itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among
us. We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which
diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible
emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec
tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director,
where all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled
in the most painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after
their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years' attendance, all
the inmates died out two or three times, and were replaced by new ones.
He does not hesitate to attribute the disease from which they suffered
to those depressing moral influences to which they were subjected.

So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of the nervous
system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take
the first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad
disaster to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence
of two gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden
feeling at the epigastrium, or, less learnedly, the pit of the stomach,
changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the knees. The
lady had a "grande revolution," as French patients say,--went home, and
kept her bed for the rest of the day. Perhaps the reader may smile
at the mention of such trivial indispositions, but in more sensitive
natures death itself follows in some cases from no more serious cause.
An old, gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on hearing of
Napoleon's return from Elba. One of our early friends, who recently
died of the same complaint, was thought to have had his attack mainly in
consequence of the excitements of the time.

We all know what the war fever is in our young men,--what a devouring
passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire
of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of
adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of
participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal
distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which
we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most
ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different
form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing
a drop of precious blood belonging to them