Note 10 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL CAUSES UPON THE MORAL FACULTY. DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, ON THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY, 1786.

There is a morbid state of excitability in the body during the convalescence from fever, which is intimately connected with an undue propensity to venereal pleasures. I have met with several instances of it. The marriage of the celebrated Mr. Howard to a woman who was twice as old as himself, and very sickly, has been ascribed, by his biographer, Dr. Aiken, to gratitude for her great attention to him in a fit of sickness. I am disposed to ascribe it to a sudden paroxysm of another passion, which, as a religious man, he could not gratify in any other, than in a lawful way. I have heard of two young clergymen who married the women who had nursed them in fits of sickness. In both cases there was great inequality in their years, and condition in life. Their motive was, probably, the same as that which I have attributed to Mr. Howard. Dr. Patrick Russel takes notice of an uncommon degree of venereal excitability which followed attacks of the plague at Messina, in 1743, in all ranks of people. Marriages, he says, were more frequent after it than usual, and virgins were, in some instances, violated, who died of that disease, by persons who had just recovered from it.