"Flagellum Salutis"
And first as to melancholy.
One predisposing cause of melancholy, observes Paullini, is love, and that eventuates in idiotcy or insanity.
To parents and guardians our author gives the advice, when the first symptoms of this complaint appear in young people under their charge, let them grasp the rod firmly, and lay it on with vigour and promptitude. The remedy is infallible. Valescus de Taranta says, in the case of a young man—and his words are words of gold—"Whip him well, and should he not mend immediately, keep him locked up in the cellar on bread and water till he promises amendment."
I saw, continues our author, an instance of the good effect of this treatment at Amsterdam. A stripling of twenty, comely enough in his appearance, the son of an artisan in the town, fell in love with the mayor's daughter. He could neither eat, drink, sleep, nor do anything in the remotest degree rational. The father, unaware of the cause, put him into the hands of a medical practitioner, who did his utmost to cure him, but signally failed. At last the father's eyes were opened by means of an intercepted letter. Like a sensible man he packed his son off to the public whipping-place, there to learn better moralia. And this had the desired effect; for the youth returned perfectly cured and in his right senses.
But for this treatment he might have sunk into
121
