Page:Poems Taggart.djvu/48

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xl
some account of the author.

ed illness, the greater part of which period I was able to sit up two or three hours in a day, and frequently rode, supported in a carriage, a short distance, though as before observed, not without great increase of pain, and total watchfulness for many succeeding nights,—I was again attacked with a still more acutely painful and dangerous malady, from which, recovery for several weeks seemed highly improbable, when this most alarming complaint again yielded to medical skill, and life continued, though strength has never more returned. And in what agony, in what excruciating tortures, and restless languishing the greater part of the last nine years has been passed, it is believed by my parents that language is inadequate to describe or the human mind to conceive. During both the former and latter period of these long-protracted and uncompromising diseases, every expedient that has been resorted to, with the blissful hope of recovery, has proved, not only ineffectual to produce the desired result, but has, invariably, greatly aggravated and increased my complicated complaints; from which it has been impossible to obtain the smallest degree of relief that could render life supportable, and preserve the scorching brain from phrensy, without the constant use of the most powerful anodynes.