As it is our intention to record whatever we meet with, that is curious or wonderful, we hesitate not in inserting the following Surprising Effects of Anger

Physicians and naturalists afford instances of very extraordinary effects of this passion. Borrichius cured a woman of an inveterate tertian ague, which had baffled the art of physic, by putting the patient in a furious fit of anger. Valeriola made use of the same means, with the like success, in a quartan ague. The same passion has been equally salutary to paralytic, gouty, and even dumb persons ; to which last it has sometimes given the use of speech. Etmuller gives divers instances of very singular cures wrought by anger; among others, he mentions a person laid up in the gout, who, being provoked by his physician, flew upon him, and was cured. It is true, the remedy is somewhat dangerous in the application, when a patient does not know how to use it with moderation. We meet with several instances of princes, to whom it has proved mortal; e. g. Valentinian I. Wenceslaus, Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, and others. There are also instances wherein it has produced the epilepsy, jaundice, cholera morbus, diarrhoea, etc. In fact, this passion is of such a nature, that it quickly throws the whole nervous system into preternatural commotions, by a violent stricture of the nervous and muscular parts ; and surprisingly augments, not only the systole of the heart, and its contiguous vessels, but also the tone of the fibrous parts in the whole body. It is also certain, that this passion, by the spasmodic stricture it produces in the parts, exerts its power principally on the stomach and intestines, which are highly nervous and membraneous parts; whence the symptoms are more dangerous, in proportion to the greater consent of the stomach and intestines with the other nervous parts, and almost with the whole body. The unhappy influence of anger likewise on the biliary and hepatic ducts, is very surprising; since, by an intense, constriction of these, the liver is not only rendered scirrhous, but stones also are often generated in the gall-bladder and biliary ducts: these accidents have scarcely any other origin than an obstruction of the free motion and efflux of the bile, by means of this violent stricture. From such a stricture, likewise, proceeds the jaundice, which, in process of time, lays a foundation for calculous concretions in the gall-bladder. By increasing the motion of the fluid, or the spasms of the fibrous parts, by means of anger, a large quantity of blood is forcibly propelled to certain parts; whence it happens, that they are too much distended, and the orifices of the veins distributed there, opened. It is evident, from experience, that anger has a great tendency to excite enormous hemorrhages, either from the nose, the aperture of the pulmonary artery, etc. The effects of this passion are well described by Armstrong in the following lines:

Fear.

"But there's a passion, whose tempestuous sway Tears up each virtue planted in the heart, And shakes to ruin proud philosophy: For pale and trembling anger rushes in With falt'ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare, Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas, Desp'rate, and arm'd with more than human strength ; But he whom anger stings, drops, if he dies, At once, and rushes apoplectic down ; Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell.'