some useful instruction, to point out the influence of the military and political events of the revolution upon the understandings, passions, and morals of the citizens of the United States; but my business in the present inquiry, is only to take notice of the influence of those events upon the human body, through the medium of the mind.

I shall first mention the effects of the military, and secondly, of the political events of the revolution. The last must be considered in a two-fold view, accordingly as they affected the friends, or the enemies of the revolution.

I. In treating of the effects of the military events, I shall take notice, first, of the influence of actual war, and, secondly, of the influence of the military life.

In the beginning of a battle, I have observed thirst to be a very common sensation among both officers and soldiers. It occurred where no exercise, or action of the body, could have excited it.

Many officers have informed me, that after the first onset in a battle, they felt a glow of heat, so universal as to be perceptible in both their ears. This was the case, in a particular manner, in the battle of Princeton, on the third of January, in the year 1777, on which day the weather was remarkably cold.

A veteran colonel of a New-England regiment, whom I visited at Princeton, and who was wounded in the hand at the battle of Monmouth, on the 28th of June, 1778 (a day in which the mercury stood at 90° of Fahrenheit's thermometer), after describing his situation at the time he received his wound, concluded his story by remarking, that “fighting was hot work on a cold day, but much more so on a warm day.” The many instances which appeared after that memorable battle, of soldiers who were found among the slain without any marks of wounds or violence upon their bodies, were probably occasioned by the heat excited in the body, by the emotions of the mind, being added to that of the atmosphere.

Soldiers bore operations of every kind immediately after a battle, with much more fortitude than they did at any time afterwards.

The effects of the military life upon the human body come next to be considered under this head.

In another place[53] I have mentioned three cases of pulmonary consumption being perfectly cured by the diet and hardships of a camp life.

Doctor Blane, in his valuable observations on the diseases incident to seamen, ascribes the extraordinary healthiness of the British fleet in the month of April, 1782, to the effects produced on the spirit of the soldiers and seamen, by the victory obtained over the French fleet on the 12th of that month; and relates, upon the authority of Mr. Ives, an instance in the war between Great-Britain and the combined powers of France and Spain, in 1744, in which the scurvy, as well as other diseases, were checked by the prospect of a naval engagement.

The American army furnished an instance of the effects of victory upon the human mind, which may serve to establish the inferences from the facts related by Doctor Blane. The Philadelphia militia who joined the remains of General Washington's army, in December, 1776, and shared with them a few days afterwards in the capture of a large body of Hessians at Trenton, consisted of 1500 men, most of whom had been accustomed to the habits of a city life. These men slept in tents and barns, and sometimes in the open air during the usual colds of December and January; and yet there were but two instances of sickness, and only one of death, in that body of men in the course of nearly six weeks, in those winter months. This extraordinary healthiness of so great a number of men under such trying circumstances, can only be ascribed to the vigour infused into the human body by the victory of Trenton having produced insensibility to all the usual remote causes of diseases.

Militia officers and soldiers, who enjoyed good health during a campaign, were often affected by fevers and other diseases, as soon as they returned to their respective homes. I knew one instance of a militia captain, who was seized with convulsions the first night he lay on a feather bed, after sleeping several months on a mattrass, or upon the ground. These affections of the body appeared to be produced only by the sudden abstraction of that tone in the system which was excited by a sense of danger, and the other invigorating objects of a military life.

The NOSTALGIA of Doctor Cullen, or the home-sickness, was a frequent disease in the American army, more especially among the soldiers of the New-England states. But this disease was suspended by the superior action of the mind under the influence of the principles which governed common soldiers in the American army. Of this General Gates furnished me with a remarkable instance in 1776, soon after his return from the command of a large body of regular troops and militia at Ticonderoga. From the effects of the nostalgia, and the feebleness of the discipline, which was exercised over the militia, desertions were very frequent and numerous in his army, in the latter part of the campaign; and yet during the three weeks in which the general expected every hour an attack to be made upon him by General Burgoyne, there was not a single desertion from his army, which consisted at that time of 10,000 men.

The patience, firmness, and magnanimity with which the officers and soldiers of the American army endured the complicated evils of hunger, cold, and nakedness, can only be ascribed to an insensibility of body produced by an uncommon tone of mind excited by the love of liberty and their country.

Before I proceed to the second general division of this subject, I shall take notice, that more instances of apoplexies occurred in the city of Philadelphia, in the winter of 1774–5, than had been known in former years. I should have hesitated in recording this fact, had I not found the observation supported by a fact of the same kind, and produced by a nearly similar cause, in the appendix to the practical works of Doctor Baglivi, professor of physic and anatomy at Rome. After a very wet season in the winter of 1694–5, he informs us, that “apoplexies displayed their rage; and perhaps (adds our author) that some part of this epidemic illness was owing to the universal grief and domestic care, occasioned by all Europe being engaged in a war. All commerce was disturbed, and all the avenues of peace blocked up, so that the strongest heart could scarcely bear the thoughts of it.” The winter of 1774-5 was a period of uncommon anxiety among the citizens of America. Every countenance wore the marks of painful solicitude, for the event of a petition to the throne of Britain, which was to determine whether reconciliation, or a civil war, with all its terrible and distressing consequences, were to take place. The apoplectic fit, which deprived the world of the talents and virtues of Peyton Randolph, while he filled the chair of congress, in 1775, appeared to be occasioned in part by the pressure of the uncertainty of those great events upon his mind. To the name of this illustrious patriot, several others might be added, who were affected by the apoplexy in the same memorable year. At this time a difference of opinion upon the subject of the contest with Great-Britain, had scarcely taken place among the citizens of America.

II. The political events of the revolution produced different effects upon the human body, through the medium of the mind, according as they acted upon the friends or enemies of the revolution.

I shall first describe its effects upon the former class of citizens of the United States.

Many persons, of infirm and delicate habits, were restored to perfect health, by the change of place, or occupation, to which the war exposed them. This was the case in a more especial manner with hysterical women, who were much interested in the successful issue of the contest. The same effects of a civil war upon the hysteria, were observed by Doctor Cullen in Scotland, in the years 1745 and 1746. It may perhaps help to extend our ideas of the influence of the passions upon diseases, to add, that when either love, jealousy, grief, or even devotion, wholly engross the female mind, they seldom fail, in like manner, to cure or to suspend hysterical complaints.

An uncommon cheerfulness prevailed every where, among the friends of the revolution. Defeats, and even the loss of relations and property, were soon forgotten in the great objects of the war.

The population in the United States was more rapid from births during the war, than it had ever been in the same number of years since the settlement of the country.

I am disposed to ascribe this increase of births chiefly to the quantity and extensive circulation of money, and to the facility of procuring the means of subsistence during the war, which favoured marriages among the labouring part of the people[54]. But I have sufficient documents to prove, that marriages were more fruitful than in former years, and that a considerable number of unfruitful marriages became fruitful during the war. In 1783, the year of the peace, there were several children born of parents who had lived many years together without issue.

Mr. Hume informs us, in his History of England, that some old people, upon hearing the news of the restoration of Charles II, died suddenly of joy. There was a time when I doubted the truth of this assertion; but I am now disposed to believe it, from having heard of a similar effect from an agreeable political event, in the course of the American revolution. The door-keeper of congress, an aged man, died suddenly, immediately after hearing of the capture of Lord Cornwallis' army. His death was universally ascribed to a violent emotion of political joy. This species of joy appears to be one of the strongest emotions that can agitate the human mind.

Perhaps the influence of that ardour in trade and speculation, which seized many of the friends of the revolution, and which was excited by the fallacious nominal amount of the paper money, should rather be considered as a disease, than as a passion. It unhinged the judgment, deposed the moral faculty, and filled the imagination, in many people, with airy and impracticable schemes of wealth and grandeur. Desultory manners, and a peculiar species of extempore conduct, were among its characteristic symptoms. It produced insensibility to cold, hunger, and danger. The trading towns, and in some instances the extremities of the United States, were frequently visited in a few hours or days by persons affected by this disease; and hence “to travel with the speed of a speculator,” became a common saying in many parts of the country. This species of insanity (if I may be allowed to call it by that name) did not require the confinement of a bedlam to cure it, like the South-Sea madness described by Doctor Mead. Its remedies were the depreciation of the paper money, and the events of the peace.

The political events of the revolution produced upon its enemies very different effects from those which have been mentioned.

The hypochondriasis of Doctor Cullen occurred, in many instances, in persons of this description. In some of them, the terror and distress of the revolution brought on a true melancholia[55]. The causes which produced these diseases may be reduced to four heads. 1. The loss of former power or influence in government. 2. The destruction of the hierarchy of the English church in America. 3. The change in the habits of diet, and company, and manners, produced by the annihilation of just debts by means of depreciated paper money. And 4. The neglect, insults, and oppression, to which the loyalists were exposed, from individuals, and, in several instances, from the laws of some of the states.

It was observed in South-Carolina, that several gentlemen who had protected their estates by swearing allegiance to the British government, died soon after the evacuation of Charleston by the British army. Their deaths were ascribed to the neglect with which they were treated by their ancient friends, who had adhered to the government of the United States. The disease was called, by the common people, the protection fever.

From the causes which produced this hypochondriasis, I have taken the liberty of distinguishing it by the name of revolutiana.

In some cases, this disease was rendered fatal by exile and confinement; and, in others, by those persons who were afflicted with it, seeking relief from spiritous liquors.

The termination of the war by the peace in 1783, did not terminate the American revolution. The minds of the citizens of the United States were wholly unprepared for their new situation. The excess of the passion for liberty, inflamed by the successful issue of the war, produced, in many people, opinions and conduct which could not be removed by reason nor restrained by government. For a while, they threatened to render abortive the goodness of heaven to the United States, in delivering them from the evils of slavery and war. The extensive influence which these opinions had upon the understandings, passions, and morals of many of the citizens of the United States, constituted a form of insanity, which I shall take the liberty of distinguishing by the name of anarchia.

I hope no offence will be given by the freedom of any of these remarks. An inquirer after philosophical truth should consider the passions of men in the same light that he does the laws of matter or motion. The friends and enemies of the American revolution must have been more, or less than men, if they could have sustained the magnitude and rapidity of the events that characterised it, without discovering some marks of human weakness, both in body and mind. Perhaps these weaknesses were permitted, that human nature might receive fresh honours in America, by the contending parties (whether produced by the controversies about independence or the national government) mutually forgiving each other, and uniting in plans of general order, and happiness.

Footnotes: