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SECT.  XXXIV.

DISEASES OF VOLITION.

I. 1. Volition defined.  Motions termed involuntary are caused by volition.  Desires opposed to each other.  Deliberation.  Ass between two hay-cocks.  Saliva swallowed against one’s desire.  Voluntary motions distinguished from those associated with sensitive motions. 2. Pains from excess, and from defect of motion.  No pain is felt during vehement voluntary exertion; as in cold fits of ague, labour-pains, strangury, tenesmus, vomiting, restlessness in fevers, convulsion of a wounded muscle. 3. Of holding the breath and screaming in pain; why swine and dogs cry out in pain, and not sheep and horses.  Of grinning and biting in pain; why mad animals bite others. 4. Epileptic convulsions explained, why the fits begin with quivering of the under jaw, biting the tongue, and setting the teeth; why the convulsive motions are alternately relaxed.  The phenomenon of laughter explained.  Why children cannot tickle themselves.  How some have died from immoderate laughter. 5. Of cataleptic spasms, of the locked jaw, of painful cramps. 6. Syncope explained.  Why no external objects are perceived in syncope. 7. Of palsy and apoplexy from violent exertions.  Case of Mrs. Scot.  From dancing, scating, swimming.  Case of Mr. Nairn.  Why palsies are not always immediately preceded by violent exertions.  Palsy and epilepsy from diseased livers.  Why the right arm more frequently paralytic than the left.  How paralytic limbs regain their motions. II. Diseases of the sensual motions from excess or defect of voluntary exertion. 1. Madness. 2. Distinguished from delirium. 3. Why mankind more liable to insanity than brutes. 4. Suspicion.  Want of shame, and of cleanliness. 5. They bear cold, hunger, and fatigue.  Charles XII. of Sweden. 6. Pleasureable delirium, and insanity.  Child riding on a stick.  Pains of martyrdom not felt. 7. Dropsy. 8. Inflammation cured by insanity. III. 1. Pain relieved by reverie.  Reverie is an exertion of voluntary and sensitive motions. 2. Case of reverie. 3. Lady supposed to have two souls. 4. Methods of relieving pain.

I. 1.  Before we commence this Section on Diseased Voluntary Motions, it may be necessary to premise, that the word volition is not used in this work exactly in its common acceptation.  Volition is said in Section V. to bear the same analogy to desire and aversion, which sensation does to pleasure and pain.  And hence that, when desire or aversion produces any action of the muscular fibres, or of the organs of sense, they are termed volition; and the actions produced in consequence are termed voluntary actions.  Whence it appears, that motions of our muscles or ideas may be produced in consequence of desire or aversion without our having the power to prevent them, and yet these motions may be termed voluntary, according to our definition of the word; though in common language they would be called involuntary.